Educational Archive not in STH

[ivor_the_injun]

Some of that might be a mixture of my sister (Elaine) and Mum’s (she’s about to be 81) files - some of it should be related to a YTS group that my ex-brother-in-law used to look after.

[CMcDougall]

^ ....

ok Mr. W, did not put them up as personal, so will PM a link of them so mummy can see them again

the coreSkills disc upped prev pg is the YTS stuff.

[ivor_the_injun]

There were some disks I didn't sent on that were labelled with people's names I didn't recognise. Not sure of the nature of those disks, presumably things like CVs etc, but on the other hand I know some of those in the YTS were pretty good at coding (and one or two were absolute demons at cracking protection).

One of the disks had "Tenpin" on the label, and I vaguely remember a kind-of primitive 10-pin bowling game that I can't find in the archive.

Could it be a type-in or from a compilation, hence it not coming up in searches?

[CMcDougall]

One of the disCs had "Tenpin" on the label, and I vaguely remember a kind-of primitive 10-pin bowling

it's in the archive section, off your discs here : viewtopic.php?f=32&t=14787#p198021
shows by BeeBug, so either a bought tape or type-in.

[OneSwitch]

Where is the latest list of items?
I've found the Brilliant computing master disks that I have and I know that Barrie was after at least one title I think I may have.

Here's the Brilliant Computing titles I have backed-up dating from 1986-1990:

All Year Round
Arcade Challenge
Blob Programs (Blob 1 Blob 2 Where's Blob?)
Everyday Signs
First Steps
Graphics and Written Stories
Joystick Games 1
Joystick Games 2
Pad Switch Games
Path Finder
Spot on Games
Street Wise
Switch On
Switch On Travel
Ted's Adventures
The Get Fit Set
Time For Work
Touch Funfair
Touch Games 1
Touch Games 2

Dropbox link to the repository here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/42w1ynzjpfdi ... G8wja?dl=0


Missing include

Arcade Adventures
Break-time Games
Compose (from ESP)
Concept Sets
Joystick Games 3
Malcom Word Processor
Using Symbols (Widgit Software)
Touch Basics

Counting Grid
From Pictures to Words
Flash Cards
Going Places
Katie's Garden
Picture Gallery
The Big Match

[AndyF]

Where is the latest list of items?

Here.

Excellent.

I have on and off been hunting for Cargo still, figuring it will be floating about in some random .ssd or similar. Having said that I noticed this in your listing:

1569 looks interesting

I'm slightly curious about 1583 too. I seem to think I've seen this somewhere else already on another disk but cannot quite place it.

[billcarr2005]

Missing include

Blob Programs (Blob 1 Blob 2 Where's Blob?)

Aren't some of those here?
viewtopic.php?f=32&t=10455&p=126417

[OneSwitch]

Ah, yes. I forgot those from my repository (have those in a separate folder). Thanks. Updated list to reflect.

[flaxcottage]

Arcademic Skill Builders in Maths

I began to try to hack two titles from this colourful series of maths programs. They sported a new (to me) method of protection, which, I am afraid to say, completely stumped me. Fortunately the very helpful and skilled Mr billcarr2005 had already cracked these titles and posted them here http://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=14811.

I checked the software on DFS, RAMFS, ADFS and NFS and with a few, minor tweaks it runs on any FS on BBCs and Masters. (For some reason Dragon Mix will not run correctly from RAMFS ). The software also runs after a fashion on RISCOS 3.1 inside !6502host.

Included with the programs is the user manual for the whole suite.

[z0m8ied0g]

Brilliant Computing
Arcade Adventures

Manual scan to come.

[z0m8ied0g]

Brilliant Computing
Switch On Travel

Manual to follow.

[z0m8ied0g]

Brilliant Computing
Flash Cards

Manual to follow.

[OneSwitch]

Huge thanks. So pleased to see Arcade Adventures finally preserved. Great work!

[z0m8ied0g]

Brilliant Computing
Joystick Games 2

Manual to follow.

[z0m8ied0g]

Brilliant Computing
Touch Basics

Manual to follow.

[z0m8ied0g]

Brilliant Computing
The Big Match

Manual to follow.

[z0m8ied0g]

Brilliant Computing
Counting Grid

Manual to follow.

[z0m8ied0g]

Brilliant Computing
Switch On Actions

Manual to follow.

[z0m8ied0g]

Brilliant Computing
Ted Steps Out

Manual to follow.

[OneSwitch]

Top job, Stephen. Thank you.

[flaxcottage]

EMR Midi MIDItracker Notator 1

This apparently takes EMR MIDItracker files and displays them as music notation which can then be printed out. It is for BBC B and B+ only, even though the documentation states it is Master compatible. The problem is that the program uses a *LOAD into &C00 to set the user-defined characters. This does not work on a Master.

The disc was protected but was quite easy to circumvent. It was a dual format 40T disc with only tracks 0-19 formatted. A CONVERT file was included to convert the disc to 80T. Track 2 sector 8 was modified to have a sector ID of 24. This prevents a straight copy of the files. The starting file, EMR, loads at &C00 and checks for the odd sector ID in track 2 then CHAINs the file COMPOSE. Apart from setting &95 to contain &1A that is all the file did. This file was ignored.

The disc has been set up to work with Shift-Break.

There is a sequence of small files which load data and set A% to Z% before running the main program EMR9. All these files are BASIC programs but are unlistable because the final &FF marker has been over-written with &04. Setting this back to &FF made these normal BASIC programs.

The file CHARS on the disk attempts to define the character set for a Master computer and then CHAINs the COMPOSE file. CHARS is only partially successful as there are two sets of user-defined graphics used by the program at different stages.

The printing function has not been tested.

[flaxcottage]

AVP - FIRST STEPS
AVP - PUZZLE PALACE

A couple of titles from the massive AVP catalogue.

These had minimal protection. The disc was formatted to 20 tracks on a 40T floppy. The catalogue was full of VDU21 and CLS commands inside the title and dummy file names. The catalogues on both discs were full with 31 entries each.

Each file name was 3 characters and included lots of non alphanumeric ones.

Using a disc editor showed the actual filenames present on the disc. *COPY 01 <filename> allowed the actual software to be sent to a blank floppy. !BOOT on each disc was a machine code program, which essentially CHAINed a BASIC program. The program name was encrypted by EOR &66. Apart from executing a number of FX calls and disabling the VDU, all !BOOT did was to execute PAGE=&1800:CHAIN"<progname>"

My apologies for First Steps not being complete. The original floppy was physically damaged such that the file KP~ could not be recovered. This title also uses a concept keyboard but, unfortunately, the overlay was missing. The disc was also corrupted so that the file IMB, which loaded the AVP logo onto the screen, was unreadable. Thankfully an identical file, '(? from the Puzzle Palace disc could be copied over and renamed so that the logo was displayed correctly.

Puzzle Palace is a mathematical adventure.

The documentation for each title had suffered over the years. The printing ink had reacted with the plastic packaging and had been detached from the paper. Also pages were stuck to each other. The printing ink seems to have gone 'soft' and glued to the opposite page. As much as possible of the damage has been repaired in the digital documentation.

[flaxcottage]

Colourcopter and other Early Learning Programs

A pre-school/infants suite of programs.

This is disc only due to the number of *DISK and *DRIVE commands in the code. It works on B, B+ and Master.

The software is driven by the function keys and comes with a collection of keystrips. Unfortunately keystrip 5 set 5 is missing. The manual allows use without this keystrip or allows the user to make a temporary keystrip.

Programs included are;

Blob
Fill
Picture
Cats & Hats
Spiro
Colourcopter
Domino

There was minimal protection on the disc. Only tracks 0-19 of a 40T disc were formatted. One file, Pic/B, was unreadable as its length overlapped the unformatted area. The disc size was set to 40 tracks of 256 bytes. *BACKUP and *COPY *.* would therefore not work. Copying all the files individually, apart from Pic/B, was all that was needed to make an unprotected copy. BITD this level of protection would have defeated most teachers.

Edit:
Please see the next post for the error-free version of the software.

[billcarr2005]

Only tracks 0-19 of a 40T disc were formatted.

Could this be related to the issue that affected the reporting of used tracks on the DLM titles?
20 x 2560 (or &14 x &A00) would give total data length of just 51200 (or &C800), whereas the SSD contains more than this?

I've attached the SSD created from de-FSDing the image i'd got. Just a standard 40 track disk, it seems...

For reference, here's a list of other esm titles I've imaged, should any be MIA

Code: Select all

ES548 copywrite (COPY)
ES581 Pick-a-Word
ES582 Sentence Builder
ES583 An Eye For Spelling (1984)
ES583 An Eye For Spelling (1987)
ES585 Storywriter
ES593 Colourcopter
ES610 Microstory
ES612 Wordweb Management
ES612A Wordweb Street
ES612B Wordweb Farm
ES612C Wordweb Zoo
ES612D Wordweb Home
ES613 SupaStore
ES613 SupaStore - Database of British Trees
ES613 SupaStore - Utils
ES618 Jigsaw and Sliding Block
ES633 Numbercopter Vn1-4
ES633 Numbercopter
ES634 The Lost Frog
ES638 Crack-It
ES643 Mapping Skills
ES649 Puff
ES695 Hands on Spelling
ES697 Kaleidoscope


[flaxcottage]

Could this be related to the issue that affected the reporting of used tracks on the DLM titles?
20 x 2560 (or &14 x &A00) would give total data length of just 51200 (or &C800), whereas the SSD contains more than this?

I've attached the SSD created from de-FSDing the image i'd got. Just a standard 40 track disk, it seems...

I've looked into this further. My disk is definitely corrupted. It will not verify past Track 21/06 on any drive I have. On further investigation it appears to have been formatted at 40T on an 80T drive and the later tracks written at 80T if that makes sense. This affects file Pic/b only. Trying to *LOAD it reports an error at T21/06

ADI reports tracks 19 onwards are unformatted on a 40T drive. On an 80T drive ADI reports all tracks formatted with normal data. Since this disc came from a teacher's centre I am assuming that the software was mis-saved by the centre.

Reading track 33 sector 6 (decimal) pulls up an error in 40T mode. In 80T mode track 66 sector 6 reads OK as do track 65 sector 6 and track 67 sector 6. However, the data are different on all these tracks, which is probably what is causing the error on a 40T drive (track 33 sector 6 has two sets of data read at the same time). Even using an 80T drive and double-stepping the head in 40T mode will not read the sector.

Thanks again for coming to the rescue.

The following esm titles from your stash are MIA

Code: Select all

ES548 copywrite (COPY)
ES581 Pick-a-Word
ES582 Sentence Builder
ES585 Storywriter
ES610 Microstory
ES612 Wordweb Management
ES612A Wordweb Street
ES612B Wordweb Farm
ES612C Wordweb Zoo
ES612D Wordweb Home
ES613 SupaStore
ES613 SupaStore - Database of British Trees
ES613 SupaStore - Utils
ES618 Jigsaw and Sliding Block
ES643 Mapping Skills
ES695 Hands on Spelling


[billcarr2005]

... On further investigation it appears to have been formatted at 40T on an 80T drive and the later tracks written at 80T if that makes sense.
... ADI reports tracks 19 onwards are unformatted on a 40T drive. On an 80T drive ADI reports all tracks formatted with normal data. Since this disc came from a teacher's centre I am assuming that the software was mis-saved by the centre.

Reading track 33 sector 6 (decimal) pulls up an error in 40T mode. In 80T mode track 66 sector 6 reads OK as do track 65 sector 6 and track 67 sector 6. However, the data are different on all these tracks, which is probably what is causing the error on a 40T drive (track 33 sector 6 has two sets of data read at the same time). Even using an 80T drive and double-stepping the head in 40T mode will not read the sector.

The only way to correctly read a file in both 40T and 80T mode is to have the logical track numbers matching the physical track number, otherwise standard DFS will balk at the suggestion. Dual format disks often have the same data duplicated at different locations on the disk.
Since track 0 is always in the same place, and sector 1 contains the file locations, in their absolute form, then the simple calculation of (track*2560)+(sector*256) = absolute, otherwise the data can't be found.

The following esm titles from your stash are MIA

Code: Select all

ES548 copywrite (COPY)
ES581 Pick-a-Word
ES582 Sentence Builder
ES585 Storywriter
ES610 Microstory
ES612 Wordweb Management
ES612A Wordweb Street
ES612B Wordweb Farm
ES612C Wordweb Zoo
ES612D Wordweb Home
ES613 SupaStore
ES613 SupaStore - Database of British Trees
ES613 SupaStore - Utils
ES618 Jigsaw and Sliding Block
ES643 Mapping Skills
ES695 Hands on Spelling


Please find attached!
I believe Supastore requires a ROM, which wasn't in the box I have

[flaxcottage]

Thanks for that billcarr2005!

You need to edit your avatar to wear a blue cloak and a big S on the chest.

[flaxcottage]

Yes, Supastore does need a ROM. This can be loaded from http://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14367.

Anyone got a pdf of the documentation?

[flaxcottage]

Maths - O-Level Revision Part One - Cheshire Cat Educational Series

This was a double cassette title in an impressive plastic case and arrived courtesy of pegson1, thanks.

The tapes were unprotected and the ADT2 command *XFER was used to copy the files over to ADFS on my Master HD. I used ADFS as the main programs had 10 character titles, which would not fit onto a DFS disc. The titles were of the format, eg. 1<8 control characters>P. These were saved on ADFS as, for example, 1????????P. Each was renamed, eg. 1P.

Each BASIC program was protected from being LISTed using the method of replacing the end of program marker &FF with &00. The programs would RUN but not LIST. Re-instating the &FF gave me the suite of programs in LISTable format.

Each side of the tape had a program called HELLO. These were almost identical, setting various data values, defining characters and then CHAINing the respective main program. One of these HELLO programs was modified to show a menu of titles to be run from the disc.

Each program was edited to remove *TAPE and *OPT 1 commands.

The MENU program also loaded the character definitions. To allow this software to work on all 8-bit BBC variants the INKEY(-256) method was used to identify a BBC B or a BBC B+; these defined characters 224 and upwards. The Master variants defined characters 224 and up and also 128 and up. This was to overcome the tacky programming which defined characters 224 and above but displayed them using characters 128 and onwards (this was a 'feature' of the BBC B OS).

Since all the main programs needed PAGE to be set at &E00 a utility called PMOVE was added to the disc image. If PAGE was found to be greater than &E00, the programs were LOADed and then PMOVE executed to move them down from the higher PAGE value to &E00. *TAPE was issued and RUN placed into the keyboard buffer.

This image works on DFS, ADFS, RAMFS and NFS. It should also work on MMFS although it has not been tested yet. If the PMOVE routine is removed from the MENU program this should work on the A3000 and older Archimedes machines. To work on newer RISCOS machines the colours will have to be changed to accept the 63 colour modes, using MODE9 instead of MODE1 or MODE4. It should also work in BBC BASIC for Windows too.

[AndyF]

It's great to see these titles rescued, saved and preserved for us.

For those involved for their continued efforts.