How to play multi disk games SIO2IDE or similar

[crash]

Hi,

 

Now that I've gotten the SIO2IDE working, I was thinking that I could put disk images in each virtual drive for games like Ultima III, and I would be ready to go. Now I'm realizing that games were not necessarily designed for more than 2 drives, and that some disk swapping may be unavoidable. This means I'm not sure how it would be possible to play some of these games with SIO2IDE or perhaps other similar products, as when it may prompt for another disk there is no way to insert it.

 

Some of the games I would like to play include:

 

Ultima II-IV

Alternate Reality: The City & Dungeon

Phantasie I&II

 

I think I've heard of a multi-drive hack for Alternate Reality, but I'm wondering if there are others that may exist, or if there may be any other means of playing these games from something other than a floppy drive.

 

Thanks!

[crash]

Anyone? How do you play multi disk games without a floppy drive? Is a flash cart with specifically hacked games the only way?

[+Philsan]

With SIO2SD and SDrive devices you can swap disks using hardware buttons.

[Rybags]

Alt Reality out of the box supports multiple drives although despite that I don't think swapping can be completely eliminated even with 4 active drives.

 

I've practically always been of the opinion - modern day SIO devices that use modern media and volume mounting are only really properly useful if you can do image swap or rotation without intervening with the computer - just for the reason you require.

 

I created a program that allows some multidisk games to run as files on systems with large amounts of Ram but it's fairly primitive, limited in what programs it can support and not really useful for games that need to write to the disk and use that data once you reload at a later date.

[crash]

It sounds like Alternate Reality the City only supports 2 drives (if I am understanding the manual). The Dungeon indicates four drive support I think, but I don't know if there is any swapping required for flipping disks or something. It sounds like SIO2IDE is not going to work for some of these games, and SIO2SD would be the preferable product.

 

Thanks

[+CharlieChaplin]

It sounds like Alternate Reality the City only supports 2 drives (if I am understanding the manual). The Dungeon indicates four drive support I think, but I don't know if there is any swapping required for flipping disks or something. It sounds like SIO2IDE is not going to work for some of these games, and SIO2SD would be the preferable product.

 

Thanks

 

Well,

 

AR-City has four disksides and since it supports only two drives, there is some disk-swapping required. AR-Dungeon supports four drives + XE ramdisk/XRAM and has five disksides, so either you have to swap a disk or you need four drives and XE ramdisk/XRAM...

 

(Note to AR-Dungeon original disks: disk 1 side a is copy-protected and loads into XRAM if available; disk 1 side b is empty; disk 2 and disk 3, sides a+b are unprotected, so they can be copied onto four different disks and placed into four single-sided disk-drives, when disk 1 has already loaded. The four disk-drives should be switched on, as soon as disk 1 loads...)

 

The best solution would be AR City / AR Dungeon a) on one large ATR image each or b) on one cart. each... hopefully one day this will come true. -Andreas Koch.

[Mathy]

Hello Andreas

 

Or better yet, all load into extended memory and load from there.

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

[crash]

It seems like the only options are:

 

Maxflash cart for games that have been converted

APE, which would allow disk image swapping while in game

SIO2SD which allows disk swapping with it's buttons and display

Floppy drives for protected games like Alternate Reality

 

It is really a shame, because I wanted to play the Alternate Reality games, and I don't know if my floppy drives are reliable enough to do so.

 

I hate copy protection

[BillC]

It seems like the only options are:

 

Maxflash cart for games that have been converted

APE, which would allow disk image swapping while in game

SIO2SD which allows disk swapping with it's buttons and display

Floppy drives for protected games like Alternate Reality

 

It is really a shame, because I wanted to play the Alternate Reality games, and I don't know if my floppy drives are reliable enough to do so.

 

I hate copy protection

AspeQT is a freeware alternative to APE, also allows you to swap which disk image is available on a drive ID and works with most generic SIO2PC(serial & USB) adapters.

[crash]

That is good to know, although I already own APE. I just don't want to tether the 800 to a big PC in order to use it I used APE to set up MyIDE and SIO2IDE, as well as making ATRs from my disks.

 

Thanks