Downloading Clean Disk Images?

[Soyale]

Can anyone point me to a source of disc images that have copy protection removed and are "clean"?  i.e. aren't a menu or have a bunch of "Cracked by XXXX" on them.  I recently got my ST out of storage and a few of my originals have gone bad and I want to do surgery on them to replace the platter.

[ParanoidLittleMan]

http://atari.8bitchip.info/ASTGA/astgam.php

[Soyale]

I should have mentioned that I'm aware of this list and that it's sadly missing both Chaos Strikes Back and Bloodwych, which are two of my problem discs.

[tjlazer]

I have put together a collection of cracktro and crack text free disk images for the Atari ST.  With a lot of work to put back the original text, etc with Hex Editors, pictures, etc.
 

https://mega.nz/folder/WzAiTQCQ#BXr4vwLb3XEGTLHSqVGn8Q

[Soyale]

That's cool, I didn't know about this archive and I'll take a look.

 

I notice you don't have Chaos Strikes Back (sad) but do have Bloodwych (happy).

[ParanoidLittleMan]

Here is Chaos Strikes Back, 2 floppy images (game and util) : http://atari.8bitchip.info/ASTGA/C/chaossb.php

I have original disks, from 1989. Used them to make deprotected floppies for self, for playing (finished couple times). And I played mostly from RAMdisk version - because this is very slow with game start, like Dungeon Master.

Well, I will dig those disks to see are still usable, what means attaching floppy drive to my Mega STE, brrr ...

Yeah, in later 28 years, play was  rather from hard disk, Flash card, and somehow doing floppy version of some improved version even did not came to mind. And that would be: using less packed GRAPHIC data file - on original it is packed in 2 levels, to make it fit on SS (400 KB) disk, and that's main reason for slow load from floppy. Because this game is very popular and appreciated, some people spent lot of  time with, made Windows version based on Atari ST version, and there is SW with which can create less packed GRAPHIC data file, for faster loading. Of course, then it needs DS floppy, but that was not problem around 2000 . Now any floppy can be problem ?

I have some other floppy versions somewhere - need to dig out them. And is possible to make DMAA floppy version too (only STE and higher, min 1 MB). Hard disk version is already done.

 

Considering cleaning of diverse cracks: sometimes it is much harder than just doing text editing, replacing spoiled images/pictures.

Crackers often added protection of their text, and if it is changed game works not. Surely, main purpose was to prevent that someone else credit self as cracker and like. Spoiling graphic with "Cracked by 'me the best' " type text is really too much, and bad thing is that in some cases is almost impossible to find original one. Plus, it is packed in most cases, what makes fixing harder. And even if not spoiled, it is worth to convert it to unpacked, because used ones (like ICE) are very slow in depacking. Storage is really cheap now.

Well, there are still many games without images of original available. Someone please dig out flawless image of Son Shu Shi !

 

[tjlazer]

Yeah I merely just put back the original texts and any picture files that were edited with NEOChrome or Degas, etc on these.  Just a simple fix.  Like for Bloodwych all I had to do was fix the crack text and replace the PI1 title pic with an original...

[ParanoidLittleMan]

Now there are 3 little different 3 floppy image sets of Chaos Strikes Back here: http://atari.8bitchip.info/ASTGA/C/chaossb.php

Oldest is RAMdisk based version, min RAM 1 MB. Version what works with 512 KB RAM too, and v. with STE DMA audio - min 1 MB RAM, and of course STE, Mega STE needed.  All it is with faster loading than original and opt. cheat.