MultiDisk games converted to MaxFlash

[Shannon]

I was wondering if any of the following games ever got converted to a single disk images or to the MaxFlash cart..?

 

221B Baker Street
Blade Of Blackpoole
Bop'n Wrestle
Field Of Fire
Golf Championship
Jinxter
Jupiter Mission
Lode Runners Rescue
Mail Order Monsters
Millionaire
Mindshadow
Pawn, The
Phantasie
Phantasie II
Racing Destruction Set
Seven Cities Of Gold
Star Fleet I - The War Begins
Universe
Wargame Construction Set
 

 

Thank you

[Rybags]

Fairly sure 7 Cities of Gold has writes to the disk during gameplay.  Flashcarts aren't really suited to short, frequent write operations.   The blocksize is such that multiple Kilobytes have to be read in then written back with the required changed data.

I produced a memory resident single-load version of Spelunker some time back.  Though it's a single side game and will write high scores to the disk (I didn't support that operation)

[Mclaneinc]

The only one I have on that list is Millionaire by MPG...

 

For the reasons Rybags says, it's not really suited to those other games. Things like AVG cart that support this sort of thing will do it, but it needs to be recoded to do that.

 

PS, I imagine the flashcarts are like the way an SSD drive works ie there's a certain amount of writes before it starts to die (not really a worry as they can be written to a huge number of times. I imagine the flash carts have the same limitation, so have games that write back to them constantly perhaps is not the best option if you want the cart to carry on working for many many years

 

I've not researched this, so I could be utterly wrong (people please correct me if I am wrong)

Edited November 8, 2022 by Mclaneinc

[ivop]

32 minutes ago, Mclaneinc said:

PS, I imagine the flashcarts are like the way an SSD drive works ie there's a certain amount of writes before it starts to die (not really a worry as they can be written to a huge number of times. I imagine the flash carts have the same limitation, so have games that write back to them constantly perhaps is not the best option if you want the cart to carry on working for many many years

 

I've not researched this, so I could be utterly wrong (people please correct me if I am wrong)

You are right. Flash memory can be written to a limited amount of times. After that, it won't work anymore. That's why CF, SD, SSDs an the likes have wear leveling algorithms in their firmware. If you overwrite a block, it's not necessarily located at the same physical location afterwards as where it was before, in order to reduce wear (not constantly overwrite the same block) and increase the lifespan of the device.

 

Edit: and most Flash ROM and EEPROM ICs don't have that, so you would have to do that in software yourself if you are going to store high scores on the cartridge.

Edited November 8, 2022 by ivop

[Shannon]

Thanks guys.. I figured the two most likely culprits were either custom read/write code or lack of interest in a particular game. 

 

I didn't think about the limitations of rewriting to flash carts too much.

 

I'm mostly interested in these multidisk 2 cart images for emulation anyways.  Just to save the hassle of disk swaps.  I did forget to mention Gauntlet Deeper Dungeons.  Which I know was converted.. but the guy created a Multi Game cart for that one.  So it's not standalone.

 

[Wrathchild]

Infocom titles

Magnetic Scrolls 

The Serpent's Star

Mask Of The Sun

Dallas Quest

Winter Olympiad 88 / Challenge

 

Some of these are just the ATRs.

You can try putting them on MaxFlash carrt via a workbook with auto-start.

In theory the adventures should still permit a save to a mounted ATR on drive 1.

[Shannon]

1 hour ago, Wrathchild said:

Infocom titles

Magnetic Scrolls 

The Serpent's Star

Mask Of The Sun

Dallas Quest

Winter Olympiad 88 / Challenge

 

Some of these are just the ATRs.

You can try putting them on MaxFlash carrt via a workbook with auto-start.

In theory the adventures should still permit a save to a mounted ATR on drive 1.

 

 

Thanks for these.. I completely forgot about Dallas Quest!