Is my floppy disk bad?

[dressupgeekout]

I tracked down a boxed copy of The Sentry (1987) -- also known as The Sentinel, apparently. It's a color game, but I don't have a color monitor, so I use Hatari to provide a virtual one for me. Unfortunately it's one of those bootable games, so I can't just copy the files off the disk and put them into the emulator, I'll need to make an image so that Hatari knows it's supposed to be a floppy.

 

The game's on a single-sided disk, but my 1040 STF has a double-sided drive in it, so that's no problem. The Magic Shadow Archiver doesn't like the disk, though -- it croaks while trying to read the same track of the disk every time. Seems like a bad sign. But I haven't been able to find a copy on the internet that doesn't crash within Hatari, either. Am I missing something here?
 

[Zogging Hell]

The Magic shadow archiver isn't all that great at copying protected disks and you would probably need to go down the hardware imaging route if you want to make an image of your own disk (or perhaps a pasti image). Regarding the cracked versions not running, you could try altering the specs of your ST in Hatari to something more akin to those the Sentinel might have been expecting in 1987, i.e. TOS 1.0 or 1.02, and 512k of memory as a start as it may have been coded to not expect later alterations like TOS 1.04 or 1mb of ram.

[TZJB]

13 hours ago, dressupgeekout said:

I tracked down a boxed copy of The Sentry (1987) -- also known as The Sentinel, apparently. It's a color game, but I don't have a color monitor, so I use Hatari to provide a virtual one for me. Unfortunately it's one of those bootable games, so I can't just copy the files off the disk and put them into the emulator, I'll need to make an image so that Hatari knows it's supposed to be a floppy.

 

The game's on a single-sided disk, but my 1040 STF has a double-sided drive in it, so that's no problem. The Magic Shadow Archiver doesn't like the disk, though -- it croaks while trying to read the same track of the disk every time. Seems like a bad sign. But I haven't been able to find a copy on the internet that doesn't crash within Hatari, either. Am I missing something here?
 

 

Welcome back to Atari Age.

 

Unfortunalely that is a no from MSA as it was only ever designed to archive unprotected disks.

 

Most original disks from that time will have some form of copy protection so they cannot be copied to an image without some sort of additional hardware like a Happy Cartridge for the ST or more currently, KyroFlux or Greaseweazle for the PC. All can copy the floppy disk magnetic image and so can store and produce an accurate reproduction.

 

There are several 'The Sentinel' files (from British Telecommunications Rainbird label) in the Atari_ST_TOSEC_2012_04_23 file from archive.org including unprotected versions. I have not tried them personally, but I assume them to work.

 

Also have a look at http://atari.8bitchip.info where Mr. Putnik has his modified Atari game downloads.

 

Alternatively, would you be able to connect your Atari STF to a colour TV to enable the colour output? Most TV's still have an RGB input with the right monitor cable from the Atari STF.

[kodak80]

There is also an STX of the game on Atarimania.com: Atari ST Sentry (The) : scans, dump, download, screenshots, ads, videos, catalog, instructions, roms (atarimania.com)

 

This should work with Hatari.

[dressupgeekout]

Thanks everyone. I actually have a Greaseweazel to step around the copy protection issues, I just need a little bit more hardware to make it actually work (need another floppy drive, primarily)... maybe I should get on that, heh.