Masquerade: trouble getting picture disk to work

[TheShanMan]

I recently set my Apple IIe up again in my computer room. As a result, my son had interest in playing Masquerade which I had and played as a kid. I tried to get it working over the weekend with no luck. I've tried several disk images from asimov and elsewhere, and I've tried it with my CFFA3000 as well as physical floppies (by using Copy II+ to copy from CFFA3000 to physical floppies). I've even tried both in various slots in case it's picky about which slot it's running from. The best I can do is get it playable without a functional picture disk (text only, with the continual error message "NOT A MASQUERADE PICTURE DISK!" I don't have any trouble getting this to work in the AppleWin emulator though.

 

Are there any special tricks to getting Masquerade disk images working on real hardware? Can anyone provide some insight into why this seems to be so difficult? Am I running into a copy protection issue using disk images that doesn't apply to emulators? Would I somehow have better luck with other hardware such as the floppy emu?

[nick3092]

What images are you using? If you are running copy protected software, your first stop to look for it is 4am's collection. All his images are cleanly cracked.

 

I can't speak to using a CFFA3000 on this as I do t own one.  But I can confirm that I got the 4am crack of the game working on my IIe and floppy emu. After booting, I "flipped" the disk over and it started up with graphics in the cheap hotel room.

 

No reason you shouldn't be able to create a real floppy from 4am's images either. No need to use any special bit copy function, just a plain old copy. 

[TheShanMan]

I've tried the 4am, and I just used the plain disk copy of copy II+, not the bit copy one. Thanks for the feedback.

 

I suspect it's some sort of issue with the picture disk (side 2) image. Weird problem. Not sure what else to try. I'm tempted to get a floppy emu generally speaking, but it seems like that wouldn't solve the problem.

[TheShanMan]

I upgraded my IIe to the "enhanced" version many years ago... I wonder if there's a compatibility issue coming into play, since I've read there are some. I don't recall what I gained by doing the upgrade other than "more better", but going back to original might be worth trying. Probably better to stick to my original IIe configuration unless I have specific need for the enhanced version.

[nick3092]

Highly unlikely. My IIe where the disk images are working with my floppy emu is enhanced. The enhancement only created issues with a very small number of software where it relied on the 6502 doing something a certain way where the 65C02 did it differently. This game does not appear to be one of them. 

[Tempest]

1 hour ago, TheShanMan said:

I upgraded my IIe to the "enhanced" version many years ago... I wonder if there's a compatibility issue coming into play, since I've read there are some. I don't recall what I gained by doing the upgrade other than "more better", but going back to original might be worth trying. Probably better to stick to my original IIe configuration unless I have specific need for the enhanced version.

Nope.  I played masquerade all the time on my enhanced IIe.

[TheShanMan]

Good to know. I also noticed that I've had AppleWin set to "enhanced" yet it works there. Nevertheless, I've now switched back to non-enhanced. Seems like I'm a little closer now using 4am, but I suppose I'm forgetting what I saw on prior 4am attempts since I've tried various images. I'm currently booting a physical floppy with CFFA3000 removed (just in case there's some weird interaction). I get the first room to draw fully but then the drive stops spinning, the text continues to say "Flip to side 'B' and hit return", and it seems to just hang there. Ugh! Any ideas?

[nick3092]

I wrote out both sides of 4am's Masquerade to a floppy with Copy II+. I had no issues running the game on my enhanced IIe. It went to side B, drew the hotel room, and I was able to go south to the lobby.

 

So, I'm not really sure what to tell you. The image is good, as proven by both AppleWin and myself. Since it's cracked, it should just be a plain 3.3 disk image that the CFFA should be able to handle. If you have a SSC and the proper cables, you could try writing out a copy with ADTPro just to rule out the CFFA doing anything odd when making the floppy. You could run the self test in the IIe by rebooting with both apples, ctrl, reset. 

[TheShanMan]

Good idea... It's been many years since I've used ADTPro, but I'll round up what I need and hopefully get that functional again.

[Tempest]

Yep use adtpto.  That's what I did and it worked perfectly,

[TheShanMan]

Success... partially... Had problems running ADTPro (hung on some screens like the volumes screen), found out there's a built in self-test, so I ran that and got a RAM error on my 80 column memory expansion board. Swapped chips around and even tried using an NOS 4164 (I have a bunch for arcade games) and that didn't change the error report, so perhaps the socket is flaky. I'll get that repaired. But in the meantime, I pulled the card and noticed that yes indeed, Copy II+ takes advantage of all available RAM (dictates how much is read and written in one pass), so I checked ADTPro and no errors there now. Lastly, I booted up 4AM Masquerade properly copied without the additional memory installed, and it works!!!

 

One question if anyone is familiar with the self-tests and how the Apple handles added memory... the self-test failed on the same RAM location every time, but if I removed the good or bad RAM chip and left the socket empty, the self-test passed. How does the Apple determine how much memory is installed? Does it do a write and read to each RAM location? If so, I guess if a RAM chip was completely dead, it wouldn't be detected. Not critical information, but I'm just curious about the detection scheme it uses.

 

Appreciate the responses here. Seeing ADTPro not working really puzzled me and got me thinking something must be fundamentally wrong. I'm not sure I would've thought to seek out diagnostic tests of some sort otherwise. I'm sure I knew about the self-test years ago but I had long forgotten. In fact I vaguely recall when I bought my extended 80 column/memory card, I had to replace a RAM chip (and indeed there's one chip that's not the stock Apple-branded chip).

 

I had been trying to figure out the best place to ask about my problem... CFFA forums? Not active enough and not particularly game-centric. Comp.sys.apple2 usenet group? Seems to be on life support. Then I found out there's an apple 2 forum here... bingo! That's convenient, because aside from my arcade game collection, my only other retro gaming platform is the atari 2600. Maybe I'll get back in the habit of coming to atariage again.

 

Thanks again everyone!