A collection of games for the Exidy Sorcerer categorized by year

[Pluvius]

https://archive.org/details/year-based-collection-of-games-for-the-exidy-sorcerer-v-1.0

 

Doing a survey of early computer systems after doing some work on a collection of Apple ][ games, I found the Exidy Sorcerer to be relatively underappreciated and easy enough to provide a service of value to anyone who might be interested.  As such, here is a collection of games for the system drawn from the two main sources that I found and converted to a less unwieldy format than the WAV files and CP/M disk images that existed.  With one exception explained in the readme, all of these games are playable in the JSorcerer emulator.  Please let me know of any questions or comments you may have, as well as any knowledge you might have of games not included in this collection.

 

I'm thinking about looking at the TRS-80 after this, but the library for that is gargantuan...

[youxia]

Fantastic work, thanks a bunch! I will check it out later.

 

As for TRS-80, I've already started on that But it's still very early days, I'm only somewhere near the end of letter A. And since I'm rather busy with other stuff, this is only a very low priority side project, so it'll probably take a while.

 

I was thinking about making a thread for this project and seeking collaborators (similar to Apple ][) so if you're interested, give me a shout.

[+thanatos]

Looks like something @Tempest might be interested in.  He just had his on display at VCFMW.

[Tempest]

I'll have to check this out.  I think I have all the known Sorcerer games but there might be something new in here.

[+OLD CS1]

6 hours ago, Pluvius said:

https://archive.org/details/year-based-collection-of-games-for-the-exidy-sorcerer-v-1.0

Now seeding on my torrent server (86MB ain't much to seed, but still helping.)

[+eebuckeye]

Terrific!  What is the best way to run them on an actual Exidy?

[Tempest]

10 hours ago, eebuckeye said:

Terrific!  What is the best way to run them on an actual Exidy?

The way I was doing it was to write the wav files out to tape using a computer and a cassette recorder.

 

Another way is to make a TapeSim and load them from binary files (they require conversion though).

 

http://www.atariprotos.com/othersystems/sorcerer/misc/tapesim.htm

 

 The TapeSim requires some hard to be parts like a Arduono Teensy which aren't made anymore but a friend of mine is redesigning it and will hopefully release a new batch of them in the future.

[Pluvius]

13 hours ago, eebuckeye said:

Terrific!  What is the best way to run them on an actual Exidy?

As stated in the readme, you can't convert the TAPE files directly into cassettes unless you have something that can interpret the TAPE file as Sorcerer-format analog audio (presumably the TapeSim mentioned above does that).  However, you can convert the TAPE files into WAV files and record those to cassette.  Here's a guide on how to do that:

1. Download and unpack JSorcerer (Java required) and execute run.sh or sorcerer.jar (not sure if it matters which).
2. Click the first cassette-tape icon on the right and select the TAPE file you want to convert into a WAV.
3. Type "LO" (all caps, no quotes) and hit Enter.
4. Click the cassette icon again, type "[desiredfilename].wav", and hit Open.  The file must have a .wav extension for this to work.
5. On the emulated Sorcerer screen, you'll see a five-letter file name followed by three hexadecimal numbers.  Type "SE X=nnnn" where nnnn is the third number.  You don't need to do this if the number is 0000.
   • Please note that the emulator has a bug where it will sometimes stop accepting Enter keypresses.  You can fix this by clicking the "C key" icon on the left side on and off again.
6. Add the other two numbers together and subtract 1.
7. Type "SA [five-letter filename] xxxx yyyy" where xxxx is the second number you were given, and yyyy is the result that you got in the last step.
8. Now we can test the WAV file to see if it works, but the test depends on whether or not the game was coded in BASIC or assembly.  You can usually tell if a game was coded in BASIC in the following ways:
   • The third hexadecimal number is 0000.
   • The second hexadecimal number is 01D5.
   • If you load BASIC (see below) and load the game up, typing "list" will give you a BASIC code listing.
9. If the game was coded in assembly, simply type "LOG" and press Enter.
10. If the game was coded in BASIC:
    1. Click the ROM chip on the lower-right corner and open "Exidy Standard Basic Ver 1.0 (1978).ROM".
    2. The emulator will load the BASIC module automatically.  Type "cload" and press Enter.
    3. After the game loads, type "run" and press Enter.

If you already know that the game you want to convert is in BASIC, you can do something simpler to convert it:

1. Follow the first two steps above.
2. Follow the first two "substeps" under Step 10 above.
3. Follow Step 4 above.
4. Type "csave [five-letter filename]" and hit Enter.  The filename must be all-caps.
5. Type "cload", then Enter, then "run", then Enter.

The assumption in all of this is that you want a 1200-baud WAV file; if for some reason you can't get that to load properly in your actual Sorcerer, you can ask about how to create a 300-baud WAV file instead.

 

Of course, for most of the games in this collection you can bypass all of this by just going to Terry Stewart's software library as linked in the readme and downloading the WAV file for the game you want.

[ClausB]

On 9/23/2024 at 12:45 PM, Pluvius said:

TAPE files

If you provide details of that TAPE format, I can add support for them to the TapeSim. Presently it supports BIN and BAS formats from MAME & MESS.

[Pluvius]

13 hours ago, ClausB said:

If you provide details of that TAPE format, I can add support for them to the TapeSim. Presently it supports BIN and BAS formats from MAME & MESS.

I would if I could.  You'd have to ask the guy who wrote the JSorcerer emulator for that information.  The source code for the emulator is also open if you want to dig through that.

[jltursan]

Tapetool2 is a powerful tool to convert files from Sorcerer, Microbee or TRS80 data files. Seems that using the right filter it can convert Sorcerer wav files to tap format (no idea if it's the same TAPE format used by JSorcerer). I haven't found source files for the version 2 of the tool; but the author has a Github with sources from the first version, maybe they could serve to document this TAP format...