Shawn Jefferson Posted June 27, 2005 Share Posted June 27, 2005 Recent, erhm, discussions about conversions of RPGs to run from flashcart prompted me to write a utility to transfer your character from the Ultima III flashcart to disk, and vice-versa. Once I had that utility complete, it wasn't much work to modify it for Ultima IV as well (hopefully no problem, Steve?). So here are the two utilities for the Ultima III and Ultima IV flashcarts. Instructions: 1. Insert your U3, or U4 flashcart. Mount the u3chrcpy.atr or u4chrcpy.atr in drive 1, depending on which game you have on flashcart. 2. Boot your computer whilst holding option down (which will bypass the flashcart and let a disk boot... handy feature that!) 3. Choose your poison, either flashcart to disk, or disk to flashcart. 4. Insert a COPY of your disk in D1: (U3 Player, or U4 Britannia) when prompted. 5. Enjoy! NOTE: The program does absolutely no checking to determine if you have your flashcart inserted, or the correct disk inserted in D1:. It's up to you, amigo! Let me know if there are any issues. u3chrcpy.zip u4chrcpy.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xebec's Demise Posted June 27, 2005 Share Posted June 27, 2005 (edited) ...erhm...881598[/snapback] So, if your chars can be saved to the much faster cartridge, what is the purpose of that? Edited June 27, 2005 by Xebec's Demise Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+remowilliams Posted June 27, 2005 Share Posted June 27, 2005 Awesome work! I had just mentioned a flashcart reader to Steve recently for just this purpose. You should always be able to backup and restore character/save game info from the flash carts Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xebec's Demise Posted June 27, 2005 Share Posted June 27, 2005 Awesome work! I had just mentioned a flashcart reader to Steve recently for just this purpose. You should always be able to backup and restore character/save game info from the flash carts 881604[/snapback] Why? Don't you think that a Flashcart would store data more reliably than a disk? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Jefferson Posted June 27, 2005 Author Share Posted June 27, 2005 I won't dictate how people use the utility. Some may use it to backup their characters (after all the flashcarts can be flashed with many different images; I seldom leave the same game on mine for very long.) Other's may use it to transfer their old characters from disk to the new medium for continued play, while still others will use it to bring their characters back from the dead, or increase their stats but still play on the flashcart. It was a fun, small project to get the utilities together. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xebec's Demise Posted June 27, 2005 Share Posted June 27, 2005 Yep, even if you wanted to you could not dictate how it would be used, people will use it for whatever they want. How much time did it take you to make them? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Jefferson Posted June 27, 2005 Author Share Posted June 27, 2005 (edited) Yep, even if you wanted to you could not dictate how it would be used, people will use it for whatever they want. How much time did it take you to make them? 881632[/snapback] About 2 hours or so, including doing some testing and finding I made a mistake when documenting the port I did of Ultima III to the flashcart. It would have taken considerably longer if it weren't for the fact that I did the U3 cart myself, and had the source code for the flash routines of the U4 cart. PS. Don't take my light hearted jab in the first post personally. It's all in fun and I would have created these utilities anyhow sooner or later. Edited June 27, 2005 by Shawn Jefferson Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted June 27, 2005 Share Posted June 27, 2005 ...erhm...881598[/snapback] So, if your chars can be saved to the much faster cartridge, what is the purpose of that? 881600[/snapback] People may only own one flashcart and wish to use it for something else and then return to their Ultima position later :!: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goochman Posted June 27, 2005 Share Posted June 27, 2005 Great work Shawn - this nows gives me an incentive to get some of these carts - I want to load my original characters back - and no, I dont trust a flash cart more than 5 or 6 backups across disk/hd in case things go wrong. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carmel_andrews Posted June 27, 2005 Share Posted June 27, 2005 ...erhm...881598[/snapback] So, if your chars can be saved to the much faster cartridge, what is the purpose of that? 881600[/snapback] People may only own one flashcart and wish to use it for something else and then return to their Ultima position later :!: 881663[/snapback] I'd be interested to find out how shawn was able to bypass the built in protection on ultima, it memory serves me right, the later ultima games required an awful lot of disk access (or was he using a 'deprotected' ATR version), if so, how did he manage to get a 'flashcart' emulated on a pc/mac A8 emu How big is the biggest flashcart for the A8 (IN TERMS OF MB'S OR K'S) could it be possible to transfer all A8 games (commercial versions) to flashcart and have a howfen/rob c type menu selection screen (i can't stand those dos type menu's) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
classics Posted June 27, 2005 Share Posted June 27, 2005 Once I had that utility complete, it wasn't much work to modify it for Ultima IV as well (hopefully no problem, Steve?). Problem?! I'm really glad you wrote these, I keep meaning to do it but I've become quite the expert at putting things off. Thanks for taking the time to write and share these. Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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