
Pirates/gs on Hard Disk

by Rubywand


History

     Back in 1987, MicroProse released the GS version of its popular
Pirates action-adventure. At last, GS users could pursue careers as
pirates on the Spanish Main with improved sound in beautiful super-res
color .

     Naturally, the Pirates/GS diskette was copy-protected. As some
owners have discovered, this means you get to play the game as long as
your diskette develops no glitches. This is a shame, since the game's
80-page manual and map are required to enjoy play. There was no need to
make the diskette uncopiable.

     In any case, within a few months a copy de-protect was developed
and described in COMPUTIST #61 by Dan Halfwit. It permits making a
playable backup. The program still retained its documentation check--
you must look up information in the manual and answer a question to
begin play-- and needed to run under a specific version of ProDOS. Also,
the game could not be run from hard disk.

     A few issues later, #65, Brian Troha presented a modified, simpler
version of Dan's backup procedure and showed how to eliminate the
restriction on ProDOS version.

     The last published improvement to user access appears to be Keith
Reed's modification to circumvent the annoying documentation check. It
appeared in COMPUTIST #72.


The Hard Disk Mod

     The Hard Disk Mod lets you play Pirates/gs entirely from hard disk.
There is no need to insert the game diskette or to have a separate Save
Game diskette.

     First, you need to make a deprotected copy; and, you might as well
include mods which eliminate ProDOS version dependency and do away with
the documentation check. The process outlined below is a mix of the
techniques developed by Dan Halfwit, Brian Troha, and Keith Reed:

 1. Set Boot Slot to Slot 5.

 2. Boot a ProDOS 8 diskette which lets you get to BASIC. If the Visit
Monitor CDA does not show up when you do an OA-CTRL-ESC
(OpenApple-Control-Escape), do a CALL-151 to get to the monitor and
enter # (pound sign followed by RETURN) to activate it. Enter CTRL-Y
(Control-Y followed by RETURN) to get back to BASIC.

 3. Boot a ProDOS diskette which has Copy II Plus (version 7.1-8.3) in
the main directory. Rename the UTIL.SYSTEM file to AAUTIL.SYSTEM.
Alphabetize the diskette's main directory. You want AAUTIL.SYSTEM to be
the first .SYSTEM file in the directory.

 4. While still in Copy II Plus, format an 800k ProDOS diskette. It can
be an actual diskette or a RAM disk (e.g. /RAM5).  If it's a diskette,
format it under the name "PCOPY" (i.e. any name except "PIRATES").

 5. Insert the Pirates/gs diskette (with write-protect tab open to
prevent accidental writing).  Boot the Pirates/gs diskette.  After the
usual clatter of the boot start, wait for about a second and, then,
press OA-CTRL-ESC to stop the boot and go to the CDA Menu.

 6. Select Visit Monitor. In the monitor, search for the three bytes 4C
00 20 in the range 0800-1FFF. (Check at address 9CC. If you do not find
it, use the monitor search command:  \4C 00 20\<800.1FFFP to find the
bytes.)  If you cannot find the bytes, you may have let the boot
continue too long before interrupting. Try booting again.

 7. Change the 4C 00 20 to 4C 69 FF.  Enter CTRL-Y to let the boot
process continue. The process should hit a snag (the 4C 69 FF) and leave
you in the monitor.

 8. Remove the Pirates/gs diskette and insert the ProDOS 8 diskette with
the AAUTIL.SYSTEM file. You should, still, be in the monitor. Enter
2000G. Copy II Plus should start and you should arrive at the usual Copy
II Plus utils display.

 9. Swap in the Pirates/gs diskette. Since you are using a copy of the
Pirates/gs ProDOS to handle reads, you should be able to do a CATALOG of
the diskette under Copy II Plus. Use Copy II Plus to file-copy all of
the files from Pirates/gs to your formatted 800k diskette or /RAM5. (The
copying will be much faster to /RAM5.)

10. Set Boot Slot to the Slot of your hard disk. Do an OA-CTRL-RESET to
boot your usual System from hard disk.

11. Start you favorite block editing utility. Block Warden (from the old
8-bit version of ProSel) is very good. In ProSel-16, Block Warden is
called "Zap". Block Work is another good block editor.

12. On your new copy of the Pirates/gs diskette-- i.e. the one on
diskette or on /RAM5-- search for the bytes 8D 20 B1 A2 00. Or, do a
Follow File for the file named "PS2" and advance to Rel Block 3. I found
8D 20 B1 A2 00 in the third block of PS2 starting at byte $039. Change
8D 20 B1 to 60 EA EA and write the block back to your copy.  Except for
the volume name, the copy is, now, a bootable, playable backup of the
original.

13. On your copy, search for the bytes AD FF BF C9 04 F0 0F. Or, do a
Follow File for the file named "PIRATES.SYSTEM". I found  AD FF BF C9 04
F0 0F in the first block of PIRATES.SYSTEM starting at byte $034. Change
F0 0F to 80 0F and write the block back to your copy. This eliminates
dependency upon a particular version of ProDOS.

14. Exit the block editor back to your usual Finder or program launcher.
Start BASIC. From your copy load the program named "PICK". (For example,
you might enter LOAD /RAM5/PICK to load the program from a copy on
/RAM5.)

15. List line 1121. You want to change the line so that it does a RETURN
after the Y=10. Line 1121 should look like ...

1121 IF ZZ= 41 THEN X= 4: Y= 10: RETURN

16. Save the new version of PICK back to your copy.  (For example, you
might enter SAVE /RAM5/PICK to save the program back to  /RAM5.)  This
eliminates the documentation check.

17. If the copy is on /RAM5, this is a good time to make a diskette
copy. If the copy is already on diskette, you just need to change its
name. In order to have a good bootable backup diskette, the diskette
needs to have the name "PIRATES". (Also, don't forget: rename the
AAUTIL.SYSTEM file on your Copy II Plus diskette back to UTIL.SYSTEM and
do an Alphabetize.)


     The modifications needed to end up with a version of the game you
can play from hard disk mainly involve changing a few pathname
references. To keep it simple, and to avoid having to load up your boot
volume, specific names are used. This means you must decide on which
hard disk volume you want Pirates/gs to reside and use that volume name
when doing the patches. Also, the name of the hard disk volume must be
no more than five characters in length.

     What you will do is overwrite instances of "/PIRATES/" ,
"/PIRATES." and "/PIRATES" to match your volume name plus a folder name.

Example: If the target volume is named "MM", then, substituting
"/MM/PIRA/" would fit. The folder in which Pirates/gs will be located
would be named "PIRA" on the hard disk volume named "MM".

Example: If the target volume is named "GAMES", then, substituting
"/GAMES/P/" would fit. The folder in which Pirates/gs will be located
would be named "P" on the hard disk volume named "GAMES". 

     In the following steps, I'll use "/MM/PIRA/" for the pathname mods.

18. Start your block editor again. Do a Follow File for PIRATES.SYSTEM.
In the second block of the file (Rel Block 2), "/PIRATES/" should show
up in the Text side of the display starting at or near byte $3B9. Go to
Text entry mode and overwrite "/PIRATES/" with "/MM/PIRA/" (or whatever
/volume/folder/ name you are using).  If you have only hex display and
entry, you are looking to replace 2F 50 49 52 41 54 45 53 2F with the
ASCII for the pathname change ( such as 2F 4D 4D 2F 50 49 52 41 2F). 
Write the changed block back to your copy.

19. Do a Follow File for PS2. In the third block of the file (Rel Block
3), "/PIRATES." should show up in the Text side of the display at two
places: starting at or near byte $4E9 and byte $511. Go to Text entry
mode and, in each case, overwrite "/PIRATES." with "/MM/PIRA/" (or
whatever /volume/folder/ name you are using).  Similarly, overwrite one
instance of "/PIRATES" at or near byte $508 with "/MM/PIRA" (or whatever
/volume/folder/ name you are using without the trailing slash) .  Write
the changed block back to your copy.

20. Exit the block editor. On volume MM, create a folder named "PIRA". 
(Or on volume GAMES, create a folder named "P"; or ... .)  In the new
PIRA folder, create a folder named "SIDE3". Copy all files from your
copy diskette (or /RAM5) except ProDOS to the new PIRA folder. If you
have any saved game files on a separate diskette, you can copy them to
the SIDE3 folder inside PIRA. 

     On hard disk, double-click on PIRATES.SYSTEM to start the game.
With one exception, your new hard disk version of Pirates/gs will run
fine started under System 6 and should run well from earlier versions of
GS/OS, too.

    The exception is Quiting. The game does not do a ProDOS Quit and
simply hangs. (It does the same thing when playing from diskette.
Evidently, one of the places PIRATES.SYSTEM saves space is the Quit
code.)  You must reboot the system to get back to the Finder after a
session of play. Since Pirates/gs seems to break a number of rules-- for
example, running it will erase /RAM5-- doing a reboot would be a good
idea in any case.

     As would be expected, the chief benefits of running Pirates/gs from
hard disk are convenience, better game speed and quicker, easier saves.
Also, your worries of losing the game to a defective diskette are over.
You can make as many backups as you like. 

     Producing the hard disk version is a bit of bother; but, for avid
Pirates/gs players, the payoff is probably worth the effort. Let me know
(rubywand@swbell.net)  if there are any questions. Otherwise; good
hunting, Matey!


Rubywand
         




        

     

 