Retrograde Station >> Programs

The Programs Page

On this page you will find programs that will be useful when you are handling booting games, both in image and actual disk form. All programs are highly recommended to run under DOS (or in worse case, DOS prompt only). They MAY run under other OS's, like Windoze, but I wouldn't bet too much on it...

Teledisk v2.15

Teledisk handles many protected disks, but has one serious flaw: It will stop copying if it comes across an unformatted track. This will prevent you from copying original Atari booters with Teledisk. Teledisk's strongest point is that it will run on modern computers, which CopyIIPC fails to do.

Download Teledisk v2.15 here.

CopyIIPC v5.01 + Snatchit v1.11

CopyIIPC and Snatchit, the powerful combination of the past... Copies a lot of protections, but has the fatal weakness of not running on modern computers. I'm not sure how fast computers can successfully use but someone told me that anything slower than 386/33 will work fine. I haven't actually tested on any faster computer than my 286/12. I know there are newer versions of CopyIIPC out there, but this one is rumored to work on the most protections, and will not cause a problem with Snatchit. (There were rumors that Central Point were forced to remove some of their algorithms, copying certain companies' disks. Not sure how true this is, but still...)

Important note on using Snatchit: *Always* write-protect your source disks before dumping them with Snatchit! Snatchit itself is a marvellous piece of code, but it has a few fatal bugs that will allow CopyIIPC to overwrite sectors on your source disk if it's not write-protected (in special circumstances, but you can't know beforehand that it won't happen). A friend of mine lost booting Tass Times in Tonetown to this bug, and it took us a long time to find a new, working copy of that game. Don't let your rare, booting games be destroyed because of this bug!

Another thing that can be a problem: If you dump a disk with either much data, or a lot of weird tracks, Snatchit may have to "switch" disks once or more during the dump process. First CopyIIPC will read a bunch of tracks, memory gets full, Snatchit intervenes and asks if you want to write to Disk or File. You select File, and it'll ask about filename and prompt you to put the file into drive. Press any key, and Snatchit will dump the first part. (This happens every time, but if there are still tracks left, the following part will occur). After checking processor speed, CopyIIPC will write that the target disk is write-protected, and you need to remove it. DO NOT REMOVE THE WRITE PROTECTION OF YOUR ORIGINAL DISK, OR IT WILL BE DESTROYED! This is a bug in Snatchit, the data has already been written to the file, but CopyIIPC isn't aware of that, and thinks your source disk is a write-protected target disk. To get past this, remove the original disk from the drive, insert a crap disk (sectors *will* be overwritten on this disk, so don't use one with important data on!), and press any key. After a little while, CopyIIPC will prompt you to insert Source disk again. Insert your source disk (with write-protection, this can't be said enough!), and press any key. Repeat for as many times as necessary.

Download CopyIIPC v5.01 + Snatchit v1.11 here.

DISK2IMG

Trixter's program to dump standard disks to image files. This program will *not* (yet) handle any kind of protection. It is a part of the Flopper Distribution ZIP, so you have to download it from the Flopper page (along with Flopper).

Go to the Flopper Homepage.

IMG2DSK v1.007

My own Image-to-Disk program. Used to copy image files back to disks. Handles "all" disk formats (except 2,88MB), including the 200K and 400K disk formats used for the Electronic Arts games (10 sectors/track).

Download IMG2DSK v1.007 here.

Generic EA Unprotector v0.002

Another one of my small creations... It will remove the protection from (almost) any protected EA booter. Successfully tested on all EA booters on the EA page, except Marble Madness (which has completely different layout and will not be supported). It will read original floppy (whether it has working or broken protected track), and output a fully cracked, and if you wish it, Flopper patched image file. (EA mess around a little with stuff that will throw Flopper off, so I included this option to automatically remove these things. They are only part of the protection, and will not affect gameplay in any way...)

Download Generic EA Unprotector v0.002 here.

JRipCart

Have a PCjr cartridge that's not listed here? (And have a PCjr or jx that's working?) Then please download JRipCart from the Tand-em page at Oldskool.org. It's a small utility to rip the contents of a cartridge, and dump it to a file. These files will in the future be emulated by Tand-em, so I'm trying to collect all the PCjr cartridges that are out there.

Go to the JRipCart page at Oldskool.org.

ZorkTools v1.6

Written by Software Pirates back in 1985, it contains your every need for an Infocom game. Copy or unprotect the booting disks, rip the game data from a disk, play the ripped game data (or directly from the booting disk) without booting, decode the games' vocabulary and so on.

Download ZorkTools here.