07-05-2021, 11:17 AM
Thanks to Vivid for providing recordings of the Dreamcards DUO3 tape in Microbee format. Recorded on a professional Sony tape deck at 44khz and saved as a stereo 16bit WAV file and then Left & Right cannel's saved out as separate Mono recordings.
The tape contained 2 adventure games both written by John Hardy in 1983, these being CAVERNS and HYPER DRIVE II. The tape had an un-usual layout consisting of 6 recordings on each side. On side A, file 1 was 1200baud recording of Caverns Introduction basic file followed by 1200baud Caverns main program. File 3 was 1200b recording of Hyperdrive 2 Introduction basic file followed by 1200baud Hyperdrive II main program. File 5 was a 300baud recording of Hyperdrive 2 Introduction basic file followed by 300baud Hyperdrive II main program. This was repeated on Side B but file 5 & 6 were 300baud recordings of Caverns Introduction basic file followed by 300baud Caverns main program.
The tapes were recorded twice and trying to recover any of the 1200baud recordings proved fruitless. The recordings contained a lot of noise, and in a many places almost zero volume drop out. However, with some manual fixing of the wave form and noise filtering, all the 300baud recordings were finally able to load error free into a PC85 via ubee512 emulator. They are long files and takes just over 9 min to load each into a Microbee.
The cassette insert & artwork were also photographed and supplied.
These have all been supplied to the original author, John Hardy, who made the following comments:
[I was sent] the front cover of a pair of games I sold on cassette
tape in 1983. One was science fiction text adventure and inspired
by a game written by Ken Stone. The other game was a classic high
fantasy similar in spirit to Zork and Colossal Cavern but had its
own original story line based on Norse mythology which I was
reading at the time.
I asked about Hyperdrive I and Ken Stone answered:
No, it was Vic20 only. Hyperdrive II was the microbee version.
You can use NanoWasp to play these games, at http://nanowasp.org/ Click on Tape, then click on Choose Files and browse to CAVERNS.BEE on your hard drive and open. Then hit Edit and change Load Address to 0x310 and Start Address to 0x801E and click Done. Then at the main Microbee Basic prompt, type in LOAD and hit enter and almost instantly the game start. Use the exact same procedure and Load & Start addresses for HYPERDR2.BEE also. The 2 Introduction files, CAVINT.MWB & HYPINT.MWB are normal MWB files so load and run them as normal.
The zip files of each of the games contains the recovered WAV files of both the Intro & main program but also the *.MWB & *.BEE files of each plus a text file with their Load & Start addresses.
So in the MbeeTech Repository in the Microbee/Software/Tapes/Original we placed
caverns.zip
hyperdrive2.zip
duo3.jpg <-- in the Microbee/Documentation/Pictures/Tapes folder
The tape contained 2 adventure games both written by John Hardy in 1983, these being CAVERNS and HYPER DRIVE II. The tape had an un-usual layout consisting of 6 recordings on each side. On side A, file 1 was 1200baud recording of Caverns Introduction basic file followed by 1200baud Caverns main program. File 3 was 1200b recording of Hyperdrive 2 Introduction basic file followed by 1200baud Hyperdrive II main program. File 5 was a 300baud recording of Hyperdrive 2 Introduction basic file followed by 300baud Hyperdrive II main program. This was repeated on Side B but file 5 & 6 were 300baud recordings of Caverns Introduction basic file followed by 300baud Caverns main program.
The tapes were recorded twice and trying to recover any of the 1200baud recordings proved fruitless. The recordings contained a lot of noise, and in a many places almost zero volume drop out. However, with some manual fixing of the wave form and noise filtering, all the 300baud recordings were finally able to load error free into a PC85 via ubee512 emulator. They are long files and takes just over 9 min to load each into a Microbee.
The cassette insert & artwork were also photographed and supplied.
These have all been supplied to the original author, John Hardy, who made the following comments:
[I was sent] the front cover of a pair of games I sold on cassette
tape in 1983. One was science fiction text adventure and inspired
by a game written by Ken Stone. The other game was a classic high
fantasy similar in spirit to Zork and Colossal Cavern but had its
own original story line based on Norse mythology which I was
reading at the time.
I asked about Hyperdrive I and Ken Stone answered:
No, it was Vic20 only. Hyperdrive II was the microbee version.
You can use NanoWasp to play these games, at http://nanowasp.org/ Click on Tape, then click on Choose Files and browse to CAVERNS.BEE on your hard drive and open. Then hit Edit and change Load Address to 0x310 and Start Address to 0x801E and click Done. Then at the main Microbee Basic prompt, type in LOAD and hit enter and almost instantly the game start. Use the exact same procedure and Load & Start addresses for HYPERDR2.BEE also. The 2 Introduction files, CAVINT.MWB & HYPINT.MWB are normal MWB files so load and run them as normal.
The zip files of each of the games contains the recovered WAV files of both the Intro & main program but also the *.MWB & *.BEE files of each plus a text file with their Load & Start addresses.
So in the MbeeTech Repository in the Microbee/Software/Tapes/Original we placed
caverns.zip
hyperdrive2.zip
duo3.jpg <-- in the Microbee/Documentation/Pictures/Tapes folder
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ChickenMan
ChickenMan