Saving a game of zork?

General discussions related to the Altair 8800 Clone

Saving a game of zork?

Postby sabea002 » April 19th, 2015, 10:41 pm

When I try to save a game of Zork running on CP/M 2.2b it will run me through the save prompts, but I will get a "Failed." message. Is it possible to save a game on the clone or do I have to take some extra steps?

Thanks!
sabea002
 
Posts: 5
Joined: April 14th, 2015, 8:52 pm

Re: Saving a game of zork?

Postby AltairClone » April 20th, 2015, 9:39 am

Probably not enough space left on the floppy. A game save requires at least 14K. Also, be sure to type in a save file name even though it says "zork.sav" is the default.

Mike
AltairClone
Site Admin
 
Posts: 632
Joined: April 5th, 2013, 10:55 am

Re: Saving a game of zork?

Postby JNZ » April 20th, 2015, 11:50 am

That's crazy, I had the exact same question last night. Also, if the default zork.dsk is too full, is there a way to specify another drive in Zork, or do you have to use the admin menu to simulate swapping a floppy disk?

This is slightly unrelated, but the reason I chose Zork is because I figure it's stable, and hard to crash the machine with it. I had had my Altair running CP/M with a remote serial terminal, and even with DDT I was able to put the machine in a state where ^C did nothing. Since I wasn't home for the weekend, I couldn't use it at all. How do you guys deal with that?
JNZ
 
Posts: 32
Joined: March 13th, 2015, 1:13 pm

Re: Saving a game of zork?

Postby Tor » April 20th, 2015, 1:24 pm

Good question, JNZ.
That's something I would l like to hear ideas about as well. I wish to operate my Altair Clone from the other side of the world where I spend half my time. So far I have been thinking about rigging up something to remotely power cycle it. I don't think I can realistically control the front panel switches though..
Tor
 
Posts: 12
Joined: June 20th, 2013, 5:34 pm
Location: Norway/Japan

Re: Saving a game of zork?

Postby AltairClone » April 20th, 2015, 3:21 pm

JNZ wrote:Also, if the default zork.dsk is too full, is there a way to specify another drive in Zork, or do you have to use the admin menu to simulate swapping a floppy disk?


Zork is broken down into three completely independent loads: zork1.com (and .dat), zork2.com (and .dat), and zork3.com (and .dat). You can independently copy these to drives B: and/or C:

Switch to drive B: or C: in CP/M to make the new drive the default, then run zork. E.g.:

A>B:
B>ZORK2

Mike
AltairClone
Site Admin
 
Posts: 632
Joined: April 5th, 2013, 10:55 am

Re: Saving a game of zork?

Postby gmh » April 20th, 2015, 7:55 pm

JNZ wrote:is there a way to specify another drive in Zork

You can specify a drive when you use SAVE or RESTORE.

I have ZORK.DSK mounted in the B: drive and save to A:.

See below;

Code: Select all
B>ZORK1
ZORK I: The Great Underground Empire
...
>SAVE
Load SAVE disk then enter file name.
(default file name is ZORK1.SAV).
Type <ENTER> to continue  > A:ZORK1.SAV
Load Game Disk if it was removed.
Type <ENTER> to continue >
Last edited by gmh on April 20th, 2015, 11:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
gmh
 
Posts: 38
Joined: August 12th, 2014, 5:19 am

Re: Saving a game of zork?

Postby sabea002 » April 20th, 2015, 9:21 pm

AltairClone wrote:Probably not enough space left on the floppy. A game save requires at least 14K. Also, be sure to type in a save file name even though it says "zork.sav" is the default.

Mike


That fixed it! I had a feeling that it would be a simple solution. I just erased the files for zork 2 and 3 (using the ERA command) to make room on the disk for saves.
sabea002
 
Posts: 5
Joined: April 14th, 2015, 8:52 pm


Return to General Discussions

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 17 guests