Date   : Thu, 20 May 1999 00:10:15 +0100
From   : Graham Bisset <graham@...>
Subject: Re: Opus Challenger 3in1

At 17:00 19/05/99 GMT, you wrote:
>
>I want to thanks those that replied to my email.
>
>To answer some of the questions:
>
>There are a few games that aren't at the various games
>sites mentioned, so I will over the next month or so

[snip]

Sounds good.  Be sure to let us know when you do!! :-)

>Graham Bissest: To answer your Q. I have a 512K version.
>If I got the Rom of you of the Challenger, I would
>obviously need to write S/w to store the floppy disks into
>a readable image format. Has anyone any ideas, or examples of
>source code for DFS or ADFS or Watford, so I could attempt to do
>this.
>

No idea on this really, the Opus used a weird format of
disc (as you mention), but as I recall, the secondary
partitions were stored at a different area of the disc,
just as another catalogue.  I suspect you'd need to read
in these "extra" catalogues and process that info.  In the
end, I dont believe you got more out of an 80track DS disc,
just you got over the file qty limitation.

>The other stuff I mentioned below my name, e.g. copy programs,
>and other interesting utilities, did work on my Challenger
>system (for Graham's benefit). We as challenger users, did have problems 
>from software
>that refused to work on our systems, but by fooling the system
>with *fx and other commands (which I can;t remember), made
>the challenger feel like an ordinary disk system...therefore
>finally getting the games to work.

The biggest problem I found was with hardware.  Since the Challenger
plugged into the 1MHz port, running something like Music 5000
was a no-no.  You had to have *another* drive, load up the software
(sideways RAM or ROM), disable the Challenger, reboot and then boot
the Music 5000 disc.

Software wise, I found that the Challenger emulated a 1770 system,
which was fine, but most of my infamous disc copy programmes worked
on the 8271 :-(

Talking about Music 5000, anyone remember Music-X that was going to
be released by Peartree that never happened?  It promised loads of
extras, did anyone ever get a copy of this ?

>
>again, for Graham, Yeah, if you can dig out your system, and get
>those 50 or 60 disks converted, I will do the same and let everyone
>know what exactly I have, there may be some forgotten stuff
>on the way to some of you folk out there. (I'm sure alot of the stuff
>is already in circulation).

Yeah, will do that.  I had a lot of stuff, may even have VTOL somewhere,
the unreleased Peter Scott game.  I will make a list and anything
not generally available I can upload somewhere.

>For example, I have a version of Frak! that was called Fuck!
>some hacked version, where the baddies were of naked women..
>..sorry girls...a man's thing!!
>

A lot of the discs I have are of music demos, etc.  I have
about 5 or 6 discs of the Laurence Fenn music collection
(some of the best music on the Beeb), along with the DCT
(Dundee College of Technology IIRC) music files, which
were very good for their time.

Anyway, enough for now.  

Cheers
Graham