Having Difficulty With The Dragon/coco Emulator

[infidelity]

I have 3 .PAK's of Clowns and Ballons, Downland, and Demolition Derby. These 3 .PAK's are all coco roms. I would like to know how to play these on the emu? I heard from Horscht, that there's some converting involved? If so, could someone elaborate on this, and explain to me how to do this? This will be extremely appreciated if someone can figure this out. I appreciate the help! Thank You.

 

[Hooka]

XROAR can't load .PAK files right now... it's kinda depressing but if you look here you'll find a good collection of PD and shareware coco games Download the .BIN versions and you can play them... I'm not sure if the games you mentioned are available but there is a few here, I suggest downland

 

[infidelity]

ok, I found Download there! But I try loading it, and nothing happens, it makes a click sound, but it still stays at the @@@@ screen. Do I need something else? Is there a certain basic rom or something I need? I believe I have something like that, cause it's needed to run the coco2 emu i have for the pc. Could you let me know what it is, how it needs to be named, and am I loading these .bin's correctly? and is it possible to convert the rom's into bins? could it be a simple rename of the roms?? Thank you for your speedy reply!

EDIT - when i try to load the game, the @@@@ pieces dissapear, the screen goes green, and then it goes back to @@@@@@

 

[Hooka]

ok, yeah you need a coco rom, here's the info straight from the readme "The CoCo ROM image may be named 'coco.rom', 'coco_pa.rom', 'cocodisk.rom' or 'coco.dgn'." and this is also from the readme "The ROM files, all cassette images, snapshots and disk images should be in gp:/gpmm/dragon/."

So I suggest finding a couple coco roms (not games but the actual bios rom... although I'm not sure if it's called a bios rom in the coco) and copying them one at a time into the dragon directory, (deleting the old one and copying a new one every time) and keep on loading the emu and switching to coco mode and seeing if it loads up to the basic screen, when it loads up to the basic screen you can start loading .bin files and running games It took forever for me to find a working rom for coco but it's well worth it once you can see those old familiar games running

 

[sixxie]

If you have an 8K CoCo BASIC ROM, you currently need to pad it out to 16K by prepending 8K of zero bytes. If you have an 8K BASIC ROM and an 8K Extended BASIC ROM (e.g., "bas1x.rom" and "extbas11.rom"), cat them together into coco.rom with Extended BASIC first.

cat extbas11.rom bas12.rom > coco.rom

The next release will fix this and load available ROMs into the right place.

If anyone can find documentation about the .PAK format, I'll add support for it

 

[Hooka]

Well, I'm kinda off in the wrong direction but I thought I'd mention here has the Disk tech books for sale.

There is also here for technical documentation for the .CAR format.

Also here for GIME info

here is even more info about the coco

 

[infidelity]

Hooka, please check you PM h34r:

 

[sixxie]

There is also here for technical documentation for the .CAR format.

That page also documents a disk format that looks pretty good. I've been meaning to implement something as complete as that for a while (store all track/sector ids, CRCs, etc.).

The .CAR files documented seem to just be metadata.

 

[infidelity]

ok, i have the bios now, called "coco.dng" about 17kb

When I start the emulator i get the green @@@@
@@@@
@@@@ screen.

I first press start, I go to "Emulated Machine" and set it to "Tandy CoCo"
I then goto "Keymap" and set it to "Tandy CoCo"

I then goto "Load Binary" and it gives the warning "WARNING: Usually For CoCo Bianries" I press Start, the menu pops up, and I select a game in .bin format. I'm trying to play Downland.bin

I goto Downland.bin, press A, and nothing happens.

Also, the bottom left of the screen, I have Keyboard showing. I'm new to this and hae no idea what I'm doing wrong. I appreciate all your help.

 

[Hooka]

ok, when you set "Emulated Machine" to coco you have to hit the a button then go back to the menu. It needs to reset itself as a coco and will do so if you hit a after setting the emulated machine

 

[infidelity]

ahhh, got it!!! Thank You!

EDIT - I'd like to play Clowns And Ballons, Dungenos of Daggorrath, & Demolition Derby, but they're in rom format, these roms work on the coco2 emu for the pc. I was told to check out Downland which is 1 of my favorites, and it's in .bin format, and works great! I can't believe how great it works. My question, how can I convert .rom .pak .ccc to .bin? I'd really like to have the other 3 games working!