Apple IIGS emulators -- questions
Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2011 11:32 pm
Now that I feel that the DOSBox issues and playing the games on Mac is getting someplace, I have some additional questions.
My family owns an old Apple IIGS that we've had since I was in kindergarten. This was how I first heard about King's Quest. My dad used to play the games with me on that computer. The computer still works -- I turned it on a couple weeks ago.
My new computer is a Mac, and so that reminded me of the old Apple IIGS -- which I hadn't touched in over 10 years. Although I went through King's Quest 1-4 on that computer, it had been such a long time that I forgot the differences between those versions and the versions that were on the King's Quest Collections that I have. The differences seem to be mainly with the sound -- music and sound effects seem to be better on the IIGS.
I had come across a video of someone demonstrating the music that was only available on the GS. Hearing that music and sounds again made me want to play the GS versions. After some research online, I got ADT pro and used that to connect the GS with my Mac, using a serial cable and an adapter that connected the USB port on my computer with the serial cable.
I then tried copying all of the original disks from the GS to the Mac using that method so that I could play the games in Apple IIGS emulators. All of them seemed to work (I just turned them on and checked to see if they would play in the emulators) except for King's Quest 1 and King's Quest 2.
When I looked at the original box cover that the King's Quest 1 came with, I saw that it wasn't actually the GS version, but rather the IIe version. That was fine...the GS played it. The problem came with the emulator. The IIe version came on 5.25 floppies instead of the 3.5 floppies, and it seems that the disks were copy protected. So, although it copied the disks and sent it to the Mac, the disk images won't play in the emulator. Does anyone know how I can fix this?
The problem with King's Quest 2 is that Disk 1 seems to be copy protected as well. This was the IIGS version, and it was a white disk. I thought that was strange because all the other GS KQ disks were blue, but it is the original disk from Sierra.
I tried playing it on two emulators -- Sweet16 and Kegs. King's Quest 2 disk 1 caused the emulated GS to freeze. I searched for disk images of King's Quest 2 the GS version, and all the ones that I came across online also caused Sweet16 to freeze...so it's got to be something to do with the copy protection on the disk.
I checked to make sure that the disk actually played on the real GS. It did. However, there is a message that came up right after it loaded that said something like "if you want to play a backup copy, insert it now" or something like that.
With some help from other people, I got a disk image of Kings Quest 2 disk 1 to play on Kegs -- the same disk image that caused Sweet16 to freeze. On Kegs it gave me a message after I mounted it that said something about it being 0 instead of the expected number. It mounted and played anyway.
When I tried playing the disk image that I had copied from my disk, it mounted in Kegs with the same 0 warning thing. When I tried playing it, in the spot that the message had come up telling me I could play a backup copy, it told me that I needed to insert the original disk even though it was the original disk image that I was using.
The disk image that I'd gotten on the Internet didn't have that message -- it just went right to the game. Still, something must remain from the copy protection or it wouldn't cause it to freeze in Sweet16.
I don't mind playing the game in Kegs, as I couldn't get any 5.25 disk image to play in Sweet16. I think most of my 5.25 disks were copy protected (the only King's Quest game that we owned was on that size was KQ 1, but I had other games on that size disk), but I found disk images online that would play on Kegs.
Anyone know anything about this? I'd rather be playing on my actual disk images rather than ones that I got from the Internet -- but it's still the same game, so I guess it doesn't matter that much. However, I couldn't find a disk image for the version of KQ1 that I had (the IIe version).
This isn't a huge deal, but I do like playing the Apple version of the games, as those are what I originally played, and the sound and music is better than on the Dos versions.
My family owns an old Apple IIGS that we've had since I was in kindergarten. This was how I first heard about King's Quest. My dad used to play the games with me on that computer. The computer still works -- I turned it on a couple weeks ago.
My new computer is a Mac, and so that reminded me of the old Apple IIGS -- which I hadn't touched in over 10 years. Although I went through King's Quest 1-4 on that computer, it had been such a long time that I forgot the differences between those versions and the versions that were on the King's Quest Collections that I have. The differences seem to be mainly with the sound -- music and sound effects seem to be better on the IIGS.
I had come across a video of someone demonstrating the music that was only available on the GS. Hearing that music and sounds again made me want to play the GS versions. After some research online, I got ADT pro and used that to connect the GS with my Mac, using a serial cable and an adapter that connected the USB port on my computer with the serial cable.
I then tried copying all of the original disks from the GS to the Mac using that method so that I could play the games in Apple IIGS emulators. All of them seemed to work (I just turned them on and checked to see if they would play in the emulators) except for King's Quest 1 and King's Quest 2.
When I looked at the original box cover that the King's Quest 1 came with, I saw that it wasn't actually the GS version, but rather the IIe version. That was fine...the GS played it. The problem came with the emulator. The IIe version came on 5.25 floppies instead of the 3.5 floppies, and it seems that the disks were copy protected. So, although it copied the disks and sent it to the Mac, the disk images won't play in the emulator. Does anyone know how I can fix this?
The problem with King's Quest 2 is that Disk 1 seems to be copy protected as well. This was the IIGS version, and it was a white disk. I thought that was strange because all the other GS KQ disks were blue, but it is the original disk from Sierra.
I tried playing it on two emulators -- Sweet16 and Kegs. King's Quest 2 disk 1 caused the emulated GS to freeze. I searched for disk images of King's Quest 2 the GS version, and all the ones that I came across online also caused Sweet16 to freeze...so it's got to be something to do with the copy protection on the disk.
I checked to make sure that the disk actually played on the real GS. It did. However, there is a message that came up right after it loaded that said something like "if you want to play a backup copy, insert it now" or something like that.
With some help from other people, I got a disk image of Kings Quest 2 disk 1 to play on Kegs -- the same disk image that caused Sweet16 to freeze. On Kegs it gave me a message after I mounted it that said something about it being 0 instead of the expected number. It mounted and played anyway.
When I tried playing the disk image that I had copied from my disk, it mounted in Kegs with the same 0 warning thing. When I tried playing it, in the spot that the message had come up telling me I could play a backup copy, it told me that I needed to insert the original disk even though it was the original disk image that I was using.
The disk image that I'd gotten on the Internet didn't have that message -- it just went right to the game. Still, something must remain from the copy protection or it wouldn't cause it to freeze in Sweet16.
I don't mind playing the game in Kegs, as I couldn't get any 5.25 disk image to play in Sweet16. I think most of my 5.25 disks were copy protected (the only King's Quest game that we owned was on that size was KQ 1, but I had other games on that size disk), but I found disk images online that would play on Kegs.
Anyone know anything about this? I'd rather be playing on my actual disk images rather than ones that I got from the Internet -- but it's still the same game, so I guess it doesn't matter that much. However, I couldn't find a disk image for the version of KQ1 that I had (the IIe version).
This isn't a huge deal, but I do like playing the Apple version of the games, as those are what I originally played, and the sound and music is better than on the Dos versions.
I found disk images to everything except for the KQ 1 Apple IIe version. I'll try to look more for that later. 
Sigh.....Sierra isn't really around anymore to see if they have that sort of thing for those disks, and I doubt that the company that owns the King's Quest copyrights knows how they copy protected those disks, since Apple II's aren't around anymore. I doubt they used exe files.