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Building Commodore Plus 4 disks

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Uto edited this page Jan 4, 2020 · 1 revision

Commodore Plus 4 is a new target for DAAD, which was not included in the 80s release. It's a brand new target from 2019, thanks to the coding of Imre Szel, and the help of Stefan Vogt.

disks in .D64 format will requite to include the loader and DAAD interpreter file, the DDB file named BPART1, the character and graphics file named APART1, and either the Spanish (SDIPLUS4) or the English (EDIPLUS4) intrepreters.

Being all this procedure quite complicated, as the loaders are built in machine code, not BASIC, it's better if you start with these premade disks. These disk will just require you to add the DDB file, named BPART1, and in case, the picture files 00164,00264, etc. and/or xmessage files 00,01,02,03,etc.

Please notice despite DRC generating XMESSAGE files as 00.XMB, 01.XMB, etc. you will have to remove the extension before moving to D64 file.

Modifying the loader

The loader in the sample files can be modified, if load it with LOAD "DAAD", and then LIST, you see a line with a REM.

After the REM there are two numbers and one letter, this is what they mean:

  • First number is the part number, if you change that 1 with 2, then APART2 and BPART2 files would be loaded, so you can do multi-part games

  • Second number is the type of loading screen. There is no loading screen in the sample disks, but you can add a file named LOADERPICPLUS4.PRG. The value of that number will tell the loader if it's a hires image (0) or multicolor (1).

  • The letter just tells the loader if the interpreter to load is (E)DIPLUS4.PRG or (S)DIPLUS4.PRG

To change the loader, just edit the line, press intro, and save it with SAVE "NEWDAAD",8

Then use a D64 editor to wipe old loader, rename new loader as DAAD (or how you prefer) and move the new loader up so it's first file in the disk

Recommended software

  • D64 Editor allows adding files to D64 files from GUI or command line. Please notice when adding BPART1 D64 Editor will create file BPART1 if you add it as bpart1 (in lowercase). This is due to the fact Commodore Plus/4 does not use ASCII, but PETSCII. You won't have any problem with pictures or xmessage files as the file names only include numbers.
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