Problem loading Dizzy games on Steem. Please help

[ShadesUK]

Hi,

I can use most games on Steem however I have tried several different disk images that have Spellbound Dizzy on them and I cannot get any of them to work. They come up with the initial screen that says to press space to continue but after pressing space the screen just goes black and stays there, it will not come up with the game selection screen. I have tried loading the main ST screen first then loading the disk, browsing to the loader.prg file and accessing that way but still get the black screen. Does anyone have any ideas what else I can try or if I am doing something wrong.

Additional information if it helps: I am using TOS102 as it seems to be the same as my original ST console.
ST CPU Speed set to 8Mhz
Mem 4MB
Frameskip is set to draw every frame

Thanks in advance,
J

[Mug UK]

Try lowering the STEEM memory to 1Mb.

[ShadesUK]

Thanks for the reply, I have just tried lowering the memory to 1MB but there is no change, I still just get the black screen.

[Grazey / PHF]

Seem to remember it had a temperamental ikbd routine. Try not pressing anything until the last second. Also I think you had to have the joystick in the mouse port?! So try that in steem settings.

Grz

[ShadesUK]

Thanks for the advice, I've just tried that but still no joy.

J

[Zippy]

The version on the menu here seems to work fine in Steem for me, TOS 1.02 setup as 1MB or 4MB :

https://www.atarilegend.com/menusets/47?page=1

Direct download link:
https://www.atarilegend.com/storage/zips/menus/402.zip

[ShadesUK]

I have tried downloading that version and I still have the same result. I think the issue must be within the software rather than the game, just seems odd that it is the only one that has the issue.

[Zippy]

That's strange. Maybe trying re-installing STEEM?

Are you booting the image from Drive A: ?

I even tried with the "accurate disk access times" option on and off (sometimes that makes a difference if there's a non-standard disk loader) but it worked for me both ways. You could try with that option on though, to see if it helps.

If still no luck you could try with this TOS 1.02 version, attached, that's what I'm running and it works OK for me.

[mlynn1974]

Mentioned here before:
https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=39086
Have you tried the one on D-Bug Menu 41B?

[ShadesUK]

Thanks for all the help, I tried using your image file but it still didn't work. I have now downloaded a new version of steem and it is now working. My original version was 3.2 and I have now downloaded version SSE 4.1.1.

Thanks again,
J

[wheeel]

You may find that simply disabling Drive B in Steem does the trick. I seem to remember it is/was enabled by default and the loader for (all?) the Dizzy games simply hangs on a blank screen if it senses Drive B being present. My guess is that it was a simple protection against the Blitz copier, though I can be mistaken here.

[ijor]

There are some titles that attempt to access both drives at the same time. For most drives this is harmless as long as there is no actual disk inserted on the second drive. Doesn't seem to be any kind of protection but just a bug, that being harmless in most situations, was never exposed and then never fixed. Older versions of most emulators were not dealing with this correctly and then load would fail unless the second drive was turned off.