Sherlock (Melbourne House) Version 1 sought
Following my excursion to Wilderland (http://members.aon.at/~ehesch1/wl/wl.htm) I have now moved on to foggy London to research the world of Sherlock [Holmes].
That for I am looking for a "Version 1" of this Melbourne House game from the 80'ies (WOS only contains the Version 2). If someone can support me in this endeavour by providing a tape or a file I'd love to hear from!
Contact: wilderland AT aonDOTat
Regards,
CfromAT
That for I am looking for a "Version 1" of this Melbourne House game from the 80'ies (WOS only contains the Version 2). If someone can support me in this endeavour by providing a tape or a file I'd love to hear from!
Contact: wilderland AT aonDOTat
Regards,
CfromAT
Post edited by CfromAT on
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I checked the un-numbered Sherlock files on NitroROMs but they were all v.2.
To find the version# search for "LOADED" in the binary; the version# is about 40 bytes after that.
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I'd like to know this too, I have a couple of versions of it but I cannot really tell the difference. I recall there's something different in the .zip title but that may not really mean anything.
Try reading post #2.
Sorry I don't know how but I missed that :oops: , I think I was sort of expecting (Hobbit style) something in the screen$
Checking all three versions from "elsewhere" all of them despite the differing names have "SHD V2.0" around those bytes as you say.
the game is afoot [strike] watson[/strike] BB
Do we have a list of games with different versions? I know there were two versions of spitfire 40, but how many were silently released? Games released with identical covers and no indication of version numbers would be a bitch to find!
it was a nod to BB's investigation skills proven in the past, only on par with Mr G's searchology skills. Or were ya too busy drinking lashing of ginger beer to notice :)
I'm finding/buying things now that I'm surprised never surfaced since this place started.. e.g. paxman versions of stuff and this assembler course thing that is an MIA
"Why would you want v.1? It'll have even more bugs in it than v.2.
I checked the un-numbered Sherlock files on NitroROMs but they were all v.2.
To find the version# search for "LOADED" in the binary; the version# is about 40 bytes after that. "
So if I go upstairs and open my Spectrum tape of 'Sherlock' I can use this info to find out what version I have??!
(sigh)
Ex-Ocean Software graphic artist -
Download my FREE PDF 'LOAD DIJ DIJ' (180,000+ words): https://ko-fi.com/i/IG2G3BEJZP
ZX Art page: https://zxart.ee/eng/authors/m/mark-r-jones/
https://twitter.com/MarkRJones1970
https://www.facebook.com/OceanSoftwareLtd/
https://www.facebook.com/ultimateptg/
I did wonder that myself! I'm sure I have in my loft a boxed original copy of Sherlock, which was bought the moment it was released.
I also have somewhere the cheat sheet that Melbourne House posted out to people who wrote to them when they were stuck.
I did that this afternoon. I remember buying Sherlock in Selfridges (I lived in London at the time) a few days after release - it's still got the Selfridges price tag on the box (?14.95) - thinking that if v.1 had been released for sale then there was a good chance I would have it. So I rummaged through box X4 in bedroom#3 until I found it.
Although the box & contents are still in pristine condition, the tape quality has deteriorated substantially and it wasn't possible to load all the program, but I was able to retrieve enough to determine that my hopes had been dashed.
There is definitely at least one earlier version, as there's a note in the box about the WAIT UNTIL command being "improved", but whether that was ever on sale is another matter.
Apart from checking all the versions on WoS, NVG & Nitro, I also dug up a few others on obscure sites here & there, but none had an earlier number.
Have you done it yet? :razz:
For preservation we do need these things, but not at the expense of breaking copies you have!
Yes, that's right - on Bizarro World. For those of us not fuelled on absinthe a more conventional approach would be to load the tape into a Spectrum with a Multiface attached, or into an emulator with a debugger, and use that utility's search facility to find the string. The Multiface doesn't have an explicit search feature, but the Window option can be used to search visually.
I'd be interested if anyone else has tried loading their Sherlock tape recently as to the quality of the recording. My old Spectrum tapes usually load OK even after all these years, but that one had gone really bad. All my tapes are boxed in one of the back bedrooms so they're kept in a normal room environment, and I've loaded other tapes recently with my trusty old WH Smith CPD8300, so that's working OK.
...
My PC's started beeping at me whenever an alert window comes up. It's probably supposed to, but it's never done it before today. I'm unsettled now; I don't like things beeping unexpectedly.
There - the spelling checker's just done it when it asked me if I want to check the rest of the document. I think that I must have accidentally changed the sound output setting when I was trying to get Sherlock to load the other day. It's quite an unassuming sort of beep; I might keep it.
Located in Austria too, by the way...