GS/OS: "Bard‘s Tale II" Format Incompatibility

This article discusses using GS/OS and the program "Bard's Tale II.

The Electronic Arts' program "Bard's Tale II" does not recognize a disk formatted under GS/OS. The game requires the user to format a disk that will store the character player information and statistics. When formatted under GS/OS, the disk is not recognized as a ProDOS disk. Electronic Arts has verified that the problem exists regardless of what format options are chosen.

The only workaround is to format using an earlier version of System Software, like 3.1. Here's why...

The ProDOS format has not changed. The information stored in the directory blocks has changed. The change consists of including additional
information in the directory structure than in previous versions of ProDOS. The additional information is fully documented in the description of ProDOS/16 directories and is correctly handled by ProDOS/16 directory access routines.

"Bard's Tale II" reads these directories without calling the ProDOS routines. Their program only understands the information previously stored in the directory, despite the documentation for future expansion to the directories. Programs that use the ProDOS calls to access the directory continue to work.

Using earlier versions of ProDOS (v3.2 or earlier) will not write the additional information to the directory and make it possible for "Bard's Tale II" to read the disks. The problem is purely a compatibility issue due to the implementation of accessing files in "Bard's Tale II".
Published Date: Feb 18, 2012