A-Train (III) – Taiwanese Big Box Edition

3Mar/260

A-Train (III) – Taiwanese Big Box Edition

This showed up on eBay and I fought a hard negotiation to get my hands on it. It was actually a few years ago... and I've only just thought to open the box and check if the disks work! Actually, the same seller still has another copy of it, and a copy of the Construction Set on eBay... still for crazy prices.

The box is mildly grotty... and it gets worse on the inside. The floppies are white, with quite colourful labels. Very pretty, but they also contained a concerning amount of grime as I spun the disk in the insert.

Initial attempts to read the disks failed miserably. Rawwrite just threw random errors and attempts to clean the disks didn't work. I then googl'd for methods and everywhere just seemed to indicate isopropyl alcohol. Most also came with the warning to NOT insert the disk whilst it was still wet.

... I, of course, didn't bother to wait for the alcohol to dry... instead believing it might also help keep the drive heads clean. Things started to progress and read percentages were starting to get higher and higher, but Rawwrite wasn't fun as there was no mechanism to "retry on fail". That's where IMD came in...

I set the retry count to 200 and let it chugggg.... and chug it did! On the first attempt, it got to the end of the first disk, but, as you can see above, it still failed on 2 of 78 sectors. I thought this was the end, and so I put the disks back in the box and attempted to forget about it.

The next day, I had decided to try again and attempted to image the first disk again with IMD, using the same settings. Would you believe it just worked? No extra cleaning... nothing. It chugged a little and performed a few sector retries, but it got there!

I then proceeded to install the game after writing the first disk to a spare floppy. I'd stupidly only written one disk and started the install... realising that I'd have to use the 2nd and 3rd originals ... but it worked! They'd had a few issues when imaging, but somehow the continual reading must have cleaned them up.

Booting it up...

Everything in the installer felt very stock-standard and I'd therefore assumed the game would be stock A-Train (III) with a spattering of Mandarin (maybe Taiwanese Hokkien?)... but boy was I wrong. They've added two introduction movies and even copy protection!

Here's a shot of the copy protection screen...

And here's where they stored the password on each of the 104 pages!

Turns out the password is a tiny code down next to the page number.

Page	Password	Page	Password	Page	Password
1	25875522	36	14243140	71	62352272
2	44566583	37	85133224	72	17234771
3	40512782	38	22178342	73	27873449
4	64891227	39	73823428	74	74255934
5	78675662	40	99999887	75	39287474
6	77867901	41	99320300	76	36234550
7	68214782	42	88775227	77	50249444
8	49853011	43	69525288	78	37278465
9	02035103	44	29405864	79	24735836
10	13789344	45	70850613	80	33456220
11	13899239	46	00239333	81	73455398
12	84390523	47	53978222	82	27236748
13	50040624	48	78923234	83	22329223
14	18952636	49	28090230	84	12282518
15	69054305	50	28475225	85	88934394
16	21228041	51	37893410	86	28035258
17	00705623	52	94037394	87	12441523
18	25254987	53	34930563	88	12214957
19	01009344	54	39344380	89	73433924
20	21483224	55	76823322	90	32312330
21	93887144	56	51834345	91	11243238
22	20239842	57	96387544	92	82532741
23	33432022	58	59335520	93	42141135
24	72445256	59	10193113	94	33259738
25	34423425	60	34589996	95	85645716
26	24343902	61	73534569	96	51112158
27	55325732	62	91456792	97	82223373
28	89573497	63	11155014	98	21477212
29	45126456	64	82523976	99	13382228
30	67458981	65	56986069	100	38840892
31	22379296	66	96451236	101	56879571
32	29478247	67	22423329	102	46358761
33	35624354	68	75234252	103	56879156
34	28914467	69	39732523	104	21476212
35	68522276	70	88342579

I'll attempt to hack the code out of the EXE shortly. I did get bored and sent the first 10 numbers to Google Gemini... seeing if it could work out a pattern, but it had zero fkn chance. And finally, here are the disk images in IMD and IMG formats for anyone who wants to play at home.