Class idea for WinUAE

[MethodGit]

Why don't the WinUAE team add support for direct loading of ISO/BIN images (like the 32X/Sega CD emulator Ages does) and WRP/MFM images? If they think hard about it there surely must be a way of making this happen. It'll take a bit of extra code to make the idea become reality, but I bet all of us will be happier for it. :smoking

I reckon the WinFellow team should do the WRP/MFM loading idea as well.

[Twistin'Ghost]

No Amiga emulator out there does true disk emulation, which is far too complex to outline here. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for these advanced features. Their main focus right now is getting A500 emulation working and fixing bugs.

[Toni Wilen]

UAE 0.8.13 and later do full disk emulation. But I haven't heard about WRP/MFM images. Where can I download example images? I'll add support if it seems useful feature.

Currently UAE supports normal ADF, extended ADF (nearly 100% raw bitstream, only reading supported) and extended ADF2 (100% raw bitstream and supports reading and writing, this is for games with custom save game formats)

[Warlock99]

Iso's can be mounted right now using the daemon tools util, which is used a lot for psx emulation nowadays but works ok with winuae too.

http://www.daemon-tools.com/daemon_tools.htm


There's quite a few other similar utils around too.

[XoreX]

Yes, I use Daemon Tools for loading isos and they work perfect also with uae. I mounted few CDTV isos, now I gona try also with CD32. They are realy simple to use + they save a lot of burned (wrecked) cd also...

[Ian]

Wrp/MFM files are (And I no expert on this by the way) full images of "Real" Amiga disk's copy protection an all so may .wrp files are far larger than the standard 880k adf size.

I know very little about this (Codetapper please help;)), but aparently ....... Well something along the lines of writing more data to each track, than normal. That's about all I can recall, but it's far more complicated than that I'm sure.

[Toni Wilen]

Wrp/MFM files are (And I no expert on this by the way) full images of "Real" Amiga disk's copy protection an all so may .wrp files are far larger than the standard 880k adf size.

Yep, I guessed that they are raw floppy images (usually in MFM format which makes them about 2x larger than normal ADFs) but I was asking for example images and format specifications.

[andreas]

Hi Toni,

I've just uploaded the Halley Project WARP for you, on the ADF zone.
Between the 'user cp' and 'register' buttons there's the ADF zone button. The file is right at the top.

[Toni Wilen]

Thanks. I thought WRP was raw format, but it is disk packer like DMS (packs only normal Amiga tracks). It seems adding support for WRP images is waste of time because DMS is much more common and WRP isn't documented and there does not seem to be decompression sources available.

[andreas]

Toni,

I did another one. This time it's the ORIGINAL of Major Motion. This one is in MFM format.
Looks like it's more close to that extended ADF format.

(NB: no credits, please :) this one is from someone else but I forgot who it was...)

[Twistin'Ghost]

Toni...I was just coming here to let you know that wrp is not a disk format, but I see you figured that out.

There's actually a few different warp utils. Again, this link to Codetapper's site will provide you with the neccessary tools.

http://members.tripod.com/whdload/utilities.html

Just an aside I have been meaning to mention: in addition to MFMWarp and NomadWarp, that have become mainstays in transferring Amiga originals lately, they are not the same as the old school Warp util, which was how cracked warez were spread before DMS existed. After the original Warp came the hacker-improved NibWarp, which was a predecessor to (I think) NomadWarp. It's a long, interesting story which I may go into one day when I am not in a state of sleep-depravation...

[Toni Wilen]

Thanks, this looks promising.. but unfortunately all raw warp-formats seem to use XPK to compress data. I don't think it is good idea to add all XPK decompressors to UAE just for direct warp image support...

Best solution is probably to write native Amiga program that converts warp-images to extended ADF2 images. But I think I'll add direct FDI (DSK2FDI's format) support to UAE first..

[andreas]

could you please take a look on that Major Motion image in MFM format I uploaded for you? I think it's not compressed. (it doesn't look as if it was compressed in any way, at least :p)

[Toni Wilen]

Major Motion's track data is compressed with "HFMN" XPK compressor.

I am currently hacking MFMWarp's writing code and it seems creating warp->extended ADF2 converter is quite easy.. But I don't know if it really works until converter is ready.

[Akira]

It's great to have an UAE dev in the board. If you can add Warp support it would be brill, though I'd preffer being able to write Warp files back onto disks :) Does anybody know if I could get a Cyclone on eBay?

[MethodGit]

Um, sorry if I have no knowledge of every Amiga device out there, but what exactly is a "Cyclone"?

[Amigaboy]

If I recall, it was a disk copying thingy...but my memory is shot

[Amigaboy]

http://www.programmersheaven.com/file.asp?FileID=3424

"How to make a cyclone copier"

No idea if it will work (I havent even looked at the archive), but could be interesting

[Akira]

Yipee! DIY electronics... I'm crap at that but I love it :D Thanks for the link.

Now, how about a device that lets me unpack WRP files onto a disk? Would that be possible? Hmmm..

[Codetapper]

Hi guys

A couple of things for anyone that downloaded Major Motion - it has the Lamer Exterminator 4 virus on the bootblock. This one isn't the threat it used to be as it has self modifying code which crashes all cpu's > 68000. And on emulators I'm not sure what harm it would do... But for anyone that downloaded the warp and has loaded it up on a real Amiga, you can clean it just by installing the bootblock. And check your other disks!

Akira: You can write back some warped games such as Major Motion: MFMWarp WRITE MajorMotion.MFM DEEP

The DEEP argument isn't necessary ALL the time, but is best for some long track format games (Rob Northen PDos - eg. Superfrog etc).

Now that's out of the way, a few other things:

1. MFMWarp uses XPK compression as Toni figured out. Most XPK packers are coded in ASM for speed so porting to WinUAE isn't going to be easy. (I heard that some of these were being ported a while back so maybe they have been).

2. Warp images are imho pointless for being included in an emulator because of the fact that you get no proper error checking. In theory, everyone on the net could start dumping MFMWarp files and TOSEC would fill up - every warp can and most likely is different when run on the same disk at the same time by the same person!

3. Assuming you had a decent rip and that the game has no speed check of a track copy protection, you would then need all the extra work to preload the image, decrunch it, then add code to shift the bitstream to the correct sync etc. A *lot* of effort for not much reward.

4. Half the warp files are full of Dos tracks anyway (eg. Major Motion is fully warped up yet only 2 tracks require it - the main game is dos, no copy protection that I could see (I have written a whdload slave for it already to verify!) and the MFM is only for loading/saving the high scores to track 1 (in standard Microdeal format). In other words, you can DIC this disk without the virus and it should load anyway.

5. Converting a non copy protected game from MFM to ADF Extended format is trivial if you know what you are doing. Maybe like the WHDLoad project, people will write an imager using something like RawDIC (in WHDLoad package) to spit out the ADF2 format rather than a disk image compatible with WHDLoad.

[Big-Byte]

Ive got the Cyclone copier (hardware and software)

It comes with X-Copy II disk which has custom Cyclone copier on it too.

The only game I remember it working on well was Dragons Lair which uses loads of long tracks.. It took ages too.

[Akira]

Hey Code, a question about this ADF2 format... any chance we can make those images get transferred back to real Amiga disks?

[Codetapper]

Akira: Basically no you can't - in theory you have all the data you need but you would need a utility to convert the MFM back to disk and then there are the two problems of long tracks (disk drive needs to be slowed down to write the data back but you can't do this without hardware) and copy protection based on speed checks will also fail...

[Akira]

Argh! What if I have a Cyclone cartride or some similar device?

(just trying to burn all possibilities, I MUST recover my R-Type 2 disk!)

[Codetapper]

If you had a working R-Type 2 disk there and the blank to put it on, then yes I'm sure you could copy it for backup purposes. But if you know someone with the original and get a dump of the data, there is no way to write it back at the correct speed - Cyclone provides the hardware but you would need software to do it and that would be a big job.

Depending on the format of the game (I haven't disassembled this game) you might be able to write back all the tracks except the copy protected one and hope your original disk there is ok on that track and it might load, but if it's a custom format you are probably out of luck :(

I will send you R-Type 2 HD if you wish (when I get it)

[Akira]

ARG!H Im screwed then. Damn that faulty diskdrive that corrupted my beloved disk! :(

That means I need someone with the original R-Type 2 disk, a Cyclone cartridge, and my faulty disk, to restore it. Right?

R-Type 2 HD might be nice, but not needed. Don't be arsed to find it, thanks a lot for your offer. I really wanted to restore my original :( That is my real wish, I could play the cracked (spit!) version of it anyday, but you know how collectors are, don;t you :)

[Djay]

cyclone as i remember it, was a plug thru device for use with a 2nd drive, to sync copy-protected disk speeds to a destination disk speeds, the only problem is that cyclone then added it's own copy-protection so you couldn't copy the copy with cyclone.

there was a cunning way around this, by nibble copying the first block on each side using x-copy and then copying the rest with cyclone, but each time you copied a copy you had to use this method.

a few of us cracked open the cyclone cartridge to find a re-wiring solution rather than a chip solution, so we made a few more cyclone cartridges, so if you find the diagram for the cart you can re-produce it.