KryoFlux: IPF write support

mr.vince · 07 July 2011, 12:07

Broken original game? Used a virus scanner to replace the allegedly dangerous non-standard bootblock? Bought it from eBay just to find out it was "fixed" by copying a crack over it?

Don't worry... you will be helped!

[ Show youtube player ]

ppill · 07 July 2011, 13:51

Fantastic news!

desiv · 07 July 2011, 17:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by mr.vince

Don't worry... you will be helped!

Man I hate you!!!

You guys have to STOP making me spend money on my "habit"!!

That's a great announcement.... Grrr....

desiv

Wiking67 · 07 July 2011, 18:52

It getting close

kipper2k · 07 July 2011, 19:32

It is well worth the investment.

Rakki · 07 July 2011, 19:57

Splendid

.

Steve · 07 July 2011, 20:19

Awesome news!! I still would like it to be in some sort of housing case. Any news when a nicely housed version of the board will be available?

kipper2k · 07 July 2011, 20:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steve

Awesome news!! I still would like it to be in some sort of housing case. Any news when a nicely housed version of the board will be available?

I was able to pick up a case on sale for $13, fits nicely, a little bit of dremeling and heres the result

I used a regular 4 pin molex connector for my power supply, works like a charm

. The hole on top is to perform a hard reset if needed

mr.vince · 07 July 2011, 20:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by desiv

Man I hate you!!!

What a pitty. We hoped to make so many of you out there happy with it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kipper2k

It is well worth the investment.

You aren't a private beta tester, are you?!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steve

Any news when a nicely housed version of the board will be available?

I guess we won't be doing them for personal orders, as they are expensive and I don't want to waste several thousands of Euros on a mold. Only makes sense when you do thousands of products. We do have one for pro-customers (those paying for the software licence as well) which is laser-cut plexiglas. You can briefly see it in the video. Guess we could give out the outlines for this, but you'd still have to find someone with a laser cutter...

kipper2k · 07 July 2011, 20:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by mr.vince

You aren't a private beta tester, are you?!

My A500 has never been so busy checking my writes, even the unfinished beta is still performing great, no more messing around with syncs, parameters etc

(using a WinXP Pro SP3 laptop, and a Sony Z/121 floppy attached to the Kryoflux)

mr.vince · 07 July 2011, 21:22

Do you remember me saying this should become a "one-click only" experience? Now you know why.

Will be sending you next beta tonight...

kipper2k · 08 July 2011, 02:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by mr.vince

Do you remember me saying this should become a "one-click only" experience? Now you know why.

Will be sending you next beta tonight...

I received the new Kryoflux beta. So far i have wrote about 50 images back to floppy and i have only had 1 that doesnt seem to write. (ghosts n Goblins), i'm not sure if my image is bad or not.

I have used old/new/DD/HD floppies and the writes WORK!. It doesn't appear to need new and DD disks in order to successfully write images as some of the discs i have used are old IBM formatted disks that i got from work which are about 10 years old and had old data on them. Most of the disks i have are mixed brands so overall, VERY happy.

the list is long of what i have successfully copied... heres a sample

dragons Breath
Hybris
Zoom
Gunshoot
Leander
Battle Squadron
Adams Family
Alien Breed Tower Assault
Capone
Chase HQ
Defender of Crown
Dragons Lair

Denaris
Double Dragon 2
F29 Retaliator
Great Giana Sisters
James Pond
Lemmings 1
Lords of Rising Sun
Magic Pockets (loads different from original, it struggles)
Obliterator
Paradroid90
Parasol Stars
Rainbow Islands
Rick Dangerous (Both 1 and 2)
Silkworm
Silly Putty
Shadow of Beast 2
Smash TV
Space Ace
Speedball (Both 1 and 2)
Swiv
Sword of Sodan
Turrican (I, II and III)
Wrath of Demon

Awesome!

And the game Awesome too lol

musashi5150 · 08 July 2011, 08:44

Just what I've been waiting for! When this goes final here's one new customer

Will be much better than that CatWeasal crap I bought.

Alpha One · 08 July 2011, 10:53

Catweasel ist not crappy at all, but the support (none) sucks. ;p

Now that IPF writeback begins to work I will buy my personal Kryoflux today.

alexh · 08 July 2011, 11:51

Out of curiosity.

Disks which are written back using Kryoflux are distinct from ones written using a trace machine when looking at them with the analyser?

kipper2k · 08 July 2011, 12:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by alexh

Out of curiosity.

Disks which are written back using Kryoflux are distinct from ones written using a trace machine when looking at them with the analyser?

I cant speak for the tech side of things. If you were to compare the bits of 2 floppies created by a trace machine would they be identical or would there be minor differences ?

musashi5150 · 08 July 2011, 13:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alpha One

Catweasel ist not crappy at all, but the support (none) sucks

True, true

Nice to see you here Alpha One, I used to enjoy reading your tutorials

IFW · 08 July 2011, 14:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by alexh

Out of curiosity.

Disks which are written back using Kryoflux are distinct from ones written using a trace machine when looking at them with the analyser?

KryoFlux software has a greater freedom of using processing power than Trace could have used at the time.

On a Trace machine variable density tracks had to be written in multiple-passes - you could set the bitcell width only for an entire track for one pass.
KF can write anything in a single pass, greatly improving reliability and data consistency.
Right now the only bottleneck of the system is the type of drive attached and the media being used.

KF uses various modulation techniques to achieve a near identical copy of the IPF image - Trace did not have this capability, so virtually every single disk written was slightly different, especially as drives went out of alignment gradually over the course of usage.

The KF host software automatically and continuously adjusts the cells, modulation and pre-compensation to the current drive speed AND the target system's drive speed to make the image written as optimal as is possible - Trace couldn't do either of that, it required recalibration of the drives after a while or adjusting the FreeForm script describing how to write the data...

As long as your disk and drive is good enough (I know... not exactly a scientific description) - each disk written with KF is practically identical, they differ only in a few microseconds range - which is pretty good considering the variad nature of the drive signals, speed wobble etc.
Actually, it has become much better than I ever thought it could be.

We also use some magic pre-compensation, which was not always correctly set for duplicated disks at the time.

See the attached pictures for the effect, which is very clean bands making it easy for the controllers to read the data correctly, even at the very dense inner tracks of a disk using non-standard (very high) bit densities.

Note, many original disks wouldn't look as "good" as the picture with the scattered cell bands shown here on the left hand side.

IFW · 08 July 2011, 14:25

The pictures above are from the single disk (official!) version of Xenon 2, comlete with intro; track 79.0 .
They had to use a very dense disk to pull that off, and naturally that greatly decreased the readability of the disk - how precise your writing is matters when the drive speed and disk rotation speed varies and peak shifts appear.
Put simply, the narrower the written band is, the higher the chance of reading it on the target system without errors and retries.

Additionally, this disk sports the nastiest varied density protections ever on Amiga: Speedlock on track 0.1; if the written image is not 99.99% correct it will never work due to the timing checks used on very small fragments of disk data to make copying next to impossible.

IFW · 08 July 2011, 14:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by kipper2k

I cant speak for the tech side of things. If you were to compare the bits of 2 floppies created by a trace machine would they be identical or would there be minor differences ?

See my post; you'd have similar disks if they were duped about the same time on the same drive, otherwise no.

We are talking about bitcells here though, not bits.
The "bits" as in content, would be hopefully identical

As for KF, both bits and bitcells would be very nearly identical each time.

07 July 2011, 12:07	#1
mr.vince Cheesy crust Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Hawk's Creek Age: 48 Posts: 1,383	KryoFlux: IPF write support Broken original game? Used a virus scanner to replace the allegedly dangerous non-standard bootblock? Bought it from eBay just to find out it was "fixed" by copying a crack over it? Don't worry... you will be helped! [ Show youtube player ]

07 July 2011, 19:32	#5
kipper2k Registered User Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Thunder Bay, Canada Posts: 4,323	It is well worth the investment. Last edited by kipper2k; 07 July 2011 at 19:37.

08 July 2011, 14:25	#19
IFW Moderator Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: ... Age: 52 Posts: 1,838	The pictures above are from the single disk (official!) version of Xenon 2, comlete with intro; track 79.0 . They had to use a very dense disk to pull that off, and naturally that greatly decreased the readability of the disk - how precise your writing is matters when the drive speed and disk rotation speed varies and peak shifts appear. Put simply, the narrower the written band is, the higher the chance of reading it on the target system without errors and retries. Additionally, this disk sports the nastiest varied density protections ever on Amiga: Speedlock on track 0.1; if the written image is not 99.99% correct it will never work due to the timing checks used on very small fragments of disk data to make copying next to impossible. Last edited by IFW; 08 July 2011 at 14:31.

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07 July 2011, 13:51	#2
ppill CON: artist Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Poland Age: 43 Posts: 1,250	Fantastic news!

07 July 2011, 18:52	#4
Wiking67 Blowing Out The Flame Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Lulea Sweden Age: 57 Posts: 214	It getting close

07 July 2011, 19:57	#6
Rakki Registered User Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Jyväskylä / Finland Age: 49 Posts: 46	Splendid .

07 July 2011, 20:19	#7
Steve I Identify as an Ewok Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: North Lincolnshire Age: 45 Posts: 2,356	Awesome news!! I still would like it to be in some sort of housing case. Any news when a nicely housed version of the board will be available?

07 July 2011, 21:22	#11
mr.vince Cheesy crust Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Hawk's Creek Age: 48 Posts: 1,383	Do you remember me saying this should become a "one-click only" experience? Now you know why. Will be sending you next beta tonight...

08 July 2011, 08:44	#13
musashi5150 move.w #$4489,$dff07e Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Norfolk, UK Age: 42 Posts: 2,351	Just what I've been waiting for! When this goes final here's one new customer Will be much better than that CatWeasal crap I bought.

08 July 2011, 10:53	#14
Alpha One Registered User Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: Ger Posts: 223	Catweasel ist not crappy at all, but the support (none) sucks. ;p Now that IPF writeback begins to work I will buy my personal Kryoflux today.

08 July 2011, 11:51	#15
alexh Thalion Webshrine Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Oxford Posts: 14,331	Out of curiosity. Disks which are written back using Kryoflux are distinct from ones written using a trace machine when looking at them with the analyser?

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