Blank Formatted ADF save disk

I am a big believer in giving back, and since the folks here have been so helpfull and friendly, I thought I'd try and do my part to help people out here too. For all of you emulating, there are a lot of games that would be handy to be able to save your data to continue at a later time. It took me quite some time and effort to track one down, so I figured that I would/could upload to the Zone a blank formatted ADF save disk to spare people the trouble of trying to hunt one down on internet or making and formatting their own with WinUAE. I'm still new to the forum, so if someone would be kind enough to tell me how to upload to the Zone, I'll get it up there ASAP. Thanks, H.G.

[Retroplay]

You can create blank ADF files with WinUAE in seconds.



As for "The Zone" it's all explained in the FAQ.

1) Click on 'User CP' (top left of screen)

2) Click on 'Group Memberships' (bottom left under Miscellaneous)

3) Then Click 'Join Group'

Please Note:

DO NOT upload IPF images, Workbench disks, Kickstart ROMs & software or music files still supported/for sale to The Zone.
Also Please don't direct link to files in The Zone when creating a 'new thread' or 'replying to a post'

Thanks for the reply. I already joined The Zone, and have downloaded from there. What I want to know is how to upload something to The Zone? And you are right, it is a matter of seconds to make a blank ADF disk if you all ready have WinUAE on your PC. But to format it, you also need to have workbench 1.3 installed in WinUAE. I just think that it would be a lot easier for people to download an already formatted disk ready to go, especially if they allready don't have WinUAE installed. H.G.

[Retro-Nerd]

Scroll down the Zone, there you find the upload option. Browse a file and upload it, maybe with a short description.

[Retroplay]

It's already formatted if you choose to create a standard ADF.

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Scroll down the Zone, there you find the upload option. Browse a file and upload it, maybe with a short description.

Thanks my dude, it's uploaded and ready for use!!!

[prowler]

Originally Posted by hiredgun

...it's uploaded and ready for use!!!

Thanks for uploading that in spite of all the flames.

Until now, I could never lay my hands on an empty OFS formatted adf when I needed one in a hurry, so kudos to you for that!

Originally Posted by prowler

Thanks for uploading that in spite of all the flames.

Until now, I could never lay my hands on an empty OFS formatted adf when I needed one in a hurry, so kudos to you for that!

You are very welcome my dude!!! Coming from a Global Moderater it means a lot to me.

Found this old thread, could anyone provide me a link for downloading a formatted adf disk to save games? thank u!

[TroelsDK]

Originally Posted by c#82

Found this old thread, could anyone provide me a link for downloading a formatted adf disk to save games? thank u!

Freshly done for you

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/43970083/Empty.adf

great, thanks a lot mate!

it says "no disk in drive" - I'm absolutely a beginner of winuae, which folder should I put this adf file in? 've tried roms and the main emulator folder already

[xArtx]

Once any UAE can load Workbench, I imagine it can format a floppy from CLI

It's not as silly as it sounds though, I doubt the mobile UAE versions have the functionality yet,
and the fact they are so easily produced by WinUAE is likely the same reason you won't find one so easily on the net.
I have come across them in adf collections though.

[Hewitson]

Alternatively you can use "dd if=/dev/zero of=blank.adf bs=1k count=880" to make a blank ADF.

[olesio]

Hewitson: this create empty file filled with 0 Bytes. Are you guys sure that DOS header is not required in most cases?

[djukon]

Originally Posted by Retroplay

You can create blank ADF files with WinUAE in seconds.

I know this is 32 years early and might affect very little or nothing, but it is worth mentioning in case anyone stumbles on this issue and searches the web for a solution.

Beyond January 19th, 2046 at 03:14:07 (one of the Amiga's end of time dates), all floppies created by current WinUAE versions will have a date that might not function correctly with applications and games. That I know of, at least Workbench 1.0 updates its date automatically to the most recent date it finds on the mounted drives. I don't have other mock date emulated setups (1.x to 3.x) to try this on now.

Here's an example just by inserting a new floppy in df2:.



There is no file in the floppy which WB would read the date off of, it is in the floppy's meta information. WinUAE puts this date in a 32-bit block ($6E014-$6E017) on the adf file. There are some other changes from blank adf to blank adf in the region $6E1AB to $6E1EF. Checksums and a serial, perhaps?

Given this situation, it would be safer (from a user perspective) to offer a Mock Floppy Creation Date option in *UAE user interfaces (with a help bubble referring to end of time issues). And a mock emulated clock option somewhere in the hardware options too, btw.

Some workarounds:

• keep a blank floppy with a valid date archived;
• dd an adf, followed by formatting it within the mock time AmigaOS environment (dd doesn't create an OFS formatted floppy);
• insert the "post end of time floppy" in the drive created by WinUAE, make sure the emulated system date is in a valid mock one, format the floppy in the emulated system;
• change the $6E014-$6E017 block to a valid date one in a hex editor;
• run WinUAE in an emulated/virtualized (or even real) environment with a mock date, create adf.

EDIT: Correction about how the date and time is written to the adf by thomas in a following post.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by olesio

Hewitson: this create empty file filled with 0 Bytes.

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=blank.adf bs=1k count=880
880+0 records in
880+0 records out
901120 bytes (901 kB) copied, 0.000685643 s, 1.3 GB/s

$ ls -sh *adf
880K blank.adf

[djukon]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

$ ls -sh *adf
880K blank.adf

Hewitson, I think olesio was referring to the image having only zeros from start to finish and not being OFS formatted to function immediately as a save disk. I.e, the dd method doesn't have the 44 4F 53 (DOS) in the beginning and sectors 880 and 881 with OFS structure.

[thomas]

What you are looking at is the checksum of the root block.

The creation time as well as the alteration time is stored as number of days / number of minutes / number of ticks later in that block. It will not overflow any time soon.


Also, which value would you consider to be a "valid date" once the number of seconds since 1978 has overflowed?

[djukon]

Originally Posted by thomas

What you are looking at is the checksum of the root block.

You're right, sorry about that. I saw 32 bits with a sequence, assumed the date incorrectly.

Originally Posted by thomas

The creation time as well as the alteration time is stored as number of days / number of minutes / number of ticks later in that block. It will not overflow any time soon.

I'll strike out the incorrect information and place a note at the end of my post with a link to yours to avoid incorrect interpretation. Thanks, thomas.

Originally Posted by thomas

Also, which value would you consider to be a "valid date" once the number of seconds since 1978 has overflowed?

None specifically, really. The user has to sketch out a mock time frame environment according to the task at hand. A default fixed value could backfire if the user didn't understand what they were doing. Better leave optional and customizable, and just overflow if the user says nothing. Also giving a warning near and after the overflow date would be helpful.