Winuae Kryoflux support

[Joe Maroni]

is it planned that Winuae support Kryoflux device in one of the next releases ???

that would be cool...

[Steve]

No. WinUAE is an emulator. Kryoflux is hardware for preserving ancient disk media. They are totally seperate!

[Joe Maroni]

but kryoflux support adf creating..why not combined with disk reading instead of adf reading ???

[Fabie]

I don't know if it is possible Kryoflux on winuae because a device to works with winuae requires some special features and I don't know if Kryoflux is an ideal device for it
you can ask Toni...but I bet he will says no or that is impossible

[Eclipse]

It can read Amiga floppies, which would be useful in WinUAE to be honest.

[Joe Maroni]

Originally Posted by Fabie

I don't know if it is possible Kryoflux on winuae because a device to works with winuae requires some special features and I don't know if Kryoflux is an ideal device for it
you can ask Toni...but I bet he will says no or that is impossible

Harddisks are already supported...why not trying to do the same with amiga floppies....

I'd like to see two things.

• WinUAE (or UAE in genereal) with KryoFlux-Support (e.g. as DF0)
• Internal KryoFlux (therfor not USB but PCI or PCI-E)

That would give the chance to build a neat little x86-Amiga thing.

Power it up, insert a ORIGINAL Workbench, boots. Easy like this.

Would be a thing very close to a x86-Amiga.

<TheZock>

[Skope]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Real time streaming is technically possible.

Not sure if I am interested enough, maybe someday.

Toni already answered this in another thread.

Edit: Just noticed OP was over a year ago. Sorry, my bad.

[mr.vince]

Much hassle, for very little fun. Because of the USB delay this would mean freezing emulation while the next track is loaded etc.

It's more or less technically possible, but it still makes much more sense to suck in the disk at once and then work from the raw data read.

This is emulation, so my recommendation would be that if you want it to be closer to the original, spend EUR 15,- and buy an A500.

Originally Posted by mr.vince

Much hassle, for very little fun. Because of the USB delay this would mean freezing emulation while the next track is loaded etc.

Hm, Standard-PC-USB-Floppy-Drives also transfer a HD-Disk more or less FAST. DD means half the data. I guess the USB is fast enough to handle a dd-read near like a original drive. I don't think that it would freeze the emulation a lot! Think about USB 2.0 Videograbbers! They handle huge amounts of data.

If the actual KryoFlux reads in a floppy very slow i guess it's because the strong analysis of the disk. KryoFlux can almost read a disk made of paper But for Disks in good condition all this analysis is not needed. I could imagine that the flexible firmware of KryoFlux allows for a "Fast-Version" which does not do that much analysis an just reads a GCR-Formated disk QUICK!

The Bus (USB) can do the job. I guess KryoFlux with a modified Firmware (less analysis) can also do the job. And for UAE, i guess it's also possible.

It's "just" software-modifications. Okay, >I< can't do it. I am not a good programmer when it comes to hardware. But i guess for the KryoFlux-Team and the WinUAE-Team it's not that huge work.

BOTH Teams would have an advantage. KryoFlux would have one more big reason for people to buy a KryoFlux-Hardware. And WinUAE would have a unique Feature. I guess it's then the first emu that can handle Original Disks!

The point of buying a "cheap" original system is that these don't live forever! Just think about the capacitors. How old are the capacitors in an original A500 now? 20 Years? 25 Years? How long does a capacitor work? Changing all the capacitors also is quiete a job.

Just got one A500 from the bay. Unfortunatly the PSU delivered +38V instead of +12V. "Pop goes the Capacitor!"

TheZock

[Skope]

I have to agree with Vince. While fun I'm sure, I fail to see the point. It's way better to dump your disk and work with the image in the emulator. And if you really want to work just like on the real thing, use the real thing.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by TheZock

Hm, Standard-PC-USB-Floppy-Drives also transfer a HD-Disk more or less FAST. DD means half the data. I guess the USB is fast enough to handle a dd-read near like a original drive. I don't think that it would freeze the emulation a lot! Think about USB 2.0 Videograbbers! They handle huge amounts of data.

He is not talking about speed but latency. Time between requesting something and getting the requested data. This is MUCH longer and "random" compared to real hardware.

Copy protected software requires near-perfect timing. Even if we forget about copy protections, standard trackdisk.device won't like too long delays either. (it probably works, most of the time)

Latency is always huge problem when connecting physical hardware (that requires specific timing) to software emulation. It simply won't work, without ugly hacks.

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

He is not talking about speed but latency. Time between requesting something and getting the requested data. This is MUCH longer and "random" compared to real hardware.

Copy protected software requires near-perfect timing. Even if we forget about copy protections, standard trackdisk.device won't like too long delays either. (it probably works, most of the time)

Latency is always huge problem when connecting physical hardware (that requires specific timing) to software emulation. It simply won't work, without ugly hacks.

So the problem is the delay between requesting an operation and fetching the result? But isn't there a speed-setting in the WinUAE-Config? That increases the speed the floppy-emulation is working? Also the real drives have latency due to the stepper and motor.

Okay, i guess i don't understand that much about the disk interface at all. I thought that these rather slow transfers where unproblematic.

It's just the wish to handle REAL disks with WinUAE. It's easy to insert a disk, but lot more work to transfer all the disks from a real amiga to a pc :-/

No support for this par-port-floppy-reader-thingy either? Same reasons?

So the solution is... reading in the floppy to adf, then booting the emulation from adf. And juggeling around with those adf's. Hmmm.

Okay, better than no emulation at all

Thanks anyway for the great work. I think UAE is one of the most important amiga-realted things nowadays. Huge potential!

TheZock

Originally Posted by Skope

And if you really want to work just like on the real thing, use the real thing.

But the "real thing" is not developed any further. Old systems die like the flies. That's a dead-end-road. Fun while it lasts but after that...

I really dislike all the a1/minimig/ppc solutions as they all seem to work into another dead-end. Expensive hardware with really small acceptance. Not really a help to bring the whole idea/system into a brighter future.

Emulation of the 68k-stuff and opening the system to a well acepted hardware seems (at least for me) the clever option. Amithlon was a great step into this direction. But you all know the story. It's not a story of a failed product but of business-idiots that burried a good idea.

Amithlon + Real Floppy Access would have been a solution for a good transition to the x86-hardware.

Amithlon is dead, so UAE seems to be the best alternative around.

10 Years ago, a x86-Platform that would boot off a original workbench would be news that all the magazines would print! With headlines like "The NEW Amiga". Nowadays the platform is near dead and people are just archiving their old disks.

For me it's not the point to play old games. If it was, i would find enough ADF's in the Net. It's about making a huge Transition with only small Steps needed to finish.

What was WarpUp? A big "Horay!" for the magazines and some users. Horay, we are on the road to ... nothing. PowerPC...Dead like Elvis.

UAE could be like WarpUP the 68k-legacy emulation and opening to new cheap hardware. But no "Horay!", just a "Can it run Turrican?" :-P

Okay, i guess i'm quite alone with that dream/opinion

TheZock

[ShK]

There is still no basic DF0-driver for the WinUAE?

[Toni Wilen]

No because it would be quite annoying to use.

It can only work if it uses separate device like catweasel does. (something.device, not DF0:/trackdisk.device). I am still not sure if it is worth the trouble.

Main problem is latency (see above), trackdisk.device expects data very quickly, too quickly before WinUAE can get enough track data -> read error.

There is easy workaround but it also makes it annoying: pause emulation completely until track data has been received. It gets mega-annoying if program also plays any audio during loading..

Sequential reading probably can work because UAE can read next track while emulated program reads previous track. Until program decides to read some random track..

Supporting copy protections (=exact timing) would require constant pausing because emulation don't and can't know when program does "normal" reading or copy protection reading.

[ShK]

Despite of the trackdisk.device's annoy behavior the experimental support of the Kryoflux's direct hardware access would still be very interesting to see.

[ShK]

I bought one of those. It seems to work ok, what I quickly tested.

[ShK]

It seems that I need to buy the another floppy-drive cos there is no support standard A: drive either...

http://forum.kryoflux.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=229

[Joe Maroni]

ok, forget about a direct support of Kryoflux in Winuae. Another idea:

adfs can be created with Kryoflux, ipfs not.
adfs didn´t support custom disk formats, ipfs does.

Kryoflux didn´t support (as far as i know) some kind of custom dump format for disks. but it creates stream files.

would it be possible to let Winuae support this stream files?

imagine you have a bunch of disk where you don´t know what is on the disks and have no original amiga anymore. try to dump them with adfs with kryoflux and with luck they can be dumped correct.
what if the disk you like to dump uses a custom format. adf dumping would result in errors and the only possibility is to create stream files and ask the SPS team to have a look what's on the disks.

now it would be really useful to use the stream files with Winuae.

i don´t think that the SPS team have so much time to look at a bunch of e.g. 200 disks...

[IFW]

If it's a crack/ADF it can be dumped without any guessing.
If it's an original, it definitely has a label or title printed on the disk