Some info wanted about common trackloaders

Hi All,

I am the developer of the Minimig (http://home.hetnet.nl/~weeren001).
I have some questions about common trackloaders. Some people at Amiga.org suggested me to take a look here as there are still some old-school developers around here .

The problem I am facing is as follows; Minimig has a simple floppy emulator that basically monitors the diskregisters (dsklen,adkcon,dskpth/l etc). When disk dma is activated, an MFM encoded track is loaded from an ADF file into the Amiga memory at approximate real Amiga speed.
This works fine for a lot af games/disks but some games refuse to load correctly. The games affected are titles as Parasol stars, Rick Dangerous 1 and 2, most sensible software games etc. I must add that all of these games are cracked/trained versions.

The scenario of failure is usually as follows. The first few tracks are loaded normally, the software reads them only once with dsklen to such a large value, that every sector of the track is read.
Then, another type of trackloader kicks in that reads track multiple times with different dsklen values. It looks as if it is searching for some sector but can't find it. Sometimes it finds what it is looking for (but only after rereading a track for 10 times or so), other times ik keeps rereading the track.

Can anyone help me out here? For example with some descriptions/source code of the trackloaders used or some other tips?
I am really stuck

Dennis

[Toni Wilen]

I can check if you post CRC32's of the adfs that don't work. (too many different versions as usual..)

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Dennis

Hi All,

I am the developer of the Minimig (http://home.hetnet.nl/~weeren001).
I have some questions about common trackloaders. Some people at Amiga.org suggested me to take a look here as there are still some old-school developers around here .

The problem I am facing is as follows; Minimig has a simple floppy emulator that basically monitors the diskregisters (dsklen,adkcon,dskpth/l etc). When disk dma is activated, an MFM encoded track is loaded from an ADF file into the Amiga memory at approximate real Amiga speed.
This works fine for a lot af games/disks but some games refuse to load correctly. The games affected are titles as Parasol stars, Rick Dangerous 1 and 2, most sensible software games etc. I must add that all of these games are cracked/trained versions.

The scenario of failure is usually as follows. The first few tracks are loaded normally, the software reads them only once with dsklen to such a large value, that every sector of the track is read.
Then, another type of trackloader kicks in that reads track multiple times with different dsklen values. It looks as if it is searching for some sector but can't find it. Sometimes it finds what it is looking for (but only after rereading a track for 10 times or so), other times ik keeps rereading the track.

Can anyone help me out here? For example with some descriptions/source code of the trackloaders used or some other tips?
I am really stuck

Dennis

Parasol Stars, Rick Dangerous 1 & 2 use the Rob Northen Sector loader, and it sounds to me like the games themselves aren't setting up the correct DMA for the loader.

The reason I say this is because the RNC Sector loader is used on an absolute SHITLOAD of Amiga games, and in the case of cracked games, there would be absolutely no need to replace it to crack the game.

Does Minimig work on the following: Hook, Indy Heat, Rodland, Back to the Future 2.

These all use the RNC Sector loader.

[Toni Wilen]

At least RD2 loader loads in small pieces ("random" amount of words, 32+, not full track).

My guess is incorrect "disk" rotation position when next dma starts.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

At least RD2 loader loads in small pieces ("random" amount of words, 32+, not full track).

My guess is incorrect "disk" rotation position when next dma starts.

Smallest size the RNC loader will load is $200 bytes.

Have you tried it with another RNC loaded game that I've listed above Toni? I've always found it to be a very reliable loader.

The First Rick Dangerous one might be an early variant, but the rest of the games I listed should all be the final version loader.

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

At least RD2 loader loads in small pieces ("random" amount of words, 32+, not full track).

My guess is incorrect "disk" rotation position when next dma starts.

Thanks for the response!

I was also thinking along that way. Is the RN loader a "sector-loader" as opposed to a "track-loader"? If so, how does it know when to start DMA to load the right sector?

I have tried doing it the way Winfellow does; Winfellow increments the start sector every time a track is reread. This is the way the current Minimig trackloader works. But, a lot of games still fail on it.
I will dig up some crc's or pointers to failing ADF files.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by Dennis

Thanks for the response!

I was also thinking along that way. Is the RN loader a "sector-loader" as opposed to a "track-loader"? If so, how does it know when to start DMA to load the right sector?

I have tried doing it the way Winfellow does; Winfellow increments the start sector every time a track is reread. This is the way the current Minimig trackloader works. But, a lot of games still fail on it.
I will dig up some crc's or pointers to failing ADF files.

You need to emulate disk rotation properly. Think it as a "infinite" stream of bits instead of sectors. (some programs for example peek DSKBYTR and start DMA when DSKBYTR contains expected data.. The Deep is good example)