HRTmon hard drive support
 

Hi,

I would like to get HRTmon working on my Amiga 1200 so that I can save game progress and then load it up later.

I have it installed and working fine with a level 7 interrupt switch.

I would like to configure it so that can save and load to and from my hard drive, is that possible?

yes but the problem is HRTMon isn't going to be able to perform perfect save states as it cannot snoop write-only $DFFxxx registers.

2 ways of saving to disk

- format your drive with FFS 512 or 1024 blocks (AFAIR). hard drive routines only support low level IDE write and FFS. No fancy SFS, PFS...
- run games under whdload. Then you can use whdload interface in hrtmon (alternate commands AFAIR ws, wl) which will work with all filesystems since whdload switches back to the OS to write to/read from disk

Thanks JOTD for the quick and informative reply :)

My setup up is SFS so guess I will have to go with the WHDLoad option which is better I suppose, didn't realise you could do that! Ace!

Is there a list of the WHDLoad commands anywhere? All I really need:

1. Create save directory location on hard drive
2. Save game to that location
3. Load game from that location

the hrtmon help includes whdload commands. You have to get the latest version available.

I don't think that you can create a directory. Create it beforehand. Then specify the path to it when using whdload load/save. I haven't used them in a while (winuae has a built-in monitor no need for hrtmon anymore) but it worked pretty well.

Thanks JOTD :)
I know WinUAE is excellent but I like to use real hardware

It would be nice if HRTmon could save to RAM or RAD instead of DF0.

@daxb well, actually you can. Using whdload, use AllocAbs on some fast mem, and use memocy copy command from hrtmon to this address area, quit whdload, grab the memory with hex editor and save to file (the process can be easily automated too)

I also like to use real hardware, but only to play (rare exceptions when investigating crashes happening only on real hardware like 68060 or CD32: running hrtmon on a CD32 is really a cool experience)

Thanks again Jotd, I have HRTmon version 2.22 but can't find any WHDLoad commands :/. It only detects DF0 although when I type IDE it picks up my drive then.

Is there a way to get a custom kickstart rom like with Action Replay III built in with 3.1? I have an action replay and works fine on my A500 but would like to save games to hard drive.

If I cant fix HRTmon and if I cant get a custom ROM I might have to buy an ACA500plus for my 500.

v2.22 is not the latest version of hrtmon. I have to check the one I have on my drive (at work now)

Wepl added the commands later. Check built-in version of hrtmon in winuae it has the commands already (but of course it's not possible to extract it). I'll zone my version when I'm home. Worked years with it and the w commands.

Latest HRTmon is available at the WHDLoad site :)
http://www.whdload.de/whdload/Tools/

ah yeah forgot the link. Definitely recommended :)

Thanks Zack and Jotd :D

Got it up and running but can't figure which commands I need to load and save game?
Also do you know which command I need to save to hard drive using WHDload, see photos:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Dly...ew?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10tT...ew?usp=sharing

wlm to load and wsm to save. ide isn't interesting as you can't bang into it because of SFS.

Ah ok thanks.
So if I made my hard drive FFS I would be able to use HRTmon to save to hard drive?

I used it like this a long time ago. But you have to use very standard FFS. I don't know the exact detail. 512 bytes per block is recommended. You have to try several settings before you succeed. Start with the basic setting.

Other partitions can be non FFS. But first partition must be FFS.

Ace thank you very much

I got the drive working :D

Although I can't work out how to save a file, what syntax do I use...

what is meant by "WSM name strt end" in the help, see screenshot here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FT0...ew?usp=sharing

Not sure what is meant by "strt" and "end"

if you can do CD on your drive it means it's probably supported so you don't need whdload commands. Just use standard load/save commands. plus whdload commands don't care about the current directory. It's been added because a lot of people didn't use ffs anymore.

Anyway, to save a file you need filename but also start and end addresses... how is the software supposed to know what to put in the file if you don't?

Ahhh ok so I need to enter, WSM, filename, start address, end address.

I just assumed that WSM worked like SA.

Basically at the point I interrupt the game I would like to save the game there and SA does this fine just using "SA filename". Although I think I'm right in saying that I can't use SA with WHDload and this method will only work with floppy games?

Is there a way to find the start and end address at the point of the interrupt? That way I can play and save games using WHDload?