Looking for hardware file loader and saver

[h0ffman]

It's increasingly looking like I'm going to need to kill the system to fit my metal gear port into an a500. There are some additional compression areas I can go down but I know I'm going to lose that with the other soundtracks I still need to write.

My current thoughts are I can do two builds, one hard drive and one from floppy for the 500 / low memory configs.

So I was wondering if anyone has a hardware based file load and save routine I could use. Obviously credit will be given.

[Galahad/FLT]

I would avoid using a hardware file load/save. Only one I can think of that does it natively is a Rob Northen one.

But I find they are not very reliable.

My advice would be to stick with a sector loader/save, and if you wanted it file loading/saving because you wanted to allow copying of save file between floppy and hard drive version, does write a quick AmigaDOS util that can do the extraction for the user.

When it comes to errors and the like, I just find one that dodges the system that saves to be problematic.

[alpine9000]

Celtic Heart contains hardware trackdisk routines for reading and writing:

http://server.owl.de/~frank/CelticHeart.lha (trackdisk.asm)

[a/b]

hrtmon (src/file.s). Should be on aminet but maybe there's is a newer version somewhere around (whload is using it as well as winuae).

[mcgeezer]

Ross’ ocean loader can load files from a dos file system with the system off.
It doesnt save though but may get part of what u need.

[ross]

Yep, version for DOS\0 or DOS\1 FS exists, easily configurable as to which CIA/Timer to use.
But no files saving...
Probably the simplest thing is to use a defined track, reserving the sectors in the bitmap and then write it entirely.

[Photon]

Macro/function MyLoadFile(name) with a flag to switch to track-loaded? Looks up sector start and length in a table from the name. Even with multiple disks it's really quite easy.

But I would wait until the game is near completion with final enough assets.

For OCS/1MB normally the OS ends up in slowmem or in case of chipmem-only machines, same amount of total memory left. Is it really that close to full 1MB RAM usage? Only ~7% is used by the OS.

[Angus]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

I would avoid using a hardware file load/save.

Hi Phill, sent you a pm a bit back, in case you missed it - quite understood if it's a "no". Cheers.

[h0ffman]

Ah OK. Not the greatest of ideas then. I'll hold fire for now on making a final decision until the last of the assets are in. I guess one option also is to use trackdisk.device as that'll be pretty safe and I could do that from boot block saving a few kb without completely killing the system.

[mr.spiv]

Originally Posted by ross

Probably the simplest thing is to use a defined track, reserving the sectors in the bitmap and then write it entirely.

Or use the free available sector label area

[ross]

Originally Posted by mr.spiv

Or use the free available sector label area

This reminds me of something