Exe loads faster than disk ..... why ?

[chip]

Hi guys

Just noticed this a lot of times, but never thinked to ask why this happens

So, here we go

I have a disk with exe inside that is launched by a simple startup-sequence

Then i extracted the same exe

I tried to launch both the disk and the exe itself and difference in speed is evident

The exe loads faster than disk, even if the disk is simply .... the exe !

So, why this happens ?

Thanks in advance, chip

[Solo Kazuki]

Transfer? I suppose You mean floppy as disk? Where You copy exe? to HD or RAM? Floppy is always slower than HD or RAM, even on emulator as image. If You haven't sound of floppy drive enabled just turn it on for a while, You should see (or rather hear) that floppy emulation is almost as reading from real floppy disk.

[chip]

Yes, for disk i mean floppy disk

The exe is extracted from the disk image to my hd and then simply loaded with WinUAE

[Toni Wilen]

Because exe does not care about floppy accuracy/timing, it automatically enables turbo floppy speed.

[chip]

Ahh, that make sense .... thanks

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by chip

Ahh, that make sense .... thanks

What tool do you use to extract the .exes from the .adfs? I'd like to do the same thing, too.

[chip]

Hi Foebane

I use ADF-Workshop

You can find it in the TOSEC site ..... really useful tool

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by chip

Hi Foebane

I use ADF-Workshop

You can find it in the TOSEC site ..... really useful tool

Yes, I use it already.

[chip]

To search for exes you must hex-edit the files

Indeed you can't trust of the extension, this can be missing or different from .exe

You must view the first 4 bytes of the file

An Amiga exe always start with "00 00 03 F3"

Good ripping

[chip]

Just and additional info

Please note that sometimes exes are deleted from the disk

But luckily ADF-Workshop is able to extract those also

[Foebane]

Sorry, Chip, I've examined several ADF files in the Workshop, but I think there's a reason why most of them are ADFs in the first place, as most of the older Amiga demos I have are trackmos and so are tied directly into the ADF disk structure, and load more data in every now and then with the timing fitting the demo content, or close to that.

I figured that extracting EXEs from ADFs would be like doing so from LHAs, but it's turning out not to be the case, IMHO. As I said before, many demos are multiple files, not to mention support files and C and S folders with scripts and commands, and it just seems like breaking a demo, ripping something like that apart.

As for disk loading, I find that the waiting time is not as bad as I thought, and as I said, most demos designed for disk will load a small part in at the start and load more while that's running, so there's always something to see. The term trackmo is the key.

I think I'll leave the ADFs alone but carry on what I've done with LHAs. But I will immediately convert any DMSs I see into ADFs.

[DamienD]

Thread moved as this is clearly not a support.WinUAE issue...

[Tomislav]

Yes, there are trakmos which are trackloaded and most of them (if not all) are loading at absolute addresses.

Also there are some demos that are loaded by Amiga DOS filesystem but needs to be loaded with specific condition, like one drive (DF0: only), chip only, KickStart 1.2 only, ... Most of them (if not all) are loading at absolute address in memory.

Those KickStart x.x only demos are made that they use direct calling of function in KickStart ROM. If, for example, it calls directly KS1.2 functions, same functions are on different address in other KSs and it will call wrong code in other KSs than KS1.2 and thus will crash. I think that those are rare demos/intros.

You know that you can speedup floppy disk loading in WinUAE. But remember that some programs which depends on timing won't work or just partially work. In "Floppy Drives" exists section "Floppy Drive Emulation Speed". On the right is acceleration up to 800% and on the left is "Turbo" mode. Just remember that some things won't work with floppy speedup or they will work maybe with lower disk speedup.

There are some demos (and maybe some games) which uses floppy as sound device. For those don't use floppy speedup.

[chip]

Hey guys, you probably misunderstood my reasoning, i think

I'm not talking of the NODOS disks which are continously loaded

I'm talking ONLY of the disks which contain a SINGLE exe which is launched by the disk at his startup

As simple as that

In this condition, you are not going to break anything of the demo if you rip the exe

Of course, if a text is written before the demo, you will lose that

So, if you consider it part of the demo, you of course can keep the ADF as it is

But demo works the same, no difference at all

I know what i'm talking about since my collection contains more than 7.000 files and i extracted A LOT of exes from disk

No problem at all

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by chip

Hey guys, you probably misunderstood my reasoning, i think

I'm not talking of the NODOS disks which are continously loaded

I'm talking ONLY of the disks which contain a SINGLE exe which is launched by the disk at his startup

As simple as that

In this condition, you are not going to break anything of the demo if you rip the exe

Of course, if a text is written before the demo, you will lose that

So, if you consider it part of the demo, you of course can keep the ADF as it is

But demo works the same, no difference at all

I know what i'm talking about since my collection contains more than 7.000 files and i extracted A LOT of exes from disk

No problem at all

Fair enough.

So if I drag and drop an ADF file into Workbench and DF0:NDOS comes up, I leave it as it is, but anything else, rip it?

[chip]

Sure, if it is NODOS disk you leave it as it is, right

Otherwise you must see if it is a SINGLE exe file

This because on the disks there could be also other external data files

You must check it by eye

With the experience you easily will recognize single exe files from multi files demos

Anyway, just to be clear, i prefer rip the exe for a reason, not for personal pleasure

Indeed in this way i get a file of some KBs against a fixed file size of 880 KB

If you multiply this for thousands of files you will save a lot of space in your collection