What is an .Wrp file and how to decompress it ?

[Maverick357]

Hello,

I have somes games that are in wrp format, with wich decompressor can i get it back to adf or usable files ?

[Codetapper]

Warp files are made with either MFMWarp or NOMADWarp.

MFMWarp is the much better product (both written by sceners, Ferox in 1995 and N.O.M.A.D. in 1992 respectively) and MFMWarp even handles NOMADWarp files. MFMWarp also compresses the data using the XPK libraries.

Unless you know what you are doing, the large majority of disks will not write back to floppy, or they will write back the wrong data/corrupt. This is due to the original holding more data on a track than your standard unmodified Amiga drive will allow you to write. Hence you get corruption.

The imaging page I wrote on the WHDLoad site has a lot more info and the tools you need there, but as I say, the number of games which will work after writing back to floppy is quite small. The Action site has more info and tools in the utilities section.

[Twistin'Ghost]

My guess is that he's talking about the warp files I put in the ADF Zone (for Codetapper...)

[Maverick357]

Twistin' Ghost:

Maybee well yes, now it sure that you have posted it here in the adf zone, i have look it
The files ares: Loopz, Plan9 2-3-4
I have downloaded in July so many files that i must sort now.
I can't remember where i got it.

I try to collect the must possible working classics game for my collection.
I like so much Amiga games, and some of it remember me good time.
I am not looking only for pirated (abandonware) games i have download free an public domain from Aminet.

So, no offence i hope


Codetapper:

I have understand what you have explain here and your page on whdload is very good too.

I think that is a format too complicated for me and then the games are useless (protected copy backup).

Thanks again

[Codetapper]

...and worse than that, Loopz and Harley Davidson are unreadable and you would never be able to HD install them from those files...

Most of the others will at least work (until you get stuck asking for a word from the manual) except for a few which have copy protection and whoever upped them didn't warp up the copy protected track...

[chip]

Old thread, but i need to add something

I also have more than 2000 wrp files and i tried to save some of them as ADF with Unwarp command

For what i saw till now, everything gone OK

Resulting ADF is working as expected

Why there should be problems with these kind of disks then ?

Am i missing something ?

[demoniac]

I have had no problems extracting warp using unwarp or various nibble warp programs. For nibble warp, I believe I used extended ADFs.

[zodiac]

Warp was used in the 80’s early scene. Not sure what Codetapper is talking about.

[jotd]

Codetapper means that warp files aren't able to clone all formats.

Of course if there's no protection MFMWarp will work, but so does DMS.

The only interest of MFMWarp is to image games that aren't DOS tracks but can be copied with xcopy nibble mode. For instance Zool, or a lot of other Gremlin games. And some formats, when hacked (RN 12 track) can also be warped. I think I saw a nibble copy of Unreal once too.

But MFMWarp isn't going to be able to write longtracks or protections (even if it could store longtracks so we can use that data in RawDIC, that I'm not sure). Same limitation goes for most "warpers".

[chip]

Thanks for the info jotd

Summarizing we can say there's no problem in using .wrp or .dms with non-protected disks ?

At least it seems so

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by chip

there's no problem in using .wrp or .dms with non-protected disks ?

Depends on your definition of "no problem". DMS is a quite bug ridden and I for one wouldn't use it for any disks that are important to me.

[chip]

What do you mean exactly ?

I never found "problems" using .DMS

They seems to work as expected

[StingRay]

Bugs in the compression algorithm, bugs in the verify algorithm and a lot more. Once you created a DMS archive of a disk and used the "test" option of DMS to make sure the written data is fine and then discover the resulting disk image once you write it back to disk is DIFFERENT to the original you'd never use DMS again!

These days there is no reason to use DMS anymore anyway.

[chip]

Thanks for clarification

The only thing i can say is that, from my experience, when i used some .DMS (converting back them to ADF) the resulting ADF was fine

I use always ADF-Workshop to check the content of a converted .DMS

So, at the moment, i never found a bugged .DMS it seems

At least, i never noticed something strange after the conversion

[jotd]

Ah forgot about this DMS stuff. Then you can use DIC from whdload package and compress the images with a non-buggy packer.

[AmigaHope]

Yeah DMS is a broken format. I'm not a big fan of ADF either though due to it being a straight dump with no built-in error detection, etc. or variable track formats, etc.

For regular AmigaDOS floppies though ADF + gz or xz is fine since you get the benefit of compression and error detection from the compressor. I wish more stuff had built-in xz support.

[jotd]

with some experience you know which ones will have copy protection and which ones won't. Heavily depends on the editor. But there are exceptions. Microprose games usually use document protection, but Gunship uses doc protection AND disk protection. Same for Lucasfilm or Sierra. Early games had disk protection. Others just have this awful VM protection that we hate (but crack anyway )