Re-recorder information (WinUAE 2.3.1+)

[Toni Wilen]

Re-recorder = combined input and state recorder.

- automatic (every n seconds) or manual ("Save state capture checkpoint" input event) in-memory state capture
- circular buffered multiple state capture checkpoints (note that each state capture takes as much RAM as one uncompressed normal statefile), use "Load current state capture" to return to previous checkpoint and "Load previous state capture checkpoint" to return to previous (if more than 0.5s) or to older (if less than 0.5s to previous checkpoint) check points.
- recording can be started from boot or you can use already existing statefile
- When saving recording (can be done as many times as needed), following files will be created:
* input file (*.inp) Note that currently this includes debugging data.
* startup statefile (*.uss) This gets automatically loaded when starting playback.
* all disk image(s) that were used during recording. Used automatically when playing back.
- during playback you can switch to recording mode any time by clicking "re-recording enabled" button (do not touch playback button). First state capture check point will be created automatically.
- playback is 100% cycle-exactly identical to recording. Even single emulated clock cycle difference will be reported and can cause desynchs! (Amiga's shared chip ram that makes this very difficult, even one incorrectly timed audio DMA fetch stealing single CPU cycle can mess up the timing completely)
- "automatic replay" = after state capture checkpoint restore playback is automatically enabled until joystick/keyboard activity is detected or in memory recording finishes.

Requirements:

MUST BE A500 most compatible (cycle-exact) Quickstart configuration.
Only following hardware configuration entries can be modified:
- chipset (ocs/ecs)
- number of disk drives
- memory size
- Kickstart ROM

This means no harddrives. Even unused or dismounted harddrive will mess up the timing.

- standard and extended adf supported (including all compressed variants).
- compatible ipf support requires 4.1 or newer library version (not yet released)

- Warp mode is safe to use.
- Most host GUI options can be changed while recording or playing. Changing input options may not be fully supported.
- ugly graphics garbage flash during state capture restore is normal
- ALWAYS START FROM SCRATCH by exiting and restarting emulator before enabling recording or playback!

EDIT: disable battery backup up clock option in adv. chipset panel (untick compatible, set "none" clock. DO NOT touch any other options), KS sets CIA initial values using battery backup clock values and timing calculations use muls and divs which have dynamic cycle usage depending on input values..

All other hardware settings MUST BE exactly same as in original Quickstart configuration.
(it may still work but you are on your own and you should keep your hands away from keyboard)

Input file most likely won't be compatible with newer emulator versions if there is even single cycle exact mode timing update.

and finally:

It took over a month to make this usable. It takes less than one second to move this to "unsupported stupid feature" category. Think about it before posting anything stupid. (I don't care about this feature, I was bribed to do this )

More non-technical information coming soon...

[MickJT]

Haven't tried it, but it sounds pretty awesome. Bribed hey? As in, money?

[drHirudo]

Hello,
I know this is very old feature and most probably abandoned, but is there any chance to update it with support for serial/MIDI re-recording?

I am trying to do some recordings with MIDI Out enabled (USB2.0-MIDI)

But when I try to Replay the recording, I get at the start the following error messages:

INPREC OFFSET=-219
Then
INPREC OFFSET=0

Or this has something to do with the interrupts generated by the serial port, which are not recorded?