Where can I find WHDLoad installed games ?

[orange]

IIRC, the SPS/CAPS team that makes .ipf said that you may send them your broken original floppies and get .ipf, that could solve your problem. Also, have you tried using some copy program to read several times bad tracks and make working backups?
Maybe someone could just send you track that is unreadable, dunno if that would violate the copyright..

[nasty]

@arkpandora

Whether your right or wrong! it is still the policy of Amiga.Org not to publish links to copyrighted material. So if there was such a site that offered only freeware then there would be no problem in giving you the link. But the games you have asked for to my knowlegde are still under copyright and therefore giving you a link to a site that contains these files, means that the person would be breaking the policy of this site. And Wayne has to look after the interests of the site before the need of members! Our personal views dont come into it. This is something you would need to take up with the copyright holder.

As for replacing your broken games you have afew options

1)ebay
2)amibench
3)Ask afew member if anyone has the required broken floppy disk (they may request so proof that you own the original e.g photo!)and they might send you an ADF from the orignal floppy
4)Place a WTB advert on the site!

But as for someone here giving you a link to the games, thats gonna be a no no!

[arkpandora]

Hi,

To Coldfish :

"People are still hypersensitive to piracy" : you're probably right.  Even when it's not about piracy, but on the contrary attempts to perpetuate works of art.  The music industry knows the problem very well... *sigh*

I tried WinUAE a few years ago, but it seemed awful to me, because it does (did ?) not include any software algorithm that could adapt the emulated screen refresh rate to the emulator's refresh rate.  Since no VGA refresh rate is an exact multiple of a PAL or NTSC refresh rate, animations can't be displayed normally : some original video signals are displayed more times than others.  Have current versions of WinUAE found a solution to this problem ?  It concerns every Amiga or C64 emulator I have tried.  Connecting the graphic card to a TV is not a solution, because its video signal is a conversion of the VGA signal, not a direct video signal.

To Orange :

Thanks, you are right, I learned that SPS can send IPF files to the owner even if the game has already been released.  I can do that for some games, but not all since my games have not all been released by the SPS (but some of my dumps have not been sent yet).  And not anyone can do that, since you have to depart from your original disks or own a 68020+ (etc.) Amiga in order to dump them before sending them to the SPS.  Anyway, not every IPF image can be used on a real Amiga with WHDLoad, and it can't be transferred back to a disk.  So this is not a solution to our problem.

Most copy-protected disks can't be copied nor read by any software copy-program.  I know that X-Copy sometimes succeeds in duplicating some copy-protections, but only in rare cases obviously, and whenever it does, the result is another - perishable - floppy.  So I'm afraid this is not a solution either.

Trying to share floppy disks tracks between copy-protected disks and between game players who haven't any technical knowledge, when the whole HD-installed package is available on the Web, is absurd, isn't it ?

To Nasty :

Well, I guess I have now understood that giving a link to copyrighted material is against the policy of Amiga.org.  But my thread was not more about my needs than about the needs of any Amiga games owner, hence the interests of the Amiga community, hence the interests of this site.  Moreover, the purpose of this policy is to protect copyright ; and the purpose of copyright is to avoid piracy.  Yet, if one doesn't have the opportunity to find a replacement copy of a game he owns, or the opportunity to test a game he can't find for sale, piracy is his only solution.  And as I said in my previous post through my "third kind of people", in this particular situation (unavailable or unusable games), there is no point in avoiding piracy.  So in this situation, I think that this policy is not justified, and is harmful in the eyes of the artists, who are the finality of copyrights.

I agree this would have to be discussed with the copyright holder too, but I won't discuss with every copyright owner, and anyway I doubt he will be more receptive than you or Amiga.org's policy can be...

As I explained, any solution that implies finding another old copy of the same age is not a solution to our problem since numerous games can't be found anymore, and anyway not one will still be in working order in a short while.

You'll understand that my aim now is not to have my initial question answered, but to find a solution to the problem this Amiga.org policy has raised.

[coldfish]

I dont know exactly what caused the framedrop youre talking about with WinUAE, it could be a lot of things including what you noted.

With a relatively fast PC (1Ghz+) you'll have none of these issues once WinUAE is setup right.   I run WinUAE on several machines, it does get a bit choppy on my P3-600 laptop, with demanding games, esp with sound emulation on 100%.  

On my 1gig HTPC the same game runs fine using exactly the same settings and ver of WinUAE.  Through a TV and with some output (TVtool) tweaking for screen size/refresh ect, its really very good for the occasional bout of Amiga nostalgia.  Better than the hit-and-miss-compatability-struggle that was my real A1200.

[skilgannon]

email me at John@jmcdonline.com - I pretty much have them all.

J

[arkpandora]

Hi,

To Coldfish :

Is WinUAE's quality of the animation really like on a real Amiga ?  Scrollings, or the mouse pointer movement (in the Amiga native screen modes) for example, are they absolutely perfect, without jumps ?

The problem I am talking about is not a framedrop : every frame is displayed.  It is not a problem of emulation quality or speed, but a limitation of any modern computer, since all of them use different screen refresh rates than the original video screens.

Let me take an example.  You are emulating an Amiga default PAL screen, whose original refresh rate is 50.12 Hz, on your WinUAE using a 120 Hz (for example) screen mode on your PC monitor.  It means that the emulated screen (the Amiga) displays 50.12 frames a second, whereas the emulator screen (the screen mode you use on your PC) displays 120 frames a second.  A condition of the Amiga's quality of animation is that the frame rate of the animation is adapted to the screen refresh rate.  A graphic object that makes a one pixel move 50.12 times a second is an example of a perfect animation on a 50.12 Hz screen, since the computer makes the same move on every monitor signal.  If the display's refresh rate is an exact multiple of 50.12 Hz (for example 100.24 or 150.36 Hz), this animation remains perfect : the only difference is that every state of the move is displayed more than one time (two times in 100.24 Hz, three times in 150.36 Hz).  But every state of the move is still displayed the same number of times.  Now, if your screen's refresh rate is not an exact multiple of 50.12, every state of the move will _not_ be displayed the same number of times.  In our example, a PC screen of 120 Hz, some states of the move will be displayed two times, some others three times.  The result is that your animation is not smooth anymore : it slows down when a state of the animation is displayed three times, and speeds up again while the following states are displayed two times, making animations look like epileptic.  To my knowledge, there isn't any VGA refresh rate that is an exact multiple of the PAL or NTSC refresh rate, so that displaying a good Amiga animation on a PC is impossible (a Commodore 64 emulator for example will suffer the same problem).  Unless some software comes in between the emulator's output and the video output, which rescales the emulated refresh rate in order to adapt it to the PC refresh rate.  This would involve some graphic "anti-aliasing" techniques that would create an illusion of continuity by drawing on each VGA signal what the user would see at the same moment on a real Amiga video screen.  At the same moment, that is between two frames of the original signal, so this software would have to know the following step of the animation in order to display one in the appropriate way, so that such a software must be added to the code of the emulated machine.  Being not a coder, I can't be sure of that, but it seems to be a difficult task.  Not to mention that it needs a good knowledge of the human visual sense and perception.

I have just tried out the latest WinUAE : on my Windows 98 Pentium 3 at 500 MHz, as expected the problem shows itself.  If it doesn't manifest itself on your faster PC, then it could mean that WinUAE does include such an aglorithm and needs a certain power in order to run it.  However, I did not find any mention of such a function in the docs.  The only thing I find is a function called "Vsync", which for PAL involves selecting a 50 or 100 Hz refresh rate.  I don't what this produces, and can't test it because it doesn't work on Windows 98.  But this function seems to be more simple than what is required, and is about skipping frames, not scaling animations, so I doubt it solves the problem, nor if it is the purpose.

Any opinion about this mystery is very welcome.


To Skilgannon :

Thanks for for the help !  I have just e-mailed you.

[orange]

hmm.. would using TV-out  solve the problem?

[arkpandora]

Unfortunately not (it's even worse !), probably because the TV-Out signal is a conversion of the VGA signal, not a direct video signal.

Maybe emulating an Amiga on an XBox or another console would give better results than UAE, but I don't know if such an emulator exists as I don't have any modern console.

[c64_d0c]

jesus christ all this crap talk about copyrigth on software that are 10-20 years old. for godsake give the man some games so he can enjoy his 20 year old amiga.... or isnt people here intrested in people using the "uber machine"... if the copyrigth holder dont want you do play his old games, then its his job to uphold the copyrigth not people here at a.org.. and for what i have seen there are 100000 sites out there that offer these old amiga games and they dont hide it either, guess what the copyrigth dont care, its as simple as that... its about bloody time people grow up and start focusing on the amiga4.0 and its future than 20 years old games...
________
SHIP SALE

[arkpandora]

Well, mind you don't mix up copyright defence and policy application.  After all, that's what this thread is about ; not mixing human and machine.

Well, I don't like your avatar.

[Piru]

@arkpandora

The obvious solution is to adjust the emulation timing to match the exact video frequency (50.12 for example). The difference is so insignificant you can't spot it, and timing is perfect then.

[_ThEcRoW]

@TjLazer

What has eab to do with a.org?

[coldfish]

What Piru said.

Basically, both the real Amiga and the emulated Amiga are rendering frames in an animation.

There's a lot of ways to get around the difference.  One way I can think of is to tweak the emulation clockspeed (which is what I think Piru is talking about?

The emulated machine renders its frames at a speed that is in sync with its hosts output display signal.  The real Amiga might draw 50.12 frames per second and the emulation host machine might output 50fps, so the emulated Amiga system will be clocked slightly slower 50/50.12=0.998. Therefore the emulated animation plays 0.998 speed of the original.  Does that sound like BS or not?

Its academic though as most modern video cards can output a huge variety refresh rates, Windows doesnt let you tweak them by default, you have to try something like Powerstrip or TVtool.

I really dont know how it works, but I can assure you on a 1gig machine with XP WinUAE runs fine.  I just fiddle and tweak until it works without noticable glitches.

Hope this helps?

[arkpandora]

Thanks Coldfish and Piru for your help.

But the newbie in me is getting confused.

Is there a real difference between the original Amiga's 50.12 fps rate and the WinUAE-emulated Amiga's 50 fps rate, or is the latter simply rounded down in WinUAE's texts (docs and menu) to make it clear ?

If there is a difference, then how do you change WinUAE's timing in order to display perfect animations on a PAL TV, which displays 50.12 Hz (or 100.24 Hz) and not exactly 50 Hz (or 100 Hz) ?

If there is no difference, then I assume that external tools like TVTool are enough to go round the Windows or graphics rate refresh rate, and display the emulated 50 Hz Amiga directly on a PAL TV.  As I have not used external tools yet, this is the problem I have not managed to solve until now.  For example, CCS64 (the Commodore 64 emulator I use) emulates a PAL C64's exact 50.12 HZ clock, but animation on a 50 Hz TV is much worse than on a 100 Hz VGA screen mode.  Now, how can WinUAE be configured in order to display 60 fps instead of 50 on my 60 Hz LCD monitor ?  I am trying to adjust the timing levels I find in the Properties menu, but it doesn't change anything.  Here too it's possible that Windows is a bad intermediary that prevents the 60 fps from being displayed directly to the 60 Hz monitor ; I don't know.  There is also a "FPS adj." level that matches the Amiga frequency, but obviously it doesn't change the timing, just adds or skips frames.

"Found life a lot simpler with WinUAE", eh ?

[coldfish]

Re: WinUAE timing and stuff - I dont know.  Piru?

Try it with:
-sound emulation disabled
-frameskipping to every frame, then every second frame.
-Drive speed 100%
-CPU: match A500 speed

Any change?

-An older version; 0.8.8 - I think was the fastest and most feature filled for older machines?

But Yeah, WinUAE can be a pain to set up.  When I built my HTPC there was no rush, so I just picked away at it when I felt the urge.  

(As a side note) - I guess thats why a lot of people like their Amigas more than their work PCs, the PC is for important/time critical stuff whereas the Amiga is for hobby work/games so you never associate it with the stress and frustration that comes with a machine that is being buggy when you need it to work?

[leirbag28]

@arkpandora

 I want to commend you on that EXCELLENT explanation of the crappy Animation epileptic seizure crap that WinUAE displays..............utterly makes WinUAE useless for me as a Total Amiga replacement.

 You see I once considered taking a laptop with WinUAE instaed of lugging my real Amiga and all its parts to the night clubs where I did VJaying.............but the animation looked like pure 100% Caca!.........but the funny thing is that other VJ's who were using PC laptops and were using Windows applications to do there visuals had the same Animation cracking epiliptic crap problem........and it was all because we all had to be connected to a Projector via S-Video and I guess their PC's couldnt handle the output realistically..............the Mac users seemed to do fine most of the time...and some PC did well also. I suspect there are Gfx cards out there that will get it right..............Possibly the ATI ALL-IN-WONDER Pro.......they know a little something about Video Output.  But thats one of the cards I tried it with and couldnt get the animations to look right.......although I did use the scan line effect which looks lovely and like a real Amiga, but the animations ran with that bad epileptic crap going on.......................

ontop of that the Mouse movement in WinUAE is awful....I still cant get used to it. Some people probably dont notice it.

 I know the Refresh or epileptic thingy going on can be fixed or displayed properly somehow if there is a proper S-Video output card.

 I thought I was alone on this.................now I know im not...........................PC's suck for Video most of the time.