WHDLoad saving problem

[koshman]

Hi,
I have a problem with saving games in WHDload.I'm sorry if this has been already discussed, but I haven't been able to find the problem described anywhere.
Some games (UFO, SSI Gold Box - Pool of Radiance etc.) run okay, but when I try to save position it behaves strangely - the screen goes dark and then the game screen blinks back for a split second every ~5 seconds and this repeats for a minute or so - 5 seconds of dark screen, game screen blinks back, and immediately another 5 seconds of nothing over and over again. After the minute or more the game returns back to normal, the position is successfully saved and I can continue playing. I'm sure this behaviour is not standard or intended, waiting for a minute or two whenever I want to save is quite tiring. Am I doing something wrong?
My configuration is stock A4000 with A3640, 16MB RAM, CF card as a HDD and registered WHDload 16.8. I don't have any other problems with WHDLoad, e.g. instability or crashes, everything works fine.
Thanks.

[Matt_H]

That's normal. I think they call it an OS swap. I don't know the technical reason for it, but there is one. Ask the author of the install if there's anything that can be done  - I recall seeing entries in changelogs to that effect.

[countzero]

I'm sure this behaviour is not standard or intended, waiting for a minute or two whenever I want to save is quite tiring.

it's standard and intended. Your games can't access your HDD natively. WHDload scans their output and puts it into somekind of buffer. Then is switches to OS (to gain access to HDD) and write the buffer contents to HDD.

try running the games from ram:. at least it makes the writing go much faster.:afro:

[koshman]

Oh, thanks, who would've thought Is it because the games expect saving to a save game disk and not HDD?

[Vairn]

Yup, it is the same reason games have the preload flag, otherwise you would get the same effect when it tries to read data from the harddisk. Flashy flash flash.  therefore, we tell it to load all game data into memory first.

[mailman]

Good thing is that when the save file is being overwritten there are no OS swaps. In that situation a "real" file saving occurs after quitting the game.

[koshman]

Well, that would be nice, but unfortunately in my case (Pool of Radiance) the swapping still occurs even when I'm overwriting a previously saved game. Any ideas why it's so?

[Matt_H]

That's just the way it is, unfortunately. The author of the install might be able to optimize, but I don't think there's anything that can be done from the user side.