Where can I find WHDLoad installed games ?

[coldfish]

@arkpandora:

I can sympathise, I had an A1200 with loads of WHD installs and loads of originals on floppy, then my HD died.  No problem, reinstall a fresh Workbench, or so I thought....  When 10-20% of your original floppies are corrupted, and your backups randomly show read errors, what can you do?  

Most people here, fail to accept that Amiga floppies (and floppy drives) are looong past their shelf lifes and are virtually irreplacable.  And people are still hypersensitive to piracy, 10 years after its a moot point with the Amiga.  In many countries, if the host hardware is no longer in production/marketed then the software falls into a grey area in terms of the legality of duplication for private use.

Personally, I found life a lot simpler with WinUAE, and soon made that my primary Amiga source.  I havent touched a floppydisk since.

Screw WHDload!

[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.

[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?

[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?

[coldfish]

Ah well, It sounds like WinUAE doesnt want to play with you.

My HTPC is a Gf2-GTS-vivo & AMD Duron 1Ghz running XPpro and TVtool.  The Gfx card is modified to output Scart-RGB for connection to a TV or Projector.

I think TVtool tweaks the output signal to true PAL/NTSC?  I use NTSC because thats the native resolution of the projector I have and I get a pixel:pixel fit which looks nice and sharp.

I do remember noticing some issues back when I first setup this thing, but after all the tweakings and fooling about with it, I cant remember specifically what fixed it? Maybe it was simply TVtool or maybe it has something to do with my gfx card?

Sorry I cant help.

[coldfish]

VIVO, just means Video-In Video-Out, its a capture card and TV-out in one.  I got it for $7 (used) for the video-in feature, so I can record TV to the hardrive.

I didnt build this system with WinUAE in mind, I built it as a HTPC with some emulators, MAME and NeoRage ect, in the process of getting those to display nicely I discovered Tvtool which also got WinUAE to display better.

I just like tinkering with computers, I started on the C64 worked up through Amiga and now PC's, I dont get too attached to the hardware or spend a lot money, because eventually I do something wrong and it ends up in the bin.

Ooops!  :-D

My next project is a handheld PC based on nanoITX and a 7" touchscreen, it'll be cool and have an in-car mount with GPS.  I just have to wait for the mobo price to drop a bit more...

[coldfish]

arkpandora wrote:
Is the TV-in of your GF2 card a factory feature, or a do-it-yourself ?  Would it be possible that your TV-out is different from the standard TV-out of any other GF2 ?
...

Its a bog standard ASUS-7700/Vivo... something.

The main reason I used this card, is because it has a Chrontel TV-out chip, on which you can do a very simple hack to get Scart/RGB out, (my 5" LCD only has Scart/RGB in).  TVtool tells the card to output RGB instead of the usual Composite/S-video.

When I plug it into a VGA monitor or TV, WinUAE performs just the same, so my hack isnt doing anything special.  TVtool fixes the refresh rate to true PAL/NTSC with overscan ect.  The nVidia drivers dont allow for much signal tweaking and have only recently improved the tv-out functions.  Unfortunately, on newer cards the TV logic is integrated into the GPU so you cant hardware hack much.

Tinkering is a learning process, its fun if youre not too worried about breaking things. :-D