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Burglar
Registered: Dec 2004
Posts: 1031 |
X2016 Competitions: Your Input Wanted!
The 28th of october is still far away but getting closer and closer. The organizers have been getting busy and are now well underway to get everything sorted out for another smashing X!
Since entry delivery and running the compos at X14 went quite smooth and voting is now done in realtime, we believe we may have room for 1 or 2 more (small/fun) c64 competitions. Like a PETSCII compo or a 4k compo, or maybe you guys have an idea?
Or perhaps you think the straightforward demo/music/gfx compos are enough.
Let us know :) |
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Burglar
Registered: Dec 2004
Posts: 1031 |
lft, isnt it possible to just hook up the chameleon to the serial port? as a standalone emulated 1541? :) |
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Oswald
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 5017 |
1541u has standalone mode too, tho d64 selection blindly must be complicated :) |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11108 |
tape compo then. problem solved \o/ |
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Grue
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 146 |
Quote: lft, isnt it possible to just hook up the chameleon to the serial port? as a standalone emulated 1541? :)
Chameleon works very badly as external stand alone drive, it has serious timing problem on iec connector that makes some of the demos fail miserably. |
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Bitbreaker
Registered: Oct 2002
Posts: 500 |
Quoting Burglar
If only you loaderguys would only write loaders that don't have to be written by the same drive... That's really what causes all the real problems (crashes, delays, the need to copy with one drive only).
Don't forget, all current loaders run perfectly fine on 1541U and Chameleon, you can't say the same with real floppies and real drives.
I am on it :-) Just had more than 1100 successful reads without a single error on 2 other drives on a disk that was written on a a 3rd drive these days :-D @ X 14 the loader was still less tolerant, but the handed in disk worked fine on the censor and oxy setup, but failed on the compo setup :-D At least we always dared to run from real disk, despite the fails :-D Freezing for diskchange always bears the risk of crashes/fuckups when using NMIs, what we also dare to use in turn disk parts :-) |
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soci
Registered: Sep 2003
Posts: 473 |
I've just did a small research on the limited set of popular loaders I'm aware of. Mostly by reading the source code but also testing them by injecting random errors.
Result:
* Bitfire - OK
Does checksum and retries.
* Boozeload - Fail
No checksum, no retry. Junk in, junk out.
* Covertbitops - OK
Does a configurable number of retries, might fail if it's set too low.
* Dreamload - Fail
No checksum, no retry. Garbage in, garbage out.
* Krill - OK
Checksums, retries
* Spindle - OK
Checksums, retries
Any corrections are welcome.
Good to see that most still consider real world use. |
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Bitbreaker
Registered: Oct 2002
Posts: 500 |
Well, it is also about: write the disk on a floppy that spins with 298rpm and read it in on a floppy that spins with 302rpm. The tight timing in the sector read loops and sector header reading might fail consequently and force the loader to hang for ever/until retry count is reached. This is also a problem one needs to cope in real hardware land.
That said, i'm still for real hw use and so far it was no problem to request this on the compo, i'd just be happy to have a dry run on the hw next time :-D The whimps can of course till cry for 1541u :-D Not to forget that loading on real hw has way more jitter in loading times and sync has to be laid out with more margins around the loading. |
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MagerValp
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1055 |
Quoting BitbreakerFreezing for diskchange always bears the risk of crashes/fuckups when using NMIs, what we also dare to use in turn disk parts :-)
Freezing for disk change is never acceptable in a compo anyway, you need a two computer setup or standalone 1541U. |
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Mr.Ammo
Account closed
Registered: Oct 2002
Posts: 228 |
Quoting MagerValp
Freezing for disk change is never acceptable in a compo anyway, you need a two computer setup or standalone 1541U.
If Gideon will not deliver a stable 3.0 firmware with a configurable flip-the-disk button before X, we'll definitely consider using the spare compo machines as 'standalone' 1541Us next to bringing some more diskdrives. |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11108 |
Quote:Chameleon works very badly as external stand alone drive, it has serious timing problem on iec connector that makes some of the demos fail miserably.
thats a bit exaggerated - the timing difference to real drives is *less than one cycle* and no properly implemented loader will have a problem with it. in fact, its exactly one single loader that fails - you can easily see from socis list which one that is :o) (and this loader has problems on not-so-perfect real drives as well) |
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