> Ian Collier wrote:
> > Does the Amstrad DSK format not cover this? (I don't actually
> > know anything about it, except that it is more complicated than
> > a straight dump of all the tracks on the disk.)
>
> I've not found any official docs for it but I've flicked through the
> comments in some ASM code that reads them, and it does seem to cover things
> like unformatted tracks, but I didn't see anything for non-512 byte sectors.
> I'll have a more thorough look for the format sometime. I'm not really up
> enough on snazzy disk protection methods to understand what's needed as I
> never bothered with them myself, so I'll have to have a play with some real
> disk.
>
> Can anyone recommend any demos or games that have use fairly non-standard
> disk formats?
I can only recommend not to do this!
If soomeone made a protection, he probably wanted us not to copy these
diskettes. I'm affraid about copyright laws.
In addition, it is very problematic to use nonstandard formats under
Win32. Also, some features of Sam's drive are not compatible with pc's
drive. it simply cannot handle sectors other than 4 statndard sizes.
Since Sam can physically hanle much more sector sizes, it is almost
unpossible to use protected disks on pc.
if we would copy these disks to an image, we would need a special software
for the regular sam. this is another complication.
(of course, i'm very pesimistic.)
> I might experiment to see if anything else can be trimmed down, but I think
> the video generation eats so much (especially when large portions of the
> screen change frequently) that it's not worth spending too much time on it!
Yes, e.g. ESI's demos which use double buffering are extremely slow
in emulator on 486's. but some other programs are pretty fast on the same
486.
fortunbately, the eulator is fast enough on pentium 133 (or 166...)
and better machines.
when tested win32 vevrsion on p2/233 w/64mb ram & winnt, it runs quite
slow in double size window. (20 fps+-)
but this is probably the problem of winnt. maybe.....
the dos version doesn't work on winnt (at least here), so i can't compare
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Aley [eili] Keprt - student, programmer (multimedia soft. etc.)
phone: +420-68-538 70 35
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** http://get.to/aley
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