Writing IPF
#1
So Jeff updated the HxC floppy emulator software, and it can now convert IPF to SCP. He has informed me that it will not yet work with weak/flakey bits, but should work for most others.

I have tried it with success on the following games (convert to SCP, write to physical floppy, then test in a real Amiga 500):

Dungeon Master v3.6 (unprotected ADOS disk)
Turrican II (long tracks)
Project X (Copylock)
Xenon 2 (Copylock + PDOS?)
Mortal Kombat II (Copylock + PDOS)

The only one I had any trouble with was MK2, which seemed to be picky about the disk I wrote it to. The others worked just fine. This one also seemed to write to floppy about 2x as fast as the others, even though the image had 2 revolutions in it, like the others. Any idea why?
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#2
Nice! So, now all of those Amiga ipf files can be written to disk!

These are all probably index'd disks, right? If so, I will make an option when you select OVERRIDE file to select Blind/Non-Blind. Right now, all images that are multiple revolutions always go through the routine to determine the write splice. Since Jeff is always spooling two revolutions, this would be a way to make writing faster (if the disk really was index'd to begin with).

The MKII write speed could be because it found the write splice immediately at the start of the 2nd revolution.

Where is the new version of the converter located?
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#3
I believe they are, but I didn't check them too carefully. I suppose it's also possible that they weren't previously aligned to index, but the conversion to scp routine aligned them.

You can get the latest beta of the software here. If you are using it to read ipf images, I believe you also need the 32-bit capsimg.dll in the same directory.
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#4
Hey Jeff, if you are reading this - please don't open my driver when you open the HxC emulator. Smile You can't run SCP at the same time as your emulator!
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#5
But what about converting SCP into IPF? Seems Gotek and HxC drives can read IPF images but not SCP images. So converting to IPF would be very nice to be able to do. Thought it was what this thread was about. I did not even consider it would be a problem getting IPF files onto a disk, but that is also nice to know that it can be done.
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#6
You can convert SCP images to .hfe and use those with the HxC and Gotek drives.
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#7
Nice, good to know. Thanks for the info.
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#8
Keir Fraser's disk-analyse utility can also convert from SCP to IPF. A nice effect of converting with his utility is that you can specify the game name on the command line, and, if known, it will actually decode the data from the flux stream when storing into IPF, along with some verification (eg. it told me that one of my tracks on The Killing Game Show was shorter than it expected it to be, likely this is a high score track). Then if you convert that IPF back to an SCP image, the resulting flux generation is perfect.
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#9
Ah, I didn't know he got that implemented!
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