My experience trying to copy ALIEN BREED originals
#1
Hi ! I'm new to the forum, this is my first post. Just put my hands on one of these marvelous SuperCard pro cards and started to do damages Smile

My current configuration is:
- SCP (of course) 0.7 firmware 1.1 HW
- SCP Software 1.0
- SFD321-B REV T5 (but I tried also an ALPS DF354H911C. Both of the drives do have the "low density" switch

I attempted to obtain a backup copy of my original beloved Alien Breed diskset (first release the one with two game floppies and the story disk). No way. Tried blind mode and no-blind mode, tried copy to image (.scp) and then image to disk and also from original disk to target disk. The copy seems to work in a real AMIGA, Disk 1 is loaded and then AMIGA asks for disk 2 but then, when loading disk 2, any kind of strange things happen.. strange noises instead of the music, black background instead of the battlefield.. and then the "Guru" comes to visit me. On the contrary i tried to use the .IPF files provided by Team 17, translated to .SCP using HxC software, copied to real disks using SuperCard Pro, this way everything works perfectly ! It seems the firmware part that reads has still some flaws or I'm making something wrong trying to copy the disks... Of course the originals are working beautifully good when I try them into the AMIGA..

Any suggestion? What am I doing wrong?

Note: did not change any of the Settings in "Drive Settings" menĂ¹ - Disk Type set to "Amiga" - used 0 to 82 tracks both when reading and when writing.
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#2
Does disk 2 created with the .ipf->.scp image work after disk 1 created with SCP has been loaded?

Send me the disk images you made using SCP (copied with blind mode off) to: data@cbmstuff.com and I can look at the data. Unless the disk is dirty or drive head is dirty you can't have a bad read. It's more likely the disk was not written with the index. .ipf files completely change the original disk, moving the track start to the beginning of the data so it is not just like the original.
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#3
Quote:Does disk 2 created with the .ipf->.scp image work after disk 1 created with SCP has been loaded?
did not try this.. yet.. will try partial situations where disk 1 comes from .ipf and disk 2 is copied and vice-versa.. let's see what happens..

Quote: Unless the disk is dirty or drive head is dirty you can't have a bad read
but I would not say that disks are dirty or heads are dirty/misaligned because I did several attempts with both disks created from converted ipf's and disks copied.. the result has been always consistent-> .ipf ok, copied disks not working.. I also loaded originals at least three times-> not a single fault

Quote: It's more likely the disk was not written with the index. .ipf files completely change the original disk, moving the track start to the beginning of the data so it is not just like the original.
this could be.. anyway the originals are really.. originals.. boxed and genuine 100%..
we badly need the section of code to copy these no-index disks in SCP Big Grin

will send you the .scp after my tests. If you have an FTP server that would help a lot, files are huge and by email takes ages to send them
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#4
Sent you all the images blind/noblind of both the disks. I did additional testing and.. surprise suprise this is the result

DISK1 ........DISK2 .........Result
Noblind.......Blind..........Works perfectly fine
Blind..........Blind..........Works perfectly fine
Blind..........IPF............Works perfectly fine
Blind..........Non Blind....Works perfectly fine
IPF............IPF............Works perfectly fine
IPF............Non Blind....Works perfectly Fine
IPF............Blind..........Works perfectly Fine

So either I did a mistake or it was actually a misalignment.. no way.. I tried several times and it was NOT working for sure with both blind-blind and noblind-noblind..
However I sent you the images so you should be able to see whether they're correct or not.

My next question is: I did not receive any error when I created my previous images (the ones that did not work).. how can I be sure (without testing one by one the disks) that my dumps are ok? Is the process 100% secure ? Or we can safely say that in my case the misalignment was only between the drive I used to master the disks and my AMIGA drive?
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#5
Copied also Ballistix (PSYCLAPSE/PSYGNOSYS 1989) in no-blind mode (can we call it: indexed mode?).. worked perfectly ;-)
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#6
There is currently no way to verify the flux image. So, why does it work now when it didn't before? Well, it could be that you had some dirt on the head or disk and it was knocked off. You might also have had a destination floppy that had a "film" over it. I have found many cases where a disk won't work for writing the first time, but after reading it a few times it suddenly works! The reading move the debris off of the surface of the disk. Cleaning the destination disk can also fix this. If you use the new Drive/Disk utilities you can test the destination disk to make sure it is good before writing to it.
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#7
blind mode is indexed, non-blind mode is not.
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#8
Quote:blind mode is indexed, non-blind mode is not.
I missed a "not" in the sentence.. however that was the idea..
this "blind" is a bit meaningless, at least to my ears..
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#9
Yes, mine too. This is what the Kryoflux people were calling my method of copying, but I will be changing the names to what I used back in the 80's. Blind will become INDEX, non-blind will become SPLICE.
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#10
(02-04-2014, 04:51 PM)admin Wrote: Yes, mine too. This is what the Kryoflux people were calling my method of copying,
no. "blind copy" does not refer to the index at all. it refers to simply reading and writing the flux data without any verification, and the problems connected to it. using the index has always been "using the index".
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