Random Gaming Thoughts

[BogusMeatFactory]

I blink and a game exploded all over the internet. Undertale? Huh? Anyone played it?

[BoneSnapDeez]

noise has. I will next time I do a big Steam purchase.

Seems like it's been pretty well-received, eh?

[noiseredux]

Yeam I am 3 or 4 hrs in.

[noiseredux]

stupid question, maybe. I bought the official Amiga Forever emulator. It's awesome btw. My question is: Does anyone know if I were to buy an Amiga game released on 3.5" floppy, could I use that on my Windows PC via USB floppy drive and play the game thru Amiga Forever?

Actually same question about C64 Forever and 3.5" C64 games...?

[BoneSnapDeez]

Good question. I dunno if a PC can read Amiga disks. I've never heard of anyone doing that.

Also, 3.5" C64 games - wut?!

[Exhuminator]

My question is: Does anyone know if I were to buy an Amiga game released on 3.5" floppy, could I use that on my Windows PC via USB floppy drive and play the game thru Amiga Forever?

http://www.amigaforever.com/kb/13-118

Actually same question about C64 Forever and 3.5" C64 games...?

http://dreamsteep.com/tutorials/general ... rmats.html


Obligatory:

[noiseredux]

so if I'm reading correctly, the Amiga floppies can work but only if I use some extra hardware to use an actual Amiga floppy drive?

The C64 link you posted is about 5.25" floppies, not 3.5". Still interesting though.

[Exhuminator]

so if I'm reading correctly, the Amiga floppies can work but only if I use some extra hardware to use an actual Amiga floppy drive?

That's how it looks to me too.

The C64 link you posted is about 5.25" floppies, not 3.5". Still interesting though.

Ah, so you're talking about using the 1581 type diskettes?

Unlike the cases of the 1541 and 1571, the low-level disk format used by the 1581 is similar enough to the MS-DOS format as the 1581 is built around a WD1770 FM/MFM floppy controller chip. PC floppy controllers directly connected via the ISA-bus or onboard, but not standalone USB floppy drives, are able to deal with the 1581 format without need for any special tricks. Thus, utilities to format, read, and write 1581-format disks in standard PC floppy drives under Linux and Microsoft Windows exist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_1581

So it seems the 1581 format is similar enough to the PC-DOS 720K format that using special "utilities" (probably emulation) a direct connect PC diskette drive could read the 1581 disks. The specifics of this are outside my scope of knowledge, but maybe one of these links could help:

http://www.root.org/~nate/c64/x1541.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20040609020 ... m/1581.txt

[noiseredux]

interesting stuff tho. So, perhaps, if I were to want to install an internal 3.5" using one of those pieces of hardware to read Amiga discs, it would also handle the C64 discs. Maybe.

I mean this is all kind of back-burner project thinking. Good ideas to look into on a snow day type stuff.

One thing I've never had luck finding is a full list of all games included on the retail Amiga/C64 forever DVD's. I bought the download versions which come w/ just a handful of games. There's also a 3 volume set of Amiga DVD collections on Amazon, but again, no full game list.

[Exhuminator]

if I were to want to install an internal 3.5" using one of those pieces of hardware to read Amiga discs, it would also handle the C64 discs

Maybe:

The Commodore Amiga computers used an 880 KB format (11×512-byte sectors per track, times 80 tracks, times two sides) on a 3½-inch floppy. Because the entire track is written at once, inter-sector gaps could be eliminated, saving space. The Amiga floppy controller was basic but much more flexible than the one on the PC: it was free of arbitrary format restrictions, encoding such as MFM and GCR could be done in software, and developers were able to create their own proprietary disc formats. Because of this, foreign formats such as the IBM PC-compatible could be handled with ease (by use of CrossDOS, which was included with later versions of AmigaOS). With the correct filesystem driver, an Amiga could theoretically read any arbitrary format on the 3½-inch floppy, including those recorded at a slightly different rotation rate. On the PC, however, there is no way to read an Amiga disk without special hardware, such as a CatWeasel, and a second floppy drive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_di ... 8-bit_line

The 1581 diskettes use MFM, and it looks like the Amiga drive supports that, but in a different format than the 1581 uses. Perhaps there is a custom driver however that makes it possible for an Amiga drive to read a 1581 disk by utilizing the correct MFM format.

As for the other way around though, it looks like the 1581 drive can't read Amiga disks:

Standard 3.5 double-sided double-density diskette. Formats to 800k, but able to operate read/write compatible with MS-DOS 720k Diskettes. Not compatible with MacIntosh and Amiga 880k Diskettes http://vice-emu.sourceforge.net/plain/drive_info.txt

One thing I've never had luck finding is a full list of all games included on the retail Amiga/C64 forever DVD's.

Yeah no luck finding that here either. I came across this at least:

http://www.amigaforever.com/kb/15-124