Compatibility tests: Result with the latest version

[PARALAX]

[Sorry about possible translation mistakes. I was to lazy to re-write my posting from A1K-Forum, so I used Google Translator and try to correct some parts of the text]

My big HxC compatibility test on the A500 has ended and my overall verdict is: It's awesome!

Pure Amiga DOS disks that do not have a Fastloader I have not incidentally tested because they must work because of the perpetuated in Kickstart Amiga DOS loader (eg, Zak McKracken , Monkey Iceland , Cruise for a Corpse , Space Quest III , etc.) . However Amiga DOS disks were included with Fast loaders and also tested (eg, Dogs of War, Z -Out, Wings of Death , etc.). By this I mean of course the cracked versions .

Also the already mentioned here, "Captain Dynamo" I have tested both the cracked , and in the ungecrackten not IPF version and had no problems loading the game. Also, the demo "Voyage" by "Razor 1911". It works without problems for me until track 65, then the screen went black while the music continues. However, this is probably because the demo itself also acted as WinUAE here .

Unfortunately there are also some exceptions to the demos :

Anarchy - Deja Vu - Demo loads some time and breaks after the first "Decrunching" break with the message "Illegal exception". The demo is even not working from a real drive every time. But I wasn't able to boot it with HcX once a time at least.

http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=5860


Raytraced Dreams 2 - Crash of both the HxC including original disc on both of my A500's. Strangely, the demo runs but with exactly the same config on WinUAE. One can not therefore ascribe to the drive or the HxC.

http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=54442


Sanity - World of Commodore - The most obvious candidate of all the things that have been tested. This demo ran from two A500'er each with a Chinon FB -354 without any problems. But on the HxC I was not able to got it work. Here, the drive behaves after the onset of the fast loader so that it stops right at the first or second track. Taking the disk or the SD card from the drive and plugged it in again, it loads another track and then stops again. Perhaps this can be fixed with a firmware update (something like that I've found in another contribution to the "Voyage" demo, which , however, was fine for me) .

http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=2938


Overall, I tested an estimated 100-200 games and 30-50 demos, which of course only a small part of whose matches what it is but I would say that it's all been among the most best and most popular titles ... anyway are it is my personal favorite. Others are responsible here for the rest and I think that here a large part, if not already taken as well as all owners of different HxC together .

Anyway, I 'm going to order me two pieces of it, one for the A500 and the A1200 . I only wish that even the write reliability for Extended ADF 's will in the future improved, because there are a few exceptions : Pinball Fantasies (high score is not saved correctly) , The Games - Summer Edition (game saves on track 80, which the HxC can not save in the custom format), Turrican 1 (IPF) . Turrican II, however, saves the highscore correct (IPF) . I think that's also because the timer problem plays an important role, which is responsible for the Verify Error in nearly all copy programs. I think that in the future you could possibly get a firmware update to handle and to make "Cycle exact", as it is also the WinUAE. A 100% IPF support would also be nice but I also can live without that.

Also, I 've already contacted Jeff for the purpose of a few proposals to transfer software. That reminds me , setting the write flag is (which is already supported by the HFE 's) the most important option, since I would basically like to operate all the disk 's read-only, with some exceptions. Currently this is only possible for all HFE 's on the SD card via SD write protection on the Options menu or by HxC at pulled out card. This option should also be available in future versions of the car boot file manager, so which one is like a real disk write protection for each disc on and off can .

Overall it is a nice hardware, which is still much joy to all current Amiga users.

[PARALAX]

Here are some other things which takes my attention and should be fixed in future: The second drive don't seems to be mounted every time, especially when I don't put a disk from the filemanager in drive B. Normally the drive availability should be independent from an inderted disk. Putting in a disk vom HxC display menu don't turn the drive on, so I cannot use the second drive later for games or "X-Copy - Next Generation" as it don't offer a "Drives on" menu like the other X-Copy versions.

The other thing is the very inconvenient use of the second drive access. If you want to put or change a disk in drive B during a game and didn't put them in from the file manager, you have to put in the first disk from drive A once again, before you can enter the HxC menu next time for switching between drive A & B. In my opinion it should be possible to access the drive A/B menu directly via menu button without this circuit (maybe with a "double click" solution to keep the Autoboot feature). Saving this procedure is only useful for multi-disk games with no external drive support.

I still haven't found out why I get "Bad Block Checksum" in "X-Copy next Generation" which work for me until yesterday. It seems to be a false alarm as the disks will be copied correctly. When I convert them back, I get the same data content as the souce disk. Should this error messages generally being ignored?

[Jeff]

Anarchy - Deja Vu - Demo loads some time and breaks after the first "Decrunching" break with the message "Illegal exception". The demo is even not working from a real drive every time. But I wasn't able to boot it with HcX once a time at least.

http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=5860

HFE rev 2.

Sanity - World of Commodore - The most obvious candidate of all the things that have been tested. This demo ran from two A500'er each with a Chinon FB -354 without any problems. But on the HxC I was not able to got it work. Here, the drive behaves after the onset of the fast loader so that it stops right at the first or second track. Taking the disk or the SD card from the drive and plugged it in again, it loads another track and then stops again. Perhaps this can be fixed with a firmware update (something like that I've found in another contribution to the "Voyage" demo, which , however, was fine for me) .

http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=2938

HFE rev 2.

These 2 demos just need to be converted into the HFE Rev 2 format
No firmware update needed.

I think that this disk drive B detection problem is only due because he have changed the interface mode to shugart : Amiga have a very special way to detect additionnals disk drives. External disk drive have a special circuit to give an ID to the Amiga. This scan is done at power up.

If the emulator is not in amiga mode, the drive B will not be detected by the amiga.

So : just convert the image in Shugart if really needed, but leave the others image with default setting.