Work-In-Progress Reports for July 2005

17 July 2005

Analyser: Sync Detection: Sync's in the data or gap area of any block are detected and scripted properly now. If this data was related to protections that are suspected to be unsupported, it is no longer reported, as it is resolved properly in the script. Of course anything unresolved is still reported. Track containing syncs in their data/gap area are tagged with the flag 'M'. A few more protections are now auto-detected. (more)

13 July 2005

Analyser: Noise Filtering / Newly Found Games: Noise Filtering The analyser no longer reports random data as possible protection hotspots from unformatted areas of a track, only genuine data is reported. Disk Checking We now have proof that an Amiga copy of No Second Prize recently acquired and imaged by an SPS member is unmodified. This is very good news, as every other dump of it has been modified. (more)

11 July 2005

Analyser: Generated Descriptor Naming: Everything generated in the analyser is now human-readable and well commented, which helps double-checking the output and makes all the important information easy to read without needing effort. The block names tell what kind of data the block contains. (more)

7 July 2005

Analyser: Checksums: Checksums are now correctly inserted into the scripts, and so calculated and compared on analysation.

6 July 2005

Analyser: Source Code Cleanup: Major source cleanup completed. This cleanup was not possible under the previous version (without its own class) due to name space restrictions and internal dependencies. Hopefully nothing got broken in the process, but we will do more testing in the next few days. Apart from block and format names, everything displayed now has a human-readable explanation. (more)

5 July 2005

Analyser: Automatic Area Generation: Automatic area generation is now complete and working. This is needed for CRC support, since checksums are generated on areas. See previous WIP's to see what areas are, and how they are manually scripted. Moved all the script generator features into a new class, which made the source much cleaner as the additions contain a large amount of new code. Let's describe a practical use. (more)

4 July 2005

Analyser: Atari ST Disk System - Working: Basic support in the analyser for the first generic hardware FDC-based system (Atari ST) added to the FDC emulator is now working. This was declared after finding and fixing a very nasty bug that caused bizarre and hard to trace scripting artifacts. It is good enough to process most games as it is now. Things Still To Do * Add CRC suppor">:glossary:fdc_emulator">FDC emulator is now working. This was declared after finding and fixing a very nasty bug that caused bizarre and hard to trace scripting artifacts. It is good enough to process most games as it is now. Things Still To Do * Add CRC suppor (more)