I own an enjoy an HxC2001 floppy emulator. I have it in my Amiga 2000.

http://www.bytecellar.com/2011/04/17/my-sdcard-hxc-2001-floppy-emulator-adventure/

Many systems can benefit from the device, but few have written for them a native, software boot menu. The Amiga is one.

I am an American user with an NTSC A2000. I would, usually, load Degrader to set to PAL mode and then reboot to run all demos and many games. This is not really possible in the event chain of using the HxC2001.

I have requested that the devs add PAL / NTSC boot options into the native Amiga disk select app, on reboot. The devs have asked after Degrader. If it is open source. What they are after is example code showing how to change the PAL / NTSC system state on an Amiga with the sufficient Agnus to get it done.

Can someone point me to code that shows how to change state on reboot, to help these guys get the feature added. It would be a huge boon to me and all that use the HxC2001 on the Amiga I think.

Thanks much to anyone who can help. I will pass any and all info shared here along to the HxC2001 devs.





bp

If it is a floppy disk emulator then surely it works exactly like a real floppy disk works?

While I agree that it should work that way (I don't have one)..

It would be nice to not have to do that, and if the floppy emulator menu could, it would be nice...

desiv
p.s.  Here's some code for doing the opposite.  Haven't looked too much at the source, but could help.
http://cd.textfiles.com/sourcecode/usenet/compsrcs/amiga/volume90/util/ntscboot

But its a disk emulator.  Surely it can boot a palboot disk in say... 0.1 seconds?

It still depends..
If I can have a setting per disk image, and select that disk image and it knows to boot it into PAL, then I don't have to select the PALboot disk image, wait 0.1 seconds and then select the disk image I want.
It's not the time to load the disk, but the time for the process that can be saved.

Again, I agree it's not a big deal, BUT..
If they can make it all in one selection, then it's that much easier..

Also, here's a better page with info on switching..
http://thecryptmag.com/Online/49/PaltoNTSCandBack.html

desiv

No, it is possible..
The HxC let's you swap disks...
BUT, he's talking about the Amiga disk menu program that they have.

The HxC allows disk changes with buttons and an LCD, and that works...

But they have a full screen Amiga program that lets you choose which disk (again, you don't HAVE to use that, you can use the LCD and the buttons).  But using THIS program (as it's an Amiga program), you can't run a degrader disk  and then the game.
So you couldn't use that program to load Degrader, choose PAL, then reboot to THAT program again to choose your next disk.
Now, you can use the buttons and the LCD...
So you don't have to worry about running multi-disk games!!!

BUT, IF you ONLY want to use that menu program to load games AND have them be in PAL, having that program place the system in PAL would work.

And many many many more games are PAL than have weird requirements around memory config.

So this isn't about the HxC not being able to do it..
It's about the menu disk choice Amiga program.....

desiv

And many many many more games are PAL than have weird requirements around memory config.

True.  But there are still hundreds of games with weird memory config or must disable extra floppy drives config.

BEAMCON0 bit 5 toggles between NTSC and PAL.

http://amiga.rules.no/sources/dblpal.s

You must have an Agnus which supports this (i.e. won't work on A1000 or early A2000)

There is more to it than that.

It's generally all that anyone does though.
 
http://thecryptmag.com/Online/49/PaltoNTSCandBack.html
 
You can update execbase too, the source code here does that.
 
http://aminet.net/util/misc/60HzEmulator.lha
 
A lot of the source is useless, it allows switching using key combinations and faking vblank using a cia (if you don't have a fat agnus).
Updating exec base is mostly useless, generally the reason why you are switching is because the software doesn't bother to detect the mode.

It's generally all that anyone does though.
 
http://thecryptmag.com/Online/49/PaltoNTSCandBack.html
 
You can update execbase too, the source code here does that.
 
http://aminet.net/util/misc/60HzEmulator.lha
 
A lot of the source is useless, it allows switching using key combinations and faking vblank using a cia (if you don't have a fat agnus).
Updating exec base is mostly useless, generally the reason why you are switching is because the software doesn't bother to detect the mode.

All I know is there is more to it than just switching the video mode to PAL.  You do that with a single instruction, no need for reboot.  It also won't make most PAL games actually work.  I assume it is that execbase thing is the secret magic but I never knew.  Now that I think about it, I think it is the execbase thing.  But u can't just do it "in real time".  You would need to change the execbase var and then reset so that the whole OS is "aligned" to the new video mode.  Else all the Amigas blitting routines and so forth would have wrong clip limits, wrong overscan limits, etc.  Nothing will work right.

There are 2 kinds of palboot utilities.
A: The kind that claim to work instantly but do not actually work. They do switch the video to PAL mode but 99% of games do not work right then.  A giant portion of the screen gets chopped off or other weird things.

B: The kind that does some secret magix and then resets your Amiga.  Those kind actually work with all PAL games.

I have tested a gazillion palswitchers that don't actually work + a few others that do really work.  I even coded one myself.  I just set the beamcon bit and BAM I was in PAL mode.  It was awesome.  It was also completely useless.  Anytime I loaded a PAL game it was all screwed up.  Only using a real PALbooter that resets the machine actually works.

@FloppyEmu guys: You have been warned.

p.s. I have not read the article linked above.  I assume it has all the needed infos but I am not sure.