jasonf@cetemp.Eng.Sun.COM (Jason Freund) (09/05/90)
(long) These are my impressions of the Amiga Action Replay Cartridge ($99, Coast to Coast tech) and The Synchro Express II Cartridge/software ($69, Coast to Coast tech) after getting my big toe squished under my motorcycle over Labour Day weekend. If anyone else has either of the cartridges and would like to exchange info, please email me. Both cartridges had full-page ads in Amiga World, September. Amiga Action Replay: Plugs into expansion port. Has FREEZE button, SloMo switch, and SloMo dial to control speed of game. Can be software disabled. It's a lot of fun. Basically, you hit the FREEZE button on the cartridge and it flips you to an alternate screen that looks like BASIC on the VIC-20. Pressing HELP will list the 50+ commands available to you. Once the program is frozen, you can save/manipulate the picture that was on the screen or the sound being played at the instant it was frozen to an IFF file, you can edit/display ALL registers, parts of memory as ascii, binary, hex, dissassembled memory, whatever. You can dump the program in memory to a special FSDOS disk. FSDOS is cool. You can initialize a raw disk to FSDOS format in about 2 seconds, FSDOS typically loaded about 3 times faster than Amigados programs and saved about twice as fast. This is useful for saving games on the fly. I've been playing Shadow of the Beast 2 which takes 3:05 to load and I always got killed at a certain point. So I froze the game just before the spot where I normally die, dumped it to disk, and then loaded the game off the FSDOS disk in about :30 until I figured out that segment of the game. Of course, this can be used to copy ANY game that is 100% memory resident. Included is a software FSDOS shell that can run in a window on WB to do simple tasks like cd, list, dislpay iff, convert FSDOS <-> AmigaDos, etc. The cheat mode can be used to change any *numerically displayed statistic*. It doesn't disable sprites or anything like that -- it actually lets you edit the byte(s) containing important statistics. Probably 99% of a game in memory is dormant -- graphics, code, etc don't change much, only variables change (ie monster coordinates, x,y position on scrren, # lives, etc) Press FREEZE on the cartridge, on the alternate screen enter a command to search through all of the program's memeory for a number. (ie the number 3 if you want to find the byte containing # lives in your basic shoot-em-up) Then die. Then FREEZE and enter another command that will find all bytes that had a 3, but just got changed to a 2. It almost always finds only 1 address, the correct one. Sometimes it finds 2-3 addresses and you have to guesstimate. Synchro Express II: Goes between external drive port and 2nd Ddrive. Hardware disable switch. I've tried it on Turrican, Unreal, Shadow of Beast 2. It didn't copy any of them. But, my internal drive is kind of flakey, and the guy at Coast to Coast assured me that it copies all three and he gave me some suggestions that I will try tonight. Basically, it copies disks bit for bit using a custom LSI chip. It has several different modes, but the default mode that is supposed to work for most games copies disks in less than a minute. I would definately say that the cartridge is better than any nibbler: it's faster and more powerful. But I haven't actually seen it work on my three newest games yet, so I don't know. Both Cartridges have an 8-5 EST tech support # with very knowlegeable staff (407)767-0938. I think both carts have versions out for all machines, but you must specify which machine you have when you order. The Amiga Action cart is supposed to be out for the 3000 soon, and the Synchro is already out for the 3000 (I think). Jason Freund, Sun Microsystems, jasonf@cetemp.Corp.sun.com <== summer address Deprtmnt of Computer Science, Univ California, Davis. freund@sakura.ucdavis.edu Quantum Link: JasonF5, Compu$erve: 72007,244, 690 Erie Dr, Sunnyvale, CA 94087 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- STOLEN QUOTES -- Please give the authors credit if you know who they are! "To understand recursion, you need to understand recursion." "Wow! Virtual memory! Now I'm gonna build me a REALLY big ram disk!" "My other computer is a SUN3/50." "E. Pluribus UNIX" -- authors unkown