WHDLoad Booter (WHDBooter) F.A.Q.

What is WHDLoad anyway?

WHDLoad is a software package for the Amiga platform to make installation of software such as games to a hard disk easier, where the original software relied on customised loading routines, specifically for Floppy drives.

This gives much higher compatibility for Amiga software, which can sometimes have hardware incompatibilities making them hard to use in emulated environments due to the widely varying hardware specifications of the Amiga product line across its history. WHDLoad circumvents the operating system in the Amiga for greater compatibility and preserves the original program environment.

WHDLoad carries a number of benefits which make it ideal for an emulated game-playing environment, including:

• No disk-swapping required
• Considerably fast loading times
• Individual game bug-fixes
• Additional save support (including high-scores etc)
• Timing Fixes
• Additional controller support (CD32 or 2 button modes)
• Additional game features including palette fixes

WHDLoad performs these tasks by using game-data 'ripped' from the original disks, and a bespoke '.slave' file for each game, which contains game-specific code to appl patches on the original game in order to perform the above functions. Specific game slaves are more developed than others, and the full details of the functions of each are available via the WHDLoad project pages.

Further information on WHDLoad, and the individual game slaves (including regular updates) and main documentation and bug submission systems, is available from (www.whdload.de).

The WHDLoad Slave is out of date / A new WHDLoad install is available and not in the Downloads. When will you add it?

This website no longer maintains or hosts any game data other than UAE Configuration files. It is advised you go back to the source of your data / pre-installed game to verify if an update is available.

Maintaining the WHDLoad slave data is a long task. It has taken considerable to time to take the files loving committed to the wider Amiga community as RetroPlay's Pre-Installed WHDLoad packs and separate them into data packs suitable for this Project. This has involved the removal of re-named duplicates, other language versions and alternative versions and separating into individual packages, and has taken a lot of hours to reach it's present state.

Since this was done with a single data-extraction of the pre-installed packages, it is known and accepted that not all provided configurations files will have been created with the most recent slave file, and that some new installs are not yet included. It is planned to improve this over time, and updated Configuration Files will be provided as soon as is realistically feasible - unfortunately there is little capacity in the existing development team at present to do this, and we are instead looking at a longer term solution that will provide users an easier route to updating files. As a result, we cannot put a time-scale on any update.

The team would gladly take additional support in testing the addition of new slave files, and if you wish to contribute to this are of the project., please contact the team via our FaceBook Group.

What is JST / JST HD install, and will you be adding support for those as well?

JST was a similar program to WHDload around 1998 or so, and initially developed at the same time, for the same task - installing custom-loader games to Hard Drive via game code patching.

JST was developed by Jean Francois-Fabre, also known as JOTD. Jean-Francois did notice that WHDload was more developed however, and ceased developing the project, choosing, not long after (and still to this day) to instead codes WHDLoad slaves himself.

There should be no need to support JST installs in this project, since all of the JST loaders were ported directly to WHDLoad.

What is in the WHDLoad Booter?

The WHDload booter is combination of custom applications and AROS replacement O.S. files that all Amiberry to directly load the contents of pre-installed WHDLoad packages.

Each archive must contain a single top-level folder, in which one or more .slave files are located. This folder can then be scanned and a slave file selected for 'fast loading' on the next load, which is done by creating an 'auto-startup' file for the specific package.

My WHDLoad package doesnt seem to be supported? I experience an error on load such as 'no slave file found' or 'archive contains multiple folders'

THe booter has been designed for compatibility with the 'RetroPlay' pre-installed pacakges. Although other installed packages are available, this distribution contains every official WHDLoad slave to-date in a universal format. Unofficially produced packages may not follow the standardised format and therefore cannot be loaded by the booter. It may be advisable to request an official installer be created for the game if required.