Remember last position

[Buck]

Hi!

I've been using the Harmony for a little while now and love it. It is so nice to be able to modify the menu by simply changing folder structure.

I do have one hope. Is it possible for the Harmony to "remember" it's last position on powerup/powerdown? I have my directories sorted by first, hacks or official release. Within the official release folder, there are folders for the various companies. Then in each companies' folder are the ROMs. After I drive down into the Atari folder and select a ROM, I would LOVE to be able to power the VCS back up and have the selector bar be right at the last game I just played instead of going back to the root of the SD card. Is this possible or is it a limitation of the SD card?

 

Thanks for taking the time to read this. And thanks again for such a cool product!

 

Later

 

Buck

[cd-w]

It is something that we considered during development, but there were three problems:

1. What to do if the SD card changes?
   
2. Where to store the directory information - there isn't space to add SD card or EEPROM writing?
   
3. What to do when you don't want to go back to the previous entry - we would probably need a short-cut back to the top?
   

I couldn't think of a good way to solve these issues, so this feature was not added.

 

Chris

[A.J. Franzman]

It is something that we considered during development, but there were three problems:

1. What to do if the SD card changes?
   
2. Where to store the directory information - there isn't space to add SD card or EEPROM writing?
   
3. What to do when you don't want to go back to the previous entry - we would probably need a short-cut back to the top?
   

I couldn't think of a good way to solve these issues, so this feature was not added.

 

1. If the exact path+filename of last directory access no longer exists, return to top of root.

2. Do you mean that you're out of space to add any new feature to the Harmony BIOS, or you simply were unsure where to store the "last directory entry" info? I should think you already have some kind of NVRAM or EEPROM on the Harmony that could hold the info.

3. Not 100% necessary but would be nice. Perhaps you could detect if the harmony were switched off without playing a ROM, and use that for the decision to restore the directory initialization to "root".

 

BTW, thank you all very much for making this project into reality!

 

P.S. If you hadn't guessed, I would also very much like to have this "directory memory" feature.

Edited March 13, 2010 by A.J. Franzman

[Buck]

Is there any chance of this coming to fruition with some of A.J.'s suggestions? They make sense from my standpoint, but I didn't create the thing, so I don't know the ins and outs of the Harmony.

I am probably coming across like an old Atari marketing person who lamely asks the programmer (who just just spent months on a super cool game) - "But why is it square? Why isn't the ball more round?"

 

In all seriousness, to me, this is the one feature that the CC2 has that the Harmony doesnt that is really nice. But it's just me and A.J. who are after this apparently. Kind of knocks it down the ol' priority list, I suppose.

Thanks for your earlier response!

 

Take care

 

Buck

[+batari]

In all seriousness, to me, this is the one feature that the CC2 has that the Harmony doesnt that is really nice. But it's just me and A.J. who are after this apparently. Kind of knocks it down the ol' priority list, I suppose.

Thanks for your earlier response!

You say the CC2 does this, so maybe if someone could tell us how the CC2 handles the following issues raised by Chris:

* What to do if the SD card changes?

* What to do when you don't want to go back to the previous entry - we would probably need a short-cut back to the top?

This might help us look into actually adding this feature (if it can be made to fit, of course.)

[Underball]

In all seriousness, to me, this is the one feature that the CC2 has that the Harmony doesnt that is really nice. But it's just me and A.J. who are after this apparently. Kind of knocks it down the ol' priority list, I suppose.

Thanks for your earlier response!

You say the CC2 does this, so maybe if someone could tell us how the CC2 handles the following issues raised by Chris:

* What to do if the SD card changes?

* What to do when you don't want to go back to the previous entry - we would probably need a short-cut back to the top?

This might help us look into actually adding this feature (if it can be made to fit, of course.)

On the CC2 - if the contents of the Card changes, you will get one of two responses:

 

it will go back to the top of root, or you will get and MMC Card Read error, and need to reformat your menus.

 

With the CC2, you dont' really have a choice. It will always go back to teh last point, provided it can read the menus properly. but you can add your own shortcuts back up to root to each concatenated menu.

[flammingcowz]

you could have a text file at the root of the sd card that holds current folder info, and on power up it reads the text file. then if the card changes, it just goes to that cards root and creates a txt file for it too

[supercat]

you could have a text file at the root of the sd card that holds current folder info, and on power up it reads the text file. then if the card changes, it just goes to that cards root and creates a txt file for it too

 

From my understanding, writing files to an SD card is generally harder than reading them, though writing to a pre-existing file might not be too bad.

 

The CC2 does not use directories the same way the Harmony cart does; it uses a CC2 menu file to hold for each game a 40-character title, and the filenames for the binary, bankswitch, and boot files (8 bytes per name--24 bytes total). Seemingly-hierarchical menus are supported by specifying the name of a new menu file with a boot file name of "MENU". As such, one need only keep track of the menu file name and index, rather than having to store anything like path information.

 

My inclination would be to store the cluster number of the last directory, a checksum, CRC, or other hash of that directory, and the index of the selected file within that directory. On startup, look to see if the indicated cluster seems to point to a valid directory; if so, start there; if not, start at root. Clear the selection before trying to load it, so that if it's bogus the cart can be restored to operation by power-cycling it.

[Buck]

I am glad smarter people than me are making suggestions. It helps the cause more than just me saying, "uh, gee I just want it work, George. Now can ya tell me about the rabbits?"

 

Thanks for adding suggestions, everyone.