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Amiga 1200 with graphical glitches
« on: May 25, 2003, 11:44:24 PM »
Hi,

I recently acquired an Amiga 1200. It boots from the harddrive o.k and seems to run the workbench. However most games I boot from the floppy drive either cause a guru meditaion (8000 0004) or run with lots graphical artifacts on the screen. Very few games run perfectly.

I have removed the hard drive and an accelerator board that had been fitted. I have removed 2 chips and re-seated them which I believe are the kickstart roms. Finally I have tried 2 different power supplies but still the problem persists.

Has anyone got any ideas what may be causing this and how to fix it.

Thanks in advance.
 

Offline Stedy

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Re: Amiga 1200 with graphical glitches
« Reply #1 on: May 26, 2003, 12:05:34 AM »
Tiberius,

Have you tried another floppy drive?

You may have a faulty floppy drive that is mis-reading data and causing the crashes. The fact that your A1200 boots workbench from HD fine is another pointer.

Try booting from your original workbench floppy.

 

Offline Ilwrath

Re: Amiga 1200 with graphical glitches
« Reply #2 on: May 26, 2003, 01:54:03 AM »
Quote
I recently acquired an Amiga 1200. It boots from the harddrive o.k and seems to run the workbench. However most games I boot from the floppy drive either cause a guru meditaion (8000 0004) or run with lots graphical artifacts on the screen. Very few games run perfectly.


Hmm... this is kind of vague... Can you describe the graphical "glitches"?  Do all games do the same thing, or are they different for each one?  Plus, what are you trying to play on it?  If you're using old A500 games, you may need to use a degrader or 1.3 softkick to properly run many games.  Also, PAL/NTSC will cause lots of headaches if you're in the wrong screenmode for the game.

The 8000 0004 guru is very typical for an A1200.  It's a processor op-code violation, I think. (supervisor-mode 68000-only code running on a 68020+)  Running degrader with the "Privledged" option before loading your game usually cures this.

Personally, I think your hardware is fine, and you need to look to software for your answers.
 

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Re: Amiga 1200 with graphical glitches
« Reply #3 on: May 26, 2003, 11:37:55 PM »
Hi,

Thanks for the assistance guys. I am indeed trying to play older A500 games, I just assumed the A1200 was 100% compatible. I also picked up the A1200 version of Alien Breed II which seems to run perfectly. This concurs with IIwrath suggestion.

The games that do run have varying degrees of flashy squares on the screen ,ranging from a couple of squares to a complete mess. I am assuming now based on what's been said and my own investigations that this is completely normal.

Following IIwrath's advise I found a program called degrader v1.0 on the hard drive which I have used in conjunction with the inbuilt degrader (i.e. holding down both mice buttons on startup). I haven't had any success with any of the problem games as of yet.

At the moment I am struggling to get degrader 1.3 from an ms- dos disk onto the amiga to give that a go. I know about cross dos and I have mounted PC0: I have used both high density and double density disks. I have even tried formatting them on both platforms. Unfortunately I can't get degrader v1.3 onto the amiga (disk not recognised)

I searched the internet and found some guides but none of them seem to work 100%. One guide suggested formatting the disk using /f:720 but my windows xp doesn't like this parameter. So I am struggling to format double density disks on the PC.

Any advise/pointers to further reference material would be much appreciated.

Thanks once again for your help.

Tiberius
 

Offline Merc

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Re: Amiga 1200 with graphical glitches
« Reply #4 on: May 27, 2003, 12:10:57 AM »
Usually the early boot menu does the trick for me, try rebooting while holding down both mouse buttons, and you can choose to disable CPU caches, force PAL or NTSC (which doesn't always work) and revert to OCS or ECS chipsets.   Degrader gives you more options but it can be tricky to get working when you have accelerators/reboot resident things installed.

Hope this helps! :-D
 

Offline Merc

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Re: Amiga 1200 with graphical glitches
« Reply #5 on: May 27, 2003, 12:11:59 AM »
D'oh, I just read that you already tried the Early Boot Menu.  Ah well  :-P
 

Offline Ilwrath

Re: Amiga 1200 with graphical glitches
« Reply #6 on: May 27, 2003, 01:55:03 AM »
The degrader 1.3 should help you a lot.  (1.0 was really not intended to run on an AGA machine!)  (I'm assuming the problem is that you have the degrader on your PC, and are having trouble getting it to the Amiga?  If all else fails, perhaps a null-modem connection and an X-modem file transfer can help?)

For using degrader on many games, I use the options "Privledged, NoCache, NoView" and "Survive Resets" to reboot the machine.  Sometimes it hangs my A1200, but the three-key salute resets it, and it cycles through a couple additional colors before booting up again.  (This is good, as you know degrader "took".)

The typical problems that "NoView" fixes are graphical glitches.  Often times it will be a screen that looks like it has been horizontally "smeared".  The "NoCache" will fix certain gurus, and sometimes fix screen flashing.

And, "Privledged" usually fixes the 8000 0004 or 8000 000B gurus.

Also, another program I use is "TUDE" available from Aminet, along with a 1.3 ROM image.  between these two programs and various options in each, I've gotten most everything from my 500 collection to work on the 1200.  Certain titles cause more problems than others, of course.  (my original to Shadow of the Beast was horrible until I found a WHDLoad for it!)
 

Offline Stedy

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Re: Amiga 1200 with graphical glitches
« Reply #7 on: May 27, 2003, 09:50:56 PM »
Hi tiberius,

Some assistance on your PC floppy problems.

Windows XP needs some special commands to format a 720K floppy disk, type:
format A: /FS:FAT /T:80 /N:9
It appears Windows XP does not have much support for 720K floppies!

Sometimes I have found that formatting the disk on a PC uses a Win95 file system with longer file names, CrossDOS (supplied with workbench) only supports 8.3 file names!

Try formatting the disk on the Amiga

format PC0:

Skick,
skick345.lha  util/boot  91K  9  Soft-kicker under OS 2.0 - new release

Is good for using multiple ROM images.

I have an old assasins disk collection of degraders for the A1200 somewhere, probably as a DMS image too if you are interested. I have used it too good effect on my A1200.

HTH
Ian
 

Offline PMC

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Re: Amiga 1200 with graphical glitches
« Reply #8 on: May 28, 2003, 11:05:08 AM »
Have you guys got any more info on suitable degraders etc and/or other programs to help old software run on a "newer" system?

I've got lots of A500 games that I've never been able to get working with my A1200, and my spare room is home to three systems as a result (vanilla A1200 with HDD, Towered A1200 with PCI, A500).  Maybe you guys can help me clear some desk space LOL!
 :-D  :-D
Cecilia for President
 

Offline alx

Re: Amiga 1200 with graphical glitches
« Reply #9 on: May 28, 2003, 11:47:13 AM »
KillAGA seems to work quite well on a lot of things.

Offline elendil

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Re: Amiga 1200 with graphical glitches
« Reply #10 on: May 28, 2003, 02:46:26 PM »
Quote
KillAGA seems to work quite well on a lot of things.


...unless you have a cyberstormPPC in which case it does nothing. It is due to something with the csppc flashrom, I think I read long ago.

Probably the same deal with blizzPPC.

TUDE works great for me, though.

Sincerely,

-Kenneth Straarup.