A1200 keyboard problems under WHDload

[AmigaBruno]

I've recently been having some problems with my Amiga A1200 kryboard, which is the original Commodore Amiga style keyboard from 1992-1994. The cursor key pad, as well as the cursor control keys on the numeric keypad are affected.

These problems have only started since I bought a new CF card preload with WHDload games and demos, running on a modern looking Workbench with Scalos and a Copper style background. I will soon be contacting the seller of this card about problems I've had running various WHDload games and demos, but that's a much more complicated issue and I don't think he can help with the keyboard, which seems to be a hardware issue. I've noticed this problem while playing the game Civilization, although some other software may be affected. I've got three different versions of Civilization installed, and all of them are affected! These versions are called CivilizationAGA, CivilizationAGADe (German language version) and another version which is ECS and seems to boot from a floppy disk running under Kickstart 1.3. While moving my settlers, military units, etc around the screen I have to use the cursor keypad or numeric keypad for short distances, although for longer distances I can use a Go To option from a menu.  Perhaps there mighht be a way of using Go To over shorter distances, but it doesn't look like that. I often find that the game crashes, sending me back to the Scalos/Workbench screen  with a requester displaying a WHDload error message, giving me the choices to Quit, Restart, or Save a log. The keys I remember causing these crashes are particularly the cursor right key on the cursor keypad, then after I started using the numeric keypad keys, I had another crash when I pressed the 2 key.

Apart from the problems mentioned above, I've also found a lot of corrupted saved games from Civilization. The type of corruption is the map of the known World in the top left hand corner. After reloading, I often find some of my units in the sea, as well as some white dots in parts of the World that are black or still unknown to me, although before the crashes I had explored those parts of the World.

Can anyone tell me the best way to sort out my keyboard problem?
 

[Matt_H]

While moving my settlers, military units, etc around the screen I have to use the cursor keypad or numeric keypad for short distances, although for longer distances I can use a Go To option from a menu. 

This is normal for Civilization--it's how the game was designed.

I often find that the game crashes, sending me back to the Scalos/Workbench screen  with a requester displaying a WHDload error message, giving me the choices to Quit, Restart, or Save a log. The keys I remember causing these crashes are particularly the cursor right key on the cursor keypad, then after I started using the numeric keypad keys, I had another crash when I pressed the 2 key.

And these error windows are normal for when WHDLoad crashes. Do you get a crash every time you press these keys?

Everything you've described sounds like a software problem, some sort of incompatibility between your WHDLoad configuration and your hardware as opposed to an outright hardware failure (but give this a try, just in case). Does the keyboard give you trouble in any other applications (WHDLoad or otherwise)? That's the problem with these pre-installed system packages. They're set up a very specific way and if there's any variation between the system on which the package is designed and the system on which the package is deployed it can cause problems. It also makes it much harder to diagnose, but let's see what we can do.

First, what is your exact A1200 hardware configuration? Depending on what accelerator/RAM board you have, different global settings are required for WHDLoad. Is the machine NTSC or PAL?

Software wise, make sure you're using the latest version of each of the WHDLoad installs, i.e., that the .slave file on your hard drive matches the one from this archive. A simple bug that was later fixed might explain everything.

Disable the copper background. These and other hardware-banging system hacks might interfere with WHDLoad. Can you post your startup-sequence and user-startup? What's in your WBStartup drawer? There might be other sneaky stuff running in the background that is causing problems. Basically, you want to get the system as close to a stock 3.1 installation as possible to eliminate software incompatibilities.

Hardware wise, if there is a problem, I suspect the keyboard is merely a symptom of something else, probably power related. Has the motherboard been recapped? Is the power supply verified to be 100% stable? Those are the areas I would look at first if software adjustments don't solve your problem.

[vince_6]

I agree with Matt, preinstalled packages is not my thing too.
Try a clean install but before that do a Virus Z scan to your existing setup.
I had many problems with WHDLoad once cause my system was infected.

[AmigaBruno]

I'm happy to report that inbetween starting this topic and getting any replies, I opened my Amiga A1200 case (which Has been left without screws for some time now), pulled the keyboard out of its usual position, placing it at the back and upside down, but without disconnecting it, had a look at my capicitors which all seem fine, then I put everything back together and started to test it by playing Civilization again. I wasn't sure which of my three versions I should try, but I ended up playing the AGA German language version, although there are lots of mistakes and English words in the translation! I found that I was able to play from 4000BC right the way through to about 2050AD without it crashing, even though I was hitting the cursor right key and the 2 key on the numeric pad as hard as possible! At that stage in the game, I had almost my whole empire overrun by another empire which started a war with me just because I refused to keep paying them tribute! Eventually, I had only two cities left in a far flung overseas outpost and a population of only 80,000. After that, I decided to quit and reload a saved game. I found out that the saved game maps weren't corrupted like the ones I saved before, then I was able to carry on playing from earlier dates without crashing.

As for some of your questions and suggestions, my Amiga A1200 is PAL, my total RAM is now 10Mb since installing the new 8Mb RAM upgrade card with RTC by Amigakit, there's a real time clock which has been set to the correct date and time, but a few times recently it forgot the date and time, falling back to the default date of 01-01-1978. It has a UK keyboard, a Gotek drive is fitted and the power is on but currently has no USB stick inserted. I'm surrently in the middle of a game of Civilization. The game has disabled any details from appearing on my Workbench screen, although there is still a screen behind it with a bar saying "Workbench Screen", but apart from that it's just grey and blank. I'll post some details of my startup-sequence and other settings later. My WHDload version number starts with 18. This CF card came preinstalled with thousands of games and demos, but I don't think I could ever have installed that many bytmyself. I created a WHDload CF card by myself a few years ago, but only installed less than 30 games. I may not have tried to run more than 10% of the games on this card so far, but I'm just guessing.

This problem has made me think about what kind of replacement keyboard I could get if necessary. Unless I bought another classic A1200 keyboard by Commodore or ESCOM, then it may have to be a USB keyboard with an adaptor, as available on eBay. I found an Amiga A4000 keyboard for auction on eBay, but soon discovered it has a PS/2 type connector, although the keyboard itself isn't PS/2 because it produces different key codes, meaning that a translator is needed for anyone who wants to plug in a PS/2 keyboard to an Amiga A4000. In that case, any PS/2 adaptors designed for Amigas would have this translator built in, so they wouldn't be compatible with an Amiga A4000 keyboard. I don't know how I could make a keyboard by myself, so in that case, my most likely replacement keyboard would probably be an Apple Mac USB keyboard with Amiga stickers and an Amiga USB adaptor.
   

[Matt_H]

Again, this is very, very unlikely to be a keyboard hardware problem (try the keyboard test I linked to previously for at least partial confirmation).

Put a fresh battery into the RTC. If it keeps resetting to the default date, that tells us something. Reseat the RTC on the RAM card. Reseat the RAM card in the trapdoor slot. That's about all you should play with hardware-wise for the time being.

Focus your testing on the software side as described above. Try to get the operating system as close to a stock configuration as possible by examining startup-sequence, user-startup and WBStartup. Also look at S:WHDLoad.prefs.