Hi Amiga.org community!
Just hopped on and starting with a question as I am stuck (and sad because of it). I'll add more info after the question.
Just wondering if per chance this preloaded card I recently bought is set up properly or I'm missing something because I can't get naff all to run including whdload, and its really annoying. I know very little about this sort of thing at the moment and bought the card as a "plug&play" hoping at least some games might work without a ton of fiddling. I know one can't really expect true plug and play and some fiddling will be required, but I have tried for hours and can't get anything to run at all.
I've read as many threads as possible, googled more etc and I have tried different things but without any changes on the issues so far. It makes me wonder if what I bought is either missing something or has been badly put together/copied. Its listed on fleabay as "Amiga 1200 8GB 3.1 install License CF Hard drive.Whdload 18.6+Public Domain" by Amigaone-Heaven (Not sure if I can add the link here so playing it safe for now). And at the top of the description says "8 GB CF CARD for A1200 only Works on Rom 3 & Rom 3.1 A1200, Plug & Play, Great for Whdload games, Pre installed with OS 3.1 by Cloanto under License"
So.....
- Click on most of the programs and I get "Please insert volume A-Games in any drive". (Was there meant to be a floppy disk or pointer to a file hidden somewhere with this CF card?)
- Click "Run", then whdload on the far right and get "Can't find LAUNCH:GamesMenu/GamesMenu.menu". (Missing file location maybe?)
- Any game file I click straight on from workbench and also via the KB game loader, be it an old A500 game through to CD32 and any in the middle all come up with the red "Software Failure ... 8100 0005 Task: 0034AE68". (I assume its rom related but nowhere can I find a roms folder and not even normal A1200 games run anyway).
- Most games, especially AGA ones in a certain folder just flash the screen and not load while others near them go to the above red software failure (as though the files for those games are missing and just have empty icons).
I bought this CF card despite being a tad sceptical as the description details are copy and paste with errors leading to confusion over what you actually get for £41. But I went for it hoping it would at least run some games with minimal fiddling but at this point I wish I'd just spent the time building my own CF card up for half the price and better understanding. I don't have a CF card reader, but I can foresee I'm going to need one after posting this.
I read up on as much as I could beforehand and I think one issue might be that its an 8gb CF card, which I think might be a possible issue as I read somewhere its over a 4gb recognisable drive space limit. I thought maybe the memory was a possible issue and picked up the old but ok expansion card to test with, but it changed nothing of the above issues. Looked through Dopus, tried changing the screen to laced, PAL and NTSC variants just in case. Read through any relevant Help and readme files on the CF card too but nothing indicates solutions or routes to try with the issues I'm having.
I can't help wonder if this CF 'package' is missing something that was not mentioned anywhere. I was going to go the GoTek route but wanted to try the whdload path. So saddening that after many hours I don't really have spare trying to get just one game to work has been wasted entirely so far.
My set up is the bare basic for now just to play my fav games, an A1200 Rev 1.0 (?) 1992 with 3.0 Roms. Just bought a Marpet 1207 with 8meg (no FPU yet) which seems to work just fine when I plugged it in yesterday but made NO difference to any of the above other than some games were saying "not enough shadow memory" before and now just go straight to the red failure screen and reboots.
My history with Amiga's and my current one...
Back in 2010 I sold off my huge retro collection including arcade machines, among which was many Amiga's with some I bought new as a kid and used to use Octamed and sample cartridges to make laughably poor music, loved the demo scene too and going to carboots to pick up cheap games and such like. Always loved them next to my C64's which I started off with (never got on with the Speccy's I had as well). I am inconsolable a decade later for selling it all off.....I am stupid A.F and regret it nearly as much as destroying a Yamaha CS-80 synth when I was 16 because I didn't know what it really was. Oh for a time machine!
I went many years without any Amiga's and though I tried emulating, I prefer the route of original machine but loading media off more modern formats (best of both worlds). So I bought an A1200 a few weeks back (great price too, £150 fully working and caps/PCB really clean) and hoped to be able to get at least some games going with fiddling about endlessly as I just don't have much time for it. I'm feeling at this point to sell the CF card (as I can't return it now after fitting it) and go a different route so I can at least play something on it to make the £250 spent so far count
Thanks for reading all this! Hope someone/s might have some ideas on this, even if its to scrap the CF card route and go via pcmcia or gotek.
