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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Gaming => Topic started by: orb85750 on August 24, 2007, 07:18:46 PM
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Well, I was hoping that my "new" Commodore A1200 with hard drive would replace my old A500 completely. Apparently, this is not going to be the case, because about half my older Amiga games don't seem to work on the A1200, even when I simply attempt to use the floppy only, change boot-up options, etc. I guess it's mainly a rogue programming issue and/or backward compatibility of the AGA chipset? (I have the stock A1200 with larger hard drive.) I had not read much about this issue before purchasing the A1200, except for a couple of posts about a small fraction of the old software not working on the A1200/4000 (certainly not half my collection!)
-Dave
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I use a "degrader" floppy to make them work. Take a look an Aminet :-)
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www.whdload.de fixes everything.
Also many games will work if you boot up into the Early Boot Menu and select OCS or ECS mode rather than AGA. If most of your games are old games made for OCS machines, I'm not at all surprised half of them won't work right for you if you just try to run them.
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There are ways to make older software work. Search on this forum for relokick and whdload. I highly recommend whdload. It's a harddisk installer for a lot of games and it also fixes issues that make software break on AGA or higher specced Amigas. You can even run the games from WB and quit back to it! You might need a bit more memory than the standard 2Mb chipram though to make it work more reliably.
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@orb85750
What you need to do is install the games to the HD by using some software called WHDload.
With WHDload, you can run nearly all classic a500 games without problem. Though some games need a bit more ram than the standard 2meg that comes as stock. How much ram do you got? I have a 68020 accelerator with 4meg fast, and i can run pretty much anything.
WHDload will also eliminate the need for swapping disks and will make the games load in just seconds.
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With whdload i have manage to play almost every A500 games that i have tried, i have my A1200 expanded with 68030 accelerator with 16Meg Ram.
The only game i dont have manage to install perfectly is Airborn ranger, but i cant remember anymore what kind of problem i had :roll:
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I think the few games I can't run with WHD load have to do with the 040 and 060 cards I've had in my A1200.
Like others said you really need some fast ram to get most games to run with WHD load.
With extra ram or a 68030 you will get much better frame rate in flight and driving simulators such as F1G and F19.
AI intensive game like Battle Chess spend less time calculating the users moves.
I also noticed that Settlers will take advantage of fast ram by allowing you to have much larger maps.
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I do have just the stock 2mb ram. I presume that upgrading the ram will be much cheaper and easier than getting a 68030, but I'm not even sure how to upgrade the ram or where to get it. Any suggestions? (Note to previous poster: The early boot-up sequence to disable the AGA didn't seem to help at all.)
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I believe amigakit"http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com" had a 4meg ram addon in stock, but it looks like it is gone now. :-(
But anyways.. All you do is slide the ram/board into the bay underneath your 1200. You do not even need to open the amiga.
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Get an accelerator with RAM. If youre patient you can find one as cheap as $150 on ebay. If you're impatient, you can definitely get one under $250... but for an 030 paying $250 seems kinda silly. You'll get a lot more bang for your buck than a RAM card.
That said, AmigaKit still has the RAM boards, at least they offer them in their built-to-order Amiga 1200s. Ask them.
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I see everyone saying this, but I have only succeeded in getting a handful of games working in WHDLoad.
I even got a complete lha'd archive of a WHDLoad demo from another user (which worked), tried it on my amiga and no luck, same error.
I am running an A1200 + Microbotics 1230/50 with 64mb fast ram, 3+1 roms, and OS3.9.
I tried degrading, I tried booting from a floppy, I tried NoAutoVecs in whdload, I tried booting in ECS, removing my pcmcia ethernet card, nothing worked.
Yes, I have the correct A500 rom installed and in the correct location along with sKick tools.
I get the same replies over and over "it should work". Ok great, it should, but it doesn't.
Then of course you get accused of just being an idiot... um... ok I've owned Amigas since 1991, and worked as a software developer since 1992. I'm not a noob to computers or the Amiga by any stretch. It's not hard to install Whdload tools to C: and put kickstarts mentioned in the readme in DEVS:kickstarts.
Why it doesn't work is baffling... this is a Rev D (not D.1) motherboard.
Perhaps something is strange with my machine, but I have several WHDLoad games which do not work. Maybe it doesn't like how my memory is configured? I dunno.
SO I dunno... try a degrader before you spend a bunch of money on an accelerator and ram to use WHDLoad.
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Like Homer says, use a degrader... there are several "out there" search "degrader" on Aminet
I use Relokick, seems to work on most games.
Keep the faith!
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@vic20owner
It certainly sounds very odd, as WHDload here even runs games that dont normally work with a degrader.
With WHDload i dont even have to use ecs.
If i was you, i would try to do a clean reinstall of the OS and see if that might do something.
I also dont know whether or not os3.9 might have something to do with it, as i use 3.1.
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OS3.9 soft patches the rom on boot... maybe it doesn't liked a patched rom?
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I tired of trying to figure out how to get very old 1.3 games to work on my A4000 or 1200. I found a very nice A500 last fall at the Sacto. Amiga show and found an excent Supra A500 HD with memory on the net. Perfect old school gaming...no hassle. And likely cheaper than finding an '030 for an A1200!
Bob
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WHDLoad is incredibly easy to use... dont know why the problems.
First you need the ROM images, either from Cloanto, made yourself, or from warez sites on the net. Install these in DEVS:Kickstarts, you'll want at least the A500 and A4000 (or 1200) ROMs (1.3 and 3.0). If you use the Cloanto ROMS make sure you also copy the rom.key to the Kickstarts dir.
You need to get the SKick package from Aminet and install the *.RTB files from it into DEVS:Kickstarts too.
Install WHDLoad, you really only need the user binaries unless youre going to make your own installs, then get WHDLoad-dev.
Thats basically it. Run any installers you want and stick in the game disk when asked. I dont see how it could be messed up if you follow the instructions. It took me less than 5 minutes to install WHDLoad and a few games.
What does your Kickstart dir look like?
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@murple
It is a bit more complicated than that.. You have to have a specific version of the kickstart for it to work. I recall i had to go through quite a few before i found the right 1.3 kickstart for WHDload.
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Were you using nonstandard/hacked ROMs? I followed the instructions and it worked on the first try. If you've got Cloanto's Amiga Forever, you can just use those. Failing that, any ROM image made from an Amiga 500 with the recommended AmiNet tool should work, I'd think. Specific programs may require specific ROMs, but WHDLoad itself shouldn't. If the program will run on the computer you got the ROM image from, it will run with that ROM and WHDLoad. I dont know if there's really that many versions of the Amiga 500 ROM. As far as I know there is only ONE version of the 1.3 ROM in Amiga 500s... but I have heard of hacked ROMs floating around which have been modified from the original image.
http://www.whdload.de/docs/en/need.html
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I also had some problems with WHDLoad on my Microbotics 1230/33. I could get most games to run with NOAUTOVEC and NOMMU tooltypes, but i think i never got BeachVolley working on that card.
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I am familiar with the roms and skick. I've tested the roms by skicking into 1.3, but of course I couldn't boot because my HD is IDE on a 1200.
I did try no autovecs but I did not try nommu.
So yes, I have the correct kickstart (per the install docs for the state of the art installer), named correctly in the devs:kickstarts dir and I have the skick utils in c:.
Maybe I should make a video and put it on you tube. Honestly how could anyone screw this up, it's easy. It just doesn't work on my computer.
Which version of the state of the art demo are you running? There are two... one uses fastram or something, I can't remember the details.. the readme was sort of cryptic.
Today I went through a box of 100 amiga 500 floppies... of those only a few games worked on my A1200, even after setting CPU CACHE DISABLED and ECS chipset before booting.
Didn't try a degrader... didn't have much time today.
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A YoutTube video of attempting to install SOTA would probably helpful. Considering all the problems you're having... assuming your hardware isn't damaged, you've got to be doing SOMETHING wrong. What version of WHDLoad did you install? How did you install it? Can you show us your ROM directory listing?
I used the SOTA from Spaceball's website, but I believe the WHDLoad installer is able to work with both versions.
With the floppies... did you boot ECS/no cache and go into workbench, then load the floppies? Im not sure that it works the same if you boot from floppy after using the early boot menu.
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There are ways around this, with WHDload being one of the best, however, this easiest is to keep you A500 handy.
I still have an A1000 that I use for old games. There are a few that don't even like the "new" 1.3 OS!
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Sometimes the whdload game itself is bad.
Speedball 2 just would not work, I downloaded it from elsewhere and hey presto it worked.
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@orb85750
I ensure you that an unexpanded Amiga 1200 can replace an A500 for about 90-95% of the A500 games/demos.
The best degrader is TUDE. You can install it in your HD. No need to insert a degrader disk first.
If your amiga is an escom model, you will most likely need to apply the hardware "floppy disk fix" as it came out with a fault. Search Aminet and this forum about it.
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Didn't find anything that wouldn't work on my early A1200 with one I got on a PD disk called "kick 1.3" haven't seen that on Aminet, think it might be on some of those PD CDs compiled from BBSes.
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Hi
Really depends on your other hardware. I was OK with most games till I got the accelerator. Also a PCMCIA RAM card can cause problems. Sure, you can degrade but often thats tricky when your running the game out of Workbench. The trick is quite simple... I have always had an A500 set up next to my A1200. That was till this weekend when the Joystick port finally died playing Turrican. Anyway I swapped out the CIAs which was sad cus the seals had never been broken. That didn`t work so I swapped the motherboard. A500 bits and pieces are very very cheap and easy to come by. I wouldn`t be without the A500... Specially as loads of games that I seem to acquire come on the back of old copied floppies... ( bad boy )... So I don`t risk the 1200 with old disks I just bang them in the 500 and off I go. The 500 takes a real hammering... Magic machine. Back to Turrican.
PS A copy of Turrican 2 went on Ebay this week for £52. Worth more than the computer you play it on... happy days.
scuzz
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com
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I have never experienced games that don't work on a stock 1200. Especially with that "Boot Options - Disable CPU Cache - Use - Display Options - Original - Use - Boot" trick.
Learnt that wise process at a young age. :lol:
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Hi
Populous 1989 Bullfrog. Has never worked on my 1200, even with all those things switched off. I just had another go and as ever the game loads but the mouse locks up and then the disk goes in a spin. Has happened on every disk that I have ever had.
scuzz