Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: nickoteen on July 01, 2012, 07:11:23 PM
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Hiya there ...
A noob seeking help here !
Here's the case. I have an A500 unit (m.b. rev 6A), a nice little PC-Amiga Explorer setup, file transfer working, no problems, but ...
Some games I transfered to fdds work without a problem (Another World, Dune, Monkey Island to name just a few), some won't work at all (Canon Fodder, Lotus Esprit, Prince of Persia, Turrican(s) ... etc.). The intro/cracktro loads fine, but than the screen (usually) goes black, fdd light glows orange, and nothing happens. The Amiga freezes as far as I can tell.
I have a ks 2.04 so I thought, ok, I must be having a compatibility issue here, and got my self a nice little ks switcher board and installed both, 1.3 and 2.04 ks, but to no avail. Games that didn't work on 2.04, won't work on 1.3 either.
The ADF's are fine, checked with WinUAE. They work in the emulator, but won't start on a real hardware. Any ideas greatly appreciated.
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Hi,
How much RAM do you have on your A500?
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As he said, how much RAM? A lot of games require 1 MB.
Also, is your machine PAL or NTSC?
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Ah, yes, 4got to mention, 1 MB of ram. It's a german A500, so It must be a PAL machine.
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1 MB PAL machine should be the optimal. Have you tried different disk images?
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Well, as I mentioned, adfs work in winuae, so ... no. Although, I DL-ed 2-3 versions of Turrican II (I REALLY wanted to be able to play this particular game on a real hw), but none of them worked. I also tried three different adf versions of State of Art's Spaceballs, but none worked. Won't start. Other demos, like Arte, Elysium (sanity), Mega Demo II (alcatraz) work just fine. Really puzzled here.
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I've found that emulators sometimes are less finicky and sometimes more so than real hardware. It's basically black magic.
I'm not sure why multiple versions wouldn't work though. Where in the world are you located? I could probably make you a copy and mail it or something, though I can only test it on my 1200, so that's not a guarantee it'd work.
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I'm located in Europe. Thanks for the offer of making a copy, but I'm much more interested in why some stuff works and other doesn't. Could it be a compatibility issue still ? Newer Agnus, Denis, Paula chip(s) ? Maybe ? I'm a noob, so don't laugh.
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Some old games are notoriously picky about the setup they'll run on.
For Turrican 2 and Cannon Fodder, I doubt that's the case though, given both runs on a 1200, which would be far less compatible.
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Did you also try to load the game from another diskdrive?
I had this problem with some diskdrives which are modded PC diskdrives from Amigakit. Most of the games and software works well.
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Yes, I have. In addition to df0, I also have df1 and df2 external drives. I do have another A500 unit, older one (rev 5A) but without a fdd built in. Will try those troubleing games on this unit. If turns out they work, then I guess there is something faulty with my current Amiga. Then again, I have over 60 disks transfered using Amiga explorer that run just fine. Weird.
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Some games need the full 1MB RAM and refuse to work when DF1 and DF2 are plugged in. Have you tried running those games without any external floppy drives, which each require a small amount of memory for mounting and buffers?
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Cammy's spot on with the DF1/DF2 advise. Although it's strange how your games seem to freeze right after the intro.
May seem a silly question, but are you sure the disks are okay? I'm not sure about amiga explorer and its associated tools, but there are poor disk tools out there that don't even verify what has been written to disk...so that if you have a bad disk this could explain some of your problems. Also recommend you get a diskdrive cleaning kit.
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Hm, well, I haven't tried unplugging the drives, but I have tried switching them off (I have 2 Cumana external drives which both have small on/off switches located at the back side of the casing). And yes, the disks are (should be) ok becouse they are brand (never before used) new.
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The best Amiga 500 setup for classic Amiga games is Kickstart 1.3, 512k chip, 512k fast, normal Denise, 512k Fat Agnus. Anotherwards, nothing fancy, a stock Amiga 500. Also, make sure your disk drive can read past track 82. Newer Amiga disk drives will not read past track 82, so many games, especially with copy protection, will not work, because the copy protection tells the drive to load code from track 83, 84, or 85. So, make sure that the disk drive in your Amiga 500 computer can read past track 82. Just google for the drives specs on the internet.
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If you really like a game, just buy it on eBay. All of my favorite Amiga games are complete, with their original boxes, and they are in brand new condition. Whenever another Amiga fan comes over to the house and sees my Amiga room, they are absolutely amazed at my Amiga software collection. There is nothing like having the real game in your hands. I see boxed Amiga games all the time on eBay for $5 to $20 each, that is how I got a lot of my games.
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The best Amiga 500 setup for classic Amiga games is Kickstart 1.3, 512k chip, 512k fast, normal Denise, 512k Fat Agnus. Anotherwards, nothing fancy, a stock Amiga 500. Also, make sure your disk drive can read past track 82. Newer Amiga disk drives will not read past track 82, so many games, especially with copy protection, will not work, because the copy protection tells the drive to load code from track 83, 84, or 85. So, make sure that the disk drive in your Amiga 500 computer can read past track 82. Just google for the drives specs on the internet.
Crap. Some of the games I transferred usig AExplorer, after loading intro and me clicking the left mouse button make a floppy drive produce a sound similar to: trrrrrrrrr (like there's something very strange going on while trying to read the disk). Could it be this "past track 82" thing ?
Otherwise the fdd works just fine, loads WB and a hole pile of other disks, without any problems.
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The best Amiga 500 setup for classic Amiga games is Kickstart 1.3, 512k chip, 512k fast, normal Denise, 512k Fat Agnus. Anotherwards, nothing fancy, a stock Amiga 500. Also, make sure your disk drive can read past track 82. Newer Amiga disk drives will not read past track 82, so many games, especially with copy protection, will not work, because the copy protection tells the drive to load code from track 83, 84, or 85. So, make sure that the disk drive in your Amiga 500 computer can read past track 82. Just google for the drives specs on the internet.
I know Denise, Fat Agnus and Lisa are main components of OCS/ECS chipset (right ?), but I don't know what are "normal" Denise and 512k Fat Agnus. What other Denis/Agnus chips are there ? I bought my Amiga from a guy (it's been opened, can tell by looking at the bottom silver sticker being damaged), so maybe ... ah, I don't know, looking (grasping ? :) ) for straws here, just trying to figure out why 15 out of 20 top games on my "I REALLY want to play list" games don't work.
Thanks for your suggestions anywayz.
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I know Denise, Fat Agnus and Lisa are main components of OCS/ECS chipset (right ?), but I don't know what are "normal" Denise and 512k Fat Agnus. What other Denis/Agnus chips are there ? I bought my Amiga from a guy (it's been opened, can tell by looking at the bottom silver sticker being damaged), so maybe ... ah, I don't know, looking (grasping ? :) ) for straws here, just trying to figure out why 15 out of 20 top games on my "I REALLY want to play list" games don't work.
Thanks for your suggestions anywayz.
The 512k Agnus is 8370. The normal Denise chips are 8362R6 and 8362R8 (Half-Bright Denise). These numbers are for the NTSC versions of the chips. Check the Big Book of Amiga Hardware website for the PAL versions. Give me a list of the games you like and I will make the disks, test them on my stock Amiga 500, and then I will ship them to you, just pay me for postage :) Also, I do have a spare 8370 Agnus chip I can mail to you for FREE, but, I do not know if it will also work in PAL mode.
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A Teac fd-235hf 3218-u pc disk drive works very well with Amiga computers, and they fit the Amiga 500 nicely. They do read out to track 85. You can find these disk drives in PC recycle centers. I buy them by the box-load :)
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If your A500 has the original floppy drive inside you won't have a problem reading past track 82. I think it was mainly the later A1200s which were burdoned with crappy disk drives.
I'm sorry for asking the obvious a lot, but have you given your disk drive heads a clean? I have inherited around 10 A500s as well as other Amigas over the years and every single one of them had problems reading disks before I put a floppy drive cleaning kit through them, which fixed them all. You can get these on eBay or from a local computer supplies or stationary shop if you're lucky. They look like a floppy disk with a white pad inside them, and you put some drops of cleaning fluid in them before running it through the drive for half a minute or so. With the Amiga, just keep rebooting after it tries reading the disk, and do it about 20 times so it has a good scrub.
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If your A500 has the original floppy drive inside you won't have a problem reading past track 82. I think it was mainly the later A1200s which were burdoned with crappy disk drives.
I'm sorry for asking the obvious a lot, but have you given your disk drive heads a clean? I have inherited around 10 A500s as well as other Amigas over the years and every single one of them had problems reading disks before I put a floppy drive cleaning kit through them, which fixed them all. You can get these on eBay or from a local computer supplies or stationary shop if you're lucky. They look like a floppy disk with a white pad inside them, and you put some drops of cleaning fluid in them before running it through the drive for half a minute or so. With the Amiga, just keep rebooting after it tries reading the disk, and do it about 20 times so it has a good scrub.
Hmm .. it did cross my mind (while reading your posts) that maybe my fdd is the cause of my problems. I mean, my every Aexplorer transfer is finished succesfully (transfered 100%), but maybe some of the times the fdd doesn't write the data 100% accurately. I'll try and find a cleaning kit and use it. There are also new a500 drives I stumbled upon on ebay, so I'm thinking of maybe ordering one as well.
Once again, thankz 4 all your replyz folkz.
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I've found that emulators sometimes are less finicky and sometimes more so than real hardware. It's basically black magic.
I'm not sure why multiple versions wouldn't work though. Where in the world are you located? I could probably make you a copy and mail it or something, though I can only test it on my 1200, so that's not a guarantee it'd work.
Err, since I've exhausted all my options by now (changed the floppy drives used to write adfs to disks (external, internal), changed the homemade null modem cable with a factory one, changed the floppy disks themselves (a new unopened box with another new unopened box), I think I'll take your offer and ask you not to make a copy of some games for me, since that would involve time and money, but to send a few adfs to my email just to check whether maybe there's something wrong with my adfs.
So, if it's not to much of a trouble, could you send me at least one of the following 880K adfs please: Turrican 2, North & South, Prince of Persia, Syndicate, Cannon Fodder, Lotus Esprit Turbo Challange, Moonstone ...
Any of them will do. I'm loosing my mind here trying to figure out WHY some of the games work and a whole lot of them won't work on my machine. Thanks in advance.
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yeah for sure.
Let me try transferring one to disk later today, to verify it works, and then I'll email the same disk image to you. Might not be until this evening.
Can you email me at runequester@gmail.com ?
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yeah for sure.
Let me try transferring one to disk later today, to verify it works, and then I'll email the same disk image to you. Might not be until this evening.
Can you email me at runequester@gmail.com (runequester@gmail.com) ?
Thanks a bunch ! Take your time ...
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have you tested the diskettes with x-copy?
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No, I haven't. But I don't think the diskettes are the problem here. Every sigle game that doesn't work loadz the intro/cracktro just fine. Every one of them. After I select the "Start game" option, the Amiga freezes. Every g.d. time, right after. So, it's either the adf(s) (which run normally when opened under winUAE ... go figure), or the Amiga itself. The diskettes are alright, brand new. The Amiga Explorer transfer is alright. No problems there. In addition to a whole lot of games that just freeze after the intro, there's a whole LOT of them that work without a problem. Transfered over a nullmodem cable, started on a real Amiga, working like a charm, some 60 or so of them.
It's not the non working games that I'm worried about, I've got enough allready to play around with. It's the question whether my Amiga is faulty or not, that's what's really bugging me.
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so, its not A500+ ? I'd try it without the ROM switcher, using only KS1.3 chip.
is additional 512Kb set as FAST, not CHIP ram?
I remember having problems with K3.1 in A500, due to missing some resistor set on board.
you can test RAM with some utility from aminet.
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No, It's an Amiga 500, although (I think) a newer model, because it has a fullname logo on the top right corner. Not just a "C", but a "C" Commodore Amiga 500 logo, like in the following picture:
http://www.google.hr/imgres?q=amiga+500&um=1&hl=hr&sa=N&biw=1920&bih=1003&tbm=isch&tbnid=ktf1NDDW3cKL9M:&imgrefurl=http://www.pugo.org/collection/computer/99/&docid=0gjt8OMFFVLIrM&imgurl=http://www.pugo.org/media/collection/computer/commodore_amiga_500.jpg&w=500&h=325&ei=XsEDUL-qH-Tf4QSQvbX_Bw&zoom=1
Also, I do have a KS switcher board with 1.3 and 2.04 roms installed. I should try it without the ks board you say ? Any particular reason why I should suspect the switching board ?
How do I know if the additional 512kb was set as fast or chip ram ? As for testing the RAM, I will test it, have plenty of utils on the disks. The thing is, I even changed the memory expansion board with another one (have 2 amigas, the other one for parts mainly), but it didn't help. Two different ram cards ... they can't both be faulty ... right ?
I'm very close to tipping my hat too and saying fairwell to my Amiga as someone mentiond it earlier on The Org. ( Won't do it offcourse, but it's a very nerve consuming business I'll admit to that. )
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if the board was modified to see expansion as CHIP RAM, it would do it for both cards. and some games need 512 FAST RAM. you can see type of RAM with command: avail
srecno..
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Hvala.
What do you mean by "if the board has been modified ... " ? What board ? The morherboard ? I've seen it naked plenty of times so far and it doesn't look like it has been touched by anyone. No hw alterations as far as I can tell. How can one tell anyways ? Maybe I'm not looking at the right angle.
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It's dead easy to control - type avail into shell. What does it output?
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Can you tell me what is the exact filename of one of the ADF games that do not work and I can try it on one of my Amigas.
I know of one game "Final Fight" that refused to work on all of my Amigas until I got NTSC A1000. This was the only one that the Final Fight worked. I gont know why, my A500 was about same spec before I modified it to 1MB chip ram.
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Hvala.
What do you mean by "if the board has been modified ... " ? What board ? The morherboard ? I've seen it naked plenty of times so far and it doesn't look like it has been touched by anyone. No hw alterations as far as I can tell. How can one tell anyways ? Maybe I'm not looking at the right angle.
He's referring to your A500 motherboard being modified. I don't know the exact procedure, but it's well documented. What this modification does is to turn your 512K trapdoor "fast ram" into "chip ram" (also called graphics memory) which results in 1MB chip ram.
Basically, some games require 1MB chip ram, in which case 512K chip and 512K fast just wouldn't work. This is where the motherboard modification comes in.
It's possible that some of your games are not working because you do not have enough chip ram available.
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Can you tell me what is the exact filename of one of the ADF games that do not work and I can try it on one of my Amigas.
I know of one game "Final Fight" that refused to work on all of my Amigas until I got NTSC A1000. This was the only one that the Final Fight worked. I gont know why, my A500 was about same spec before I modified it to 1MB chip ram.
Ok, to name just a few:
Turrican II - The Final Fight_Disk1.adf
Syndicate_Disk1.adf
Cannon Fodder 2_Disk1.adf
Prince of Persia.adf
Lotus Turbo Challenge 2.adf
the intro loads fine, but afterwards it's just black screen and nothing happening.
Opposed to those, these work without any problems:
Another World_Disk1.adf (and 2)
Loom_Disk1.adf (2,3)
Leisure Suit Larry 1 - In the Land of the Lounge Lizards (remake)_Disk1.adf (2,3,4)
Dune_Disk1.adf (2,3)
Secret of Monkey Island, The_Disk1.adf (2,3,4)
and many others ...
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It's dead easy to control - type avail into shell. What does it output?
It outputs (amongst other things):
chip max: 523264
fast max: 524288
total : 1047552
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It outputs (amongst other things):
chip max: 523264
fast max: 524288
total : 1047552
So there you have it, you have an unmodified motherboard...512K CHIP, 512K FAST (trapdoor expansion). :)
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I tried "Turrican II - The Final Fight_Disk1.adf" in A500 rom 2.0, 1Meg chip, NTSC (this is normal A500 converted to A500+ with full ECS, I made a switch that I can boot in to PAL, I tested this game in PAL and it works fine too, music seems slower a bit) and A1000 Kick1.3, 512k chip, 1.5 Meg fast, NTSC, both work fine.
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iirc, the games you listed as working require only 512K RAM (not sure about Another World though). I'd try more of 1Mb RAM games.
The 'usual procedure' is to re-seat all chips (or at least press down until you hear crack) and maybe replace capacitors, test voltages too.
There was also an "Advanced Amiga Analyzer", some of its tests can be used without extra hardware, perhaps it can help.
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yaaa its true , pam machine is really helpfull, its gamimg part ,
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iirc, the games you listed as working require only 512K RAM (not sure about Another World though). I'd try more of 1Mb RAM games.
The 'usual procedure' is to re-seat all chips (or at least press down until you hear crack) and maybe replace capacitors, test voltages too.
There was also an "Advanced Amiga Analyzer", some of its tests can be used without extra hardware, perhaps it can help.
A bit lost here ... the avail command stated that I have 512kb chip and 512kb fast ram. You think there's something wrong with my ram ? Which one ? The one on the MB, or the one on the expansion card(s) ?
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A bit lost here ... the avail command stated that I have 512kb chip and 512kb fast ram. You think there's something wrong with my ram ? Which one ? The one on the MB, or the one on the expansion card(s) ?
could be, have you tried problematic games without the expansion RAM?
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could be, have you tried problematic games without the expansion RAM?
Yes. I've tried 'em without the extra ram. No go. I've pressed all the socketed chips until I heard a crack. Another no go. So, not a chip creep issue. I've even replaced the Denise chip with another one (don't ask me why, it sounded like a good idea at the moment), but it didn't work either.
To make the long story short ... some stuff works on my Amiga, some doesn't. I guess I'll just have to settle with what I've got.
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it is strange.. I'd run WhichAmiga in it and WinUAE, to make sure its the same config.
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Ok. I'll try. Where can I get WhichAmiga ?
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Ok. I'll try. Where can I get WhichAmiga ?
Found it. Ran it under WinUAE ... offcourse it worked. Tried to run it on Amiga, the Amiga said it's not an executable file and returned error code 10 or something similar.
I then ran SysInfo on Amiga and compared it with WhichAmiga output under WinUAE. The configurations are almost identical (Same Agnus, Denise chips, same CPU, same available memorym same kickstarts). I say almost becouse for some reason, WhichAmiga reported the cpu speed of 9 Mhz under WinUAE, but I don't think that's something I should bang my head against.
So, once again, I'm where I started, at the beginning. One thing though, I checked the file sizes of WhichAmiga, both on PC and Amiga.
The one on PC was 20KB in size, but once transfered, it only took up about 8 KB on Amiga floppy. Is this normal ? I know Amiga has a completely different file systems which utilises disk space much wisely than Windows, but ... "This is not an executable file" message is bugging me. I'm thinking ... maybe not all of my AExplorer transfers are sucessfull even though I don't get any transfer errors.
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"This is not an executable file" message is bugging me. I'm thinking ... maybe not all of my AExplorer transfers are sucessfull even though I don't get any transfer errors.
It certainly sounds like it. This is what you need to test, and the file sizes should be identical by the way. When you look at the file size on the Amiga you'll need to use the "list" command, or if the program has an icon (like WhichAmiga does) then you can select the icon and then select Info from the Workbench menu.
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"This is not an executable file" message is normal. IIRC, you need to set file attributes to make it 'executable'. it can be done with directory opus or similar, and in AmigaDOS.
(some) file attributes and comments are lost when copying from PC because of different filesystem. so its best to copy .lha archives, because it preserves them.
but, I don't have idea what is causing games to not work. I would try to expand it with hdd and fast RAM in hope that 'whdload games' would work.
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Firstly, sorry if this has been mentioned already as I browsed through the thread rather quickly.
What version of workbench are you using with AmigaExplorer ?
I had plenty problems (games not booting, file transfer hanging up) when I used and old copy of WB 1.3 with AE and it turned out that the WB disk contained a ton of old viruses. I used a adf. image downloaded from somewhere, it's called something like viruschecker.adf to remove the viruses, and voilá, the transferred adf's worked perfectly :)
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@lauri
its possible. still, most games are NDOS and virus can only damage bootblock in such case. but then intro wouldn't load at all.
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But if the workbench disk which is used for file transfer between PC and Amiga itself is filled with viruses, it can alter the data written to the disk IIRC.
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viruses usually alter only executable files, not disk images or archives, I think.
(one could use .dms instead of .adf, to rule out data corruption in transfer, dms has some integrity check)
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Ok, thanks for all your replys.
I think I've narroved a problem a bit.
I took out my "spare parts" only Amiga unit out of the closet, installed a fdd which it lacked and tried out all those games I was whining about not working on my second, troubling Amiga. Both units have exactly the same MBOs. Rock Lobster rev 6A.
On my spare Amiga everything works without any problems. So I figured, it must be a hardware problem. I then started replacing all the chips (Denise, Paula, Gary, CIAs, MC68KP8 ... but to no avail. The only IC still not replaced is Fat Agnus since I don't have the necessary IC removal tool to do so.
At this point I'm certain that it's not the dirty fdd heads, not the Amiga Explorer transfer, not the Rom sharer board (tried without it, just KS 1.3), not the viruses (checked the disks with several av utils) that was bugging me, but a hardware issue of some sort after all.
So, what do you think, could it be the Fatso giving me the headaches all this time ?
I'm in process of ordering two things:
1.) A PLCC extraction tool ( such as this: http://www.jonard.com/jonard-ecommerce/control/product/~product_id=11029 ) which will hopefully allow me to replace that last non soldered IC on the MBO
2.) Another rev 6A MBO in case the removal of Fat Agnus doesn't go smoothly, or it turns out it's not the Agnus but some other hw malfunction which I won't be able to fix.
Anywayz, thank you all for listening. Your help has been greatly appreciated.