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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Gaming => Topic started by: barney on November 26, 2012, 01:43:35 PM
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I know several people have said that a 68000 is too slow to run WHDLoad, and I agree with that. I was curious though....is it possible to run it with a 68010? I have used this CPU in the past and saw a slight speed increase on some games but I have never tried it with WHDLoad. Has anybody ever tried it before. If you have, please give me your results. Thanks.
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I know several people have said that a 68000 is too slow to run WHDLoad
Tell those people to know what they're talking about. That's nonsense.
I use Whdload in my plain 68000 Minimig in 7Mhz mode (As I did in my A600) and 68000 games run at 68000 speed.
Whdload is NOT an emulator. If a game is slow on a plain 68000 then it's going to be the same if you run in from floppies or a clean Whdload install.
The ONLY exceptions are a few 68000 games wich have blitter waits inserted in their Whdload installs, wich allow the games to run at the right speed on higher-end machines (James Pond 1, for example). But if you're running those games on a plain 68000 then all you need to do is disable the blitter waits, and presto, you get the same speed on a 68000 as the game has in a... well, a 68000 :D
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Thanks for the info man. Thats good news. This opens up a whole new world for me. I do have one more question for you. I'm thinking about installing it on my Amiga 1000. It only has 512k chip ram and will have 8mb fast ram. Will WHDLoad still work, or will I have too little chip ram? Thanks.
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Thanks for the info man. Thats good news. This opens up a whole new world for me. I do have one more question for you. I'm thinking about installing it on my Amiga 1000. It only has 512k chip ram and will have 8mb fast ram. Will WHDLoad still work, or will I have too little chip ram? Thanks.
You'll be short on chip for many games, as games that demanded 1MB chip RAM in the Amiga 500 period were quite a lot. When a game needs ChipRam, it NEEDS ChipRam. Even if you get 128MB of fastram, you'll have just 512KB of ChipRam :(
I don't know much about the Amiga 1000, never seen one in person, maybe it's possible to fit 1MB of ChipRam... Other people can help you better with that.
The other BIG problem I see is that kickstart ROM on an Amiga 1000 will be 1.x. That's bad because Whdload won't work unless you softload (softboot?) into a 2.x or 3.x kickstart. But I believe I read about you already doing so in some other thread!
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Like you mentioned, on my Amiga 2000 with 3 way ROM selector, WHDLoad work with Kickstart 1.3 selected. Strange but it does work fine. Maybe I would have similar luck with My 1000. I'll have to give it a try and see.
This is kind of off topic, but would having Fast Ram installed on an Amiga 1000 make a difference in playing games off floppy disks? Is the computer able to cache the game in memory resulting in smoother game play and less disk swaps? Thanks.
You'll be short on chip for many games, as games that demanded 1MB chip RAM in the Amiga 500 period were quite a lot. When a game needs ChipRam, it NEEDS ChipRam. Even if you get 128MB of fastram, you'll have just 512KB of ChipRam :(
I don't know much about the Amiga 1000, never seen one in person, maybe it's possible to fit 1MB of ChipRam... Other people can help you better with that.
The other BIG problem I see is that kickstart ROM on an Amiga 1000 will be 1.x. That's bad because Whdload won't work unless you softload (softboot?) into a 2.x or 3.x kickstart. But I believe I read about you already doing so in some other thread!
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This is kind of off topic, but would having Fast Ram installed on an Amiga 1000 make a difference in playing games off floppy disks? Is the computer able to cache the game in memory resulting in smoother game play and less disk swaps? Thanks.
Well, it's actually up to the game. I know MANY games will show nice screens saying "memory expansion in use!" or something similar, and you'll get a warm feeling, better graphics or more audio effects, etc... But I recall that happened most in the Amiga 500 days and I believe these games were really using my trapdoor chipram expansion (I've been using Whdload for so long I almost forgot those things). I hate floppies.
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I know several people have said that a 68000 is too slow to run WHDLoad, and I agree with that.
In the majority of cases WHDload will run fine with 68000. Some of the "fixes" done for 68020+ CPU's can be detrimental on games which relied on exact timing. (e.g. Turrican 3 intro)
9/10 times where people have reported WHDload being too slow on their 68000 Amiga it will be because they don't have enough memory to pre-load the game image + kickstart emulation into RAM. In that situation WHDload will attempt to load the game dynamically from disk. Each disk access requires stopping the game. Accessing the hard drive. Starting the game. Very slow.
So you need between 2 and 4Mbytes of Fast RAM + 1Mbyte of Chip RAM to be able to run most single disk games.
is it possible to run it with a 68010?
Yes and adding a 68010 CPU will give WHDload the ability to quit back to the OS without a reset. But RAM is key... not CPU power.
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About a month ago I build myself A500 and GVP HD8+ with 2.0 roms sytems. Changed fatter agnus and soldered 1mb chip hack. Whdload and about 300mb of games.
Generally nice system, most of games work just fine.
Problem of 68000 is that it doesn't have vbr remove command, so about a 1/3 games doesn't have working quit button.
Point of installing 68010 is that quit button will allways work with it, because it has a vbr remove command.
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Problem of 68000 is that it doesn't have vbr remove command, so about a 1/3 games doesn't have working quit button.
CTRL+Amiga+Amiga.
Point of installing 68010 is that quit button will allways work with it, because it has a vbr remove command.
Problem with installing a 68010 is that you'll have difficulty playing games from floppy disk due to incompatibility. But no more than say an A1200.
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I don' understand why someone would like to play with floppies. I tried to transfer amiga explorer to that machine and I needed to use/format about 5 floppien until I found working one.
Whdload is soooooo much better system.
There is plenty of problems with A500, 68010 is not big problem. Many games requires 512kb chip and 512kp fast, or just 512kb chip etc. Whdload fix them all
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WHDLoad works fine with 2MB Chip / 2MB Fast. Although alot more useable when I went to 8MB.
The 68k handled them fine and speed was okay except for some Sierra games. Alittle laggy.
Went to a 68010 and that was fine too, thought I needed it for the quit to key to work. But tested that on my setup with the 68k and the quit key was still working. So puzzled by that. Might be the games I tried. :)
My current setup is fine for 90% of the games out there and the speed is fine.
Can run 8 colours in the workbench too :-) No wallpaper though that kills it :-/
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Well, it's actually up to the game. I know MANY games will show nice screens saying "memory expansion in use!" or something similar, and you'll get a warm feeling, better graphics or more audio effects, etc... But I recall that happened most in the Amiga 500 days and I believe these games were really using my trapdoor chipram expansion (I've been using Whdload for so long I almost forgot those things). I hate floppies.
Most amiga 500 games expect the trapdoor ram to be at c00000, which is neither chip or fast. The hardware partly treats it like chip ram, you can't use it for sound or graphics but you can't access it while the custom chips are accessing chip ram either. While the OS treats it as fast ram.
I don't know if anyone ever did a memory upgrade for the a1000 that sits at that address, but it should be doable.
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Tell those people to know what they're talking about. That's nonsense.
I use Whdload in my plain 68000 Minimig in 7Mhz mode (As I did in my A600) and 68000 games run at 68000 speed.
Whdload is NOT an emulator. If a game is slow on a plain 68000 then it's going to be the same if you run in from floppies or a clean Whdload install.
The ONLY exceptions are a few 68000 games wich have blitter waits inserted in their Whdload installs, wich allow the games to run at the right speed on higher-end machines (James Pond 1, for example). But if you're running those games on a plain 68000 then all you need to do is disable the blitter waits, and presto, you get the same speed on a 68000 as the game has in a... well, a 68000 :D
Yes i also have Whdload on my 2 Amiga 2000, the one with 5 MB ram and the other with 9 MB ram. And they runs almost every game perfect. So 68000 is good for Whdload
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@Lassie
What kickstart ROM is in your A2000?
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Most amiga 500 games expect the trapdoor ram to be at c00000, which is neither chip or fast.
If you have such an A500 then you can mod it so that the trapdoor RAM is CHIPram.
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I know several people have said that a 68000 is too slow to run WHDLoad, and I agree with that. I was curious though....is it possible to run it with a 68010? I have used this CPU in the past and saw a slight speed increase on some games but I have never tried it with WHDLoad. Has anybody ever tried it before. If you have, please give me your results. Thanks.
A 68010 is exactly the same as a 68000 except:
It was easy to get them a little faster, like 12 or 16 Mhz
If you plug in a 68010 that is running at 7.15909Mhz as the 68000 then all that changes is:
1. Mul#? instructions go significantly faster. But no self-respecting asm coder uses MUL in a time critical loop :) Nevertheless I have seen cracktros run at much higher framerate on a 7Mhz 68010 than on 7Mhz 68000. Obviously they used Muls to calc their 3D rotating gfx. Shame on them :)
2. 68010 has Loop Mode Very tiny loops can run from internal cache. Does it really matter to you? Meh
3. On 68010 the Move SR, instruction is privileged. That means its ILLEGAL. So any game that uses it will work on 68000 and blow up on 68010. Maybe WHDLoad has a fancy patch for this? Donno.
Bottom line: A 68010 introduces software incompatibilities for only a tiny improvement in speed. I say it isn't worth it. But you can do what you want :) If I was going to suffer incompatibilities to old badly coded gamez then I would just go ahead and use a 68030 or higher.
I always kept at least 1 Amiga with a plain 68000 for 100% compatibility reasons.
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@Lassie
What kickstart ROM is in your A2000?
Hi they have 2.0 ROMS ( 37.175 )
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Hi they have 2.0 ROMS ( 37.175 )
What is your experience with WHDLoad and a 1.3 ROM?
A couple of years ago
I was going to set up my old A2000 1MB chip 8 MB fast + some kind of SCSI hard drive controller that maybe works or maybe doesn't as a WHDLoad arcade game center.. but I read somewhere (sounded very authoritative) that WHDLoad would not work on KS 1.3 so I gave up my idea and put my box of 4GB SCSI drives in the closet.
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3. On 68010 the Move SR, instruction is privileged. That means its ILLEGAL. So any game that uses it will work on 68000 and blow up on 68010. Maybe WHDLoad has a fancy patch for this? Donno.
A lot of games run in supervisor mode, which doesn't cause a problem. As this affects all subsequent processors it can't be a big problem, or the games wouldn't run on an 020/030/040/060 either.
I'm not sure I'd bother with just swapping a 68000 for a 68010, because it will still run at 7mhz. There are 14mhz hacks, but even these don't make a huge difference & can cause incompatibilities.
If you want a faster processor then an accelerator is the best way (I have a blizzard 14mhz 68000 accelerator with fast ram on ebay).
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A lot of games run in supervisor mode, which doesn't cause a problem.
Oh really. I never knew that. What is the advantage of doing that?
Why would one game do it but another refuse to do it?
As this affects all subsequent processors it can't be a big problem, or the games wouldn't run on an 020/030/040/060 either.
When 020 first came out I remember a lot of stuff crashing on it in 1987. donno why tho. Could have been self-modifying code or illegal instruction.
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What is your experience with WHDLoad and a 1.3 ROM?
A couple of years ago
I was going to set up my old A2000 1MB chip 8 MB fast + some kind of SCSI hard drive controller that maybe works or maybe doesn't as a WHDLoad arcade game center.. but I read somewhere (sounded very authoritative) that WHDLoad would not work on KS 1.3 so I gave up my idea and put my box of 4GB SCSI drives in the closet.
I must admit that i have never tried Whdload with KS 1.3 ROM. But i think Whdload Requires minimum 2.0 ROM.
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Oh really. I never knew that. What is the advantage of doing that?
Why would one game do it but another refuse to do it?
I don't know why some people switched to supervisor mode, but they did.
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=65247
When 020 first came out I remember a lot of stuff crashing on it in 1987. donno why tho. Could have been self-modifying code or illegal instruction.
Yeah, anything running in user mode would crash. Commodore added a call to exec for GetSR() & SetSR() that worked on everything, but not all software used it. However WHDLoad obviously has a solution to the problem as everyone is running 68000 games on 020+.
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I use Whdload in my plain 68000 Minimig in 7Mhz mode (As I did in my A600) and 68000 games run at 68000 speed.
I've never turned off "turbo mode" on my Minimig. :)
WHDLoad works like a charm off my ClassicWB HDF file. It boots off a KS3.1 ROM and I have 1MB to Chip RAM and 2.5MB to Fast RAM.
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I've never turned off "turbo mode" on my Minimig. :)
WHDLoad works like a charm off my ClassicWB HDF file. It boots off a KS3.1 ROM and I have 1MB to Chip RAM and 2.5MB to Fast RAM.
I'd like to do the same, but TURBO mode breaks audio on many games, like Ishar, wich I play often. (Well, in-game sounds are there, but the AWESOME Conan-esque intro music has wrong timming in Turbo mode, and I always start a game getting into mood with that music).
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What is your experience with WHDLoad and a 1.3 ROM?
A couple of years ago
I was going to set up my old A2000 1MB chip 8 MB fast + some kind of SCSI hard drive controller that maybe works or maybe doesn't as a WHDLoad arcade game center.. but I read somewhere (sounded very authoritative) that WHDLoad would not work on KS 1.3 so I gave up my idea and put my box of 4GB SCSI drives in the closet.
I got my Amiga 2000 to work with WHDLoad with KS 1.3. I also got Workbench 3.1 to work with KS 1.3. I wish I could tell you what I did to make it work but I can't. It just works.
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I was thinking. I wanted to install WHDLoad on my Amiga 1000 after I installed a hard drive and added memory. Now I find out that only 512kb chip ram isn't sufficient enough for WHDLoad. Now I am wondering whether adding ram to an Amiga 1000 is even feasable. What would be the point? Is there a way around the 512kb chip ram barrier on the 1000?
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I was thinking. I wanted to install WHDLoad on my Amiga 1000 after I installed a hard drive and added memory. Now I find out that only 512kb chip ram isn't sufficient enough for WHDLoad. Now I am wondering whether adding ram to an Amiga 1000 is even feasable. What would be the point? Is there a way around the 512kb chip ram barrier on the 1000?
Now u see why I gave my A1000 away.
u could solder identical ram chips on top of your existing ram chips for an extra 256K chipram but that does not solve ur problem.
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Now u see why I gave my A1000 away.
u could solder identical ram chips on top of your existing ram chips for an extra 256K chipram but that does not solve ur problem.
You'd have to fit a 1mb or 2mb agnus, but they aren't pin compatible. There was an adapter back in the day, but I think it's better to keep things original.
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What I would really like to do is install an Amiga 500 motherboard into an Amiga 1000 case. That would definitely get around the 512kb barrier. But somthing like that would be hard as hell to do.