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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Florida on June 24, 2013, 07:41:45 PM
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This is for a friend. Amiga 600HD with 1.3 and 2.0 Kickstart mounted on a Kickstart switcher. When in 1.3 mode, is his A600 then an A500? Same memory setup?
He is trying to run some old games and still having trouble.
If in Kick1.3, how does he activate his hard drive from Workbench (Compact Flash)
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This is for a friend. Amiga 600HD with 1.3 and 2.0 Kickstart mounted on a Kickstart switcher. When in 1.3 mode, is his A600 then an A500? Same memory setup?
He is trying to run some old games and still having trouble.
If in Kick1.3, how does he activate his hard drive from Workbench (Compact Flash)
I don't think so; there are some PCMCIA and IDE extensions in the A600 that have to be accounted for, right?
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Fairly certain you need at least Kickstart 2.05 for the A600 in order to support internal IDE header and PCMCIA slot. I assume you've already tried all the normal WHDLoad/Degrader/etc. options for your old games? AFAIK a few very old games require 1.2, possibly even earlier...
Also - not the same memory setup. An A600 is going to have 1MB of chip ram (again, unless you use some Degrader-like utility to cut that in half), so some games might not work right when they see that.
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A600 can never be 100% A500 compatible because A600 is missing the Numeric Keypad and some games require that.
But you should be able to get 99.8% compatible.
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When in 1.3 mode, is his A600 then an A500? Same memory setup?
Basically...
As for memory, a plain A600 with 1.3 is like an A500 with 1M CHIP RAM.
There are some old games that don't like anything other than 512k CHIP.
If in Kick1.3, how does he activate his hard drive from Workbench (Compact Flash)
He doesn't. It's A500 compatible and the A500 didn't have IDE or Compact Flash.
Degrader is the best option to get as close as you can for compatibility.
And WHDLoad if he has enough RAM.
desiv
(Now, you could try to burn your own 1.3 ROM that has the IDE (scsi.library??) from 2.0. I think that might work???? (not sure).. If that library doesn't also want a bunch or other 2.0 libs in ROM to work. )
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(Now, you could try to burn your own 1.3 ROM that has the IDE (scsi.library??) from 2.0. I think that might work???? (not sure).. If that library doesn't also want a bunch or other 2.0 libs in ROM to work. )
I believe someone did get it working in 1.3
However an a600 with 1.3 isn't going to be amazingly compatible. The lack of c00000 memory for a start (you may be able to hack the motherboard to get that working though).
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I think the question is: Is it compatible on the right issues?
Loosing IDE and PCMCIA is proberbly doable. But having memory at different places might be a full stop.
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I seem to remember that ECS versus OCS differences may affect compatibility too - though I never tested this assumption in practice.
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A game that works on OCS will work on ECS too. ECS is a big Win \o/.
Some badly coded games are incompatible with 1MB chipram tho. So u can use Degrader or other similar tool to disable the extra memory temporarily and get such a game working.
Some games are incompatible with extra floppy drives attached. So u can just use Degrader or other similar tool to disable the extra drives temporarily.
I used to hardcore test game compatiblity with a giant stack of different Amiga models and I kept a list of all the games and what their requirements were so when I had a game party I could quickly get any game in the universe working.
There are a few games which are tremendously badly coded and they just won't work on Kickstart 1.3, you MUST use Kickstart 1.2 on those few games. And there are a few others, mostly old EA games that require KS 1.1 (Arctic Fox, etc.)
There are probably at least 24 games that won't work on KS 2.0+ and MUST be started with KS1.3 but I did not really test for that. I was mainly testing 1.2 vs. 1.3,
512K chip vs 1MB or 2MB chip,
1 Floppy drive vs. 2 floppy drives,
PAL vs. NTSC. (huge numbers of games won't work in the wrong video mode)
Sometimes a game will work perfectly on your machine but then when u install a trainer suddenly the game has bizarre limitations (such as one of the things listed above). So u hafta watch out for "Virgin Game" vs. "Trained Game" differences.
There were also a couple of games that would not work if you had a modem plugged in. DOH!
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What's a tranier game vs virgin game?
About the modem thing... gosh! :D ;)
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If in Kick1.3, how does he activate his hard drive from Workbench (Compact Flash)
This might be a solution: http://aminet.net/package/util/boot/kick13scsipatch
It does however involve burning a new Kickstart 1.3 ROM.
Here is a much simpler solution: http://aminet.net/package/util/boot/GetSCSI11
But have in mind that this is originally meant to be used on a A1200 that is softkicked to ks1.3, but who knows, it might work on other Amiga models as well. It involves grabbing scsi.device from kickstart 2.05 or higher, and then creating a boot floppy which can be used for patching the system with scsi.device upon booting it.
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Does ".device" from a higher version work in a lower version just like that?
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This is for a friend. Amiga 600HD with 1.3 and 2.0 Kickstart mounted on a Kickstart switcher. When in 1.3 mode, is his A600 then an A500? Same memory setup?
He is trying to run some old games and still having trouble.
If in Kick1.3, how does he activate his hard drive from Workbench (Compact Flash)
the A600 with kick1.3 is not 100% compatible with the A500
however is more compatible than the A600 using kick 2.0
the A600 have ECS agnus and some old games don't work on it,examples double dragon 2/dragon ninja
also the A600 have 1mb ram chip while the A500 only 512kb chip, again some old games will not work, don't like 1mb chip
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I think ultimately your best solution if you want 100% A500 compatibility is to just pick up a cheap A500 off ebay, and give your A600 to me. :D
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I believe someone did get it working in 1.3
However an a600 with 1.3 isn't going to be amazingly compatible. The lack of c00000 memory for a start (you may be able to hack the motherboard to get that working though).
The way to get c00000 memory is to install a RAM board on top of the CPU which provides this.
Basically that is the biggest compatibility improvement you can make.
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I think ultimately your best solution if you want 100% A500 compatibility is to just pick up a cheap A500 off ebay, and give your A600 to me. :D
Getting an a500 is probably the best way, but even then you have to make the choice of kickstart 1.2 or 1.3 (or fit both)
An A600 isn't particularly useful either for a500 floppy game compatibility or using WHDLOAD. I've always wanted one because they look cute, but I can't imagine I'd ever use it.