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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: blakespot on March 02, 2026, 08:35:54 PM
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There are quite a few oldschool Amiga OCS/ECS demos that will run as intended, perfectly, smoothly only on base Amiga 1000, 500, 2000 systems with 68000 CPU -- unaccelerated. One example is TBL's Eon (2019) -- an incredible demo.
I've encountered a very few games that fall into this category also.
Will these run properly with 68000-emulator accelerators such as the PiStorm? It emulates the 68000, but can it do so with 100% never-failing, cycle-exact precision when operating as a base, unaccelerated 68000 at 7.16/7.09 MHz?
The demos I speak of fail to run or run visibly broken with most accelerators, including my A2620 (14.32MHz 68020).
...what I am actually looking for is an accelerator - of any sort - for my NTSC Amiga 2000 (6.4 NTSC motherboard) that has a physical switch to allow it to be disabled to easily enjoy these demos without having to do the mouse-button menu dance to enable/disable the accelerator. Given that I cannot apparently attach a switch to the pads on this board to switch between NTSC and PAL, I have to boot into Degrader and go to PAL for demos, and in combination with the mouse-button menu for 68000 mode and the retention behavior (or lack there of) after reboots makes this maddening. I want an accelerator with a HARDWARE SWITCH that lets me enable or disable acceleration. I just assumed that the emulated-68000 boards are not precise enough for such time-critical demos.
(Someone out there added a switch to their A2630 (nearly identical board to my A2620) - and so doing so to my board is theoretically possible, but looking at the schematics, it's beyond my abilities, quite sadly.)
Thanks.
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Why not just use WHDLoad to run demos (and old games)?
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Why not just use WHDLoad to run demos (and old games)?
I do use WHDload often, but not all games and demos exist under WHDload in a fashion that runs them perfectly smoothly as intended, as I described.
And in some cases, WHDload introduces slow downs. See my Zeewolf 2 video showing this: https://youtu.be/gXs0AX9LlEI
bp
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I do use WHDload often, but not all games and demos exist under WHDload in a fashion that runs them perfectly smoothly as intended, as I described.
And in some cases, WHDload introduces slow downs. See my Zeewolf 2 video showing this: https://youtu.be/gXs0AX9LlEI
bp
You tried WHDload Wrapper? in my experience, anything that had issues or never worked. Instantly were sorted by using this.
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You tried WHDload Wrapper? in my experience, anything that had issues or never worked. Instantly were sorted by using this.
I am unfamiliar with WHDload Wrapper. I shall go take a look. Still, I'd rather not rely entirely on WHDload for running items of the sort I'm talking about.
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WHDLoad Wrapper uses a database of games and demos with known-to-work configurations of WHDLoad for Emu68, some configurations adjusting parameters of the Emu68 CPU emulation before launching the game/demo (and resetting them on exit, I presume.) You can also do such adjustments manually before starting games/demos, to improve compatibility when not using WHDLoad. With PiStorm you also have the option of usign Linux+Musashi as CPU emulator instead of Emu68, which in some (rare) cases can work better than Emu68. For exact compatibility, either keep real hardware around, or use full software emulator like WinUAE - no CPU accelerator ever targeted full compatibility with old picky software.