Amiga 600, whdload and dissapearing memory

[walterg74]

Hi folks,

I took out my Amigas to start playing around a bit with them, as back in the day all I did was insert disk and play...

I'm trying to understand workbench/whdload and the behaviour I'm seeing on my computer and I am a bit puzzled...

- This is an Amiga 600

- It seems to have 2MB chip (away from home now, but I assume this would have something in the trapdoor right? As these came with 1MB stock? -and also wouldn't that trapdoor mem be fast ram and not chip/graphics as workbench tells me?)

- I fitted one of thise IDE/CF thingys with a car that came pre-loaded

The problem/thing that puzzles me is this:

On bootup, WB says at the title bar i have about 1.5 mb free. As I open the different folders (games, letter, etc.), that amount goes down. And drastically!

As an example, speedball 2. I will open the GAMES icon, mem goes down, then the S icon (that takes forever as there are a lot) and mem goes down in a huge waty! And then i open the Speedball 2 icon.

By the time I can actually see the speedball 2 icon to launch it, the free memory is arounf 200-400 Kb!!

So... WTH??? Is this normal Amiga behaviour? As I read there are lots of games that run with 2MB I would doubt it and think I'm doing something wrong, but don't know what...

Things I tried:

avail flush in a shell: pretty much does nothing..

The clear ram tool: as long as I leave the speedball 2 window open (even if closing all others that open prior to it, does nothing. If closing it then it frees it up.

So, what's going on???

Appreciate the help! :laugh1:

[walterg74]

This is all normal behaviour, the WHDLoad icons tend to be rather big, colourful icons that steal away your precious chipram. One way to improve the situation is to replace the icons with simpler icons, or use a dedicated WHDLoad launcher. Also, adding FastRAM helps, which on A600 means either getting hold of an acc-card or RAM card to fit inside the PCMCIA slot. These days, getting an acc-card is easier. Trapdoor RAM is only use to increase chipram from 1MB to 2MB, as you have seen.

Thanks Kolla.. so how do ppl woth 2MB run games? (Whatever games run with 2). Booting/launching differently? Because like I said, i lose all my memory before even launching the game :angry:

[walterg74]

Find the game with a Shell and run it. Or put smaller icons in folders that open a window just big enough to click on the small icon., like Kolle said.

Typically by using a dedicated launcher, like X-bench or Tinylauncher.

http://www.jimneray.com/xbench.html
http://ohmygibs.free.fr/ohmygibs/TinyLauncher.html

I must admit I have not tried any of them though.

Thanks guys, I will take a look at the links and also the suggesrions about icons (although still puzzles me that if this is "normal" behaviour, why didmthey make them this big to begin with...).

Kolla, I assume if you never even tried them you have lots of ram? :laugh1:

[walterg74]

Games marked OCS only or AGA only will NEVER work no matter what you do. Look for OCS/ECS, should be OK from launch year (1992 onwards) with work.

Not all games distros were tested with all Amigas sadly, but I must admit, I'm impressed with some of the collections. Very slick, very compatible. Sometimes better than original release too.

Got it, will take a look at that as well. I actually have quite a few Amigas, just the 600 was the one I pulled first to test this, but besides that one I also have an Amiga 1000 with 256+256 and an additional 2MB side expansion for it, a 500+ with 2MB plus a sidecar with HDD + 2MB more, this 600 with 2MB & CF, and a 1200 also with stock 2MB and CF. Also waiting for an NTSC A500 (except the 1000 the other 3 are PAL) which with luck I will get in Feb.
Other tidbits include a Gotek drive, a 2MB PCMCIA RAM card, and waiting (also in Feb) for a Blizzard 1220/4 for the 1200.

I think with all this, I should be able to do *something* :lol:

[walterg74]

@walterg74

Your problem is that there are too many drawers in one window. Each drawer has a .info file associated with it which contains a graphic of the icon for the drawer. If you have hundreds in one window your machine will run out of chip RAM, despite all the icons being the same. Personally I'd delete all the drawer .info files as they're pointless and only slow down directory reads of your games. Use a file manager to navigate through your games such as DOPUS, then set a custom button up in your file manager called WHDLoad and have it launch your slaves at the touch of a button.
On such a low spec Amiga as yours, use AGLaunch or TinyLauncher or XBench right from bootup instead of loading Workbench. You can run WHDLoad this way with 2MB chip RAM but it's hardly fun and a lot of slaves require a 68020 CPU and more RAM.

Your best choice here is to buy an ACA 620 card. That will run all the non-AGA games as it has a 68020 CPU with plenty of FastRAM.

Another choice is a 2MB or preferably 4MB PCMCIA card. But again, due to lack of 68020 there's a good chunk of slaves that will not work unless the slave authors fix them for 68000's. When I last fiddled with a 68000 WHDLoad machine which was 5 years ago I'd say a quarter of games wanted a 68020...this might be better now, I'm not sure.

Thanks Paul, I will read up some (a lot of) info to know how to actually do those things, and I will give it a try but is is nice to know why the computer behaves like that just by opening folders... seems pretty crappy and never would have thought it worked this way.

In any case, jus thapoened to pull out the 600 and play around with it, but I also have a 1200 that, while,right now is also stock, I will be geting in a few weeks a Blizzard 1220/4, which will give me the upgraded 68020 as well as 4MB more