Amiga 600HD game compatibility?

[orb85750]

Why is my Amiga 600HD so incompatible with many A500/2000 games?  For Christ sake, it has a 68000!!

[orb85750]

Your hard drive buffers are using to much memory.  Just add 1MB or more of fastram and you are all set.

I have the trap door memory expansion, so I doubt the memory is the problem.  Some games work absolutely fine.  Others don't work at all, even though they work fine on my A500 (with 2.0 ROM). For example, Qix won't load at all (blinking "software error" red text on black background).  Bionic Commando loads and the music starts, but the graphics are completely garbled, with 100 horizontal lines in various colors going through the screen.  Thoughts?

[orb85750]

NTSC.  OK, right, chip ram.  Hmmm.... How do I get fast ram into this machine?  The PCMCIA slot? Any good sources?  The games work fine on my A500 with 2.0, so the OS must not be the issue, right?  Could the ECS chipset be the problem or is it almost certainly a ram issue?

[orb85750]

Use WHDLoad if you find some fastram. You can use iGame too if you disable screenshot preview (you'll need some extra MCCs, I recompiled and uploaded to Aminet special 68000 versions). You could buy A608 expansion, it works great.

Or load KS1.3 (I softboot it by software) and use a degrader.

I prefer not to use WHDLoad.  Shouldn't I be able to get this machine fully compatible with the same disks that work on my OS2.0 A500?

[orb85750]

Are you using original or cracked versions of those games? Qix and Bionic Commando? I can test these games on my Amigas and see what happens for me too, but to be 100% sure I'll need to know the exact versions of those games you're trying. Here are the systems I have set up for testing:

A500 512kChip/512kFast Kickstart 1.3
A500 512kChip/512kFast Kickstart 3.1 and 1.3 on a ROM Switcher
A600 1MBChip/2MBFast (PCMCIA SRAM) Kickstart 2.05
A600 2MBChip/2MBFast (PCMCIA SRAM) Kickstart 3.1 and 1.3 on a ROM Switcher
A1200 2MBChip/32MBFast 030/28 Kickstart 3.1
A1200 2MBChip/128MBFast 030/50 Kickstart 3.1

I have a feeling it may be the lack of FastRAM causing it though, but we'll see what I can find out.

Thank you.  Those are both originals.  I bought the Bionic Commando way back in 1989 (I think) soon after I bought my first A500, which is still mint.  :-)

[orb85750]

If his A500 was PAL and his A600 was NTSC (or vice versa) then that would perfectly explain all his problems.

Did anyone install a PAL switch into your A500 or A600?

I just tested my Bionic Commando and Qix and they are both NTSC.  But you may have different versions than me.

Have you tried using Degrader (or similar util) to disable 1 MB of your A600 chipmem?  You don't normally need to do that but Bionic Commando is very old and its by Capcom so you'd better try it.

I have two A600 (one with the standard OS 2.0x (2.05?) and another with OS 3.1).  Both games fail to load properly in exactly the same way on both machines.  I have tried them with and without the trap-door memory expansion.  It makes no difference.  I have not tried a degrader or any softkick stuff from the web.  (At the moment, I don't have an easy way of getting such software onto the machine.)  I suppose that one should always have an A500 or A2000 on hand if one wants *seamless & easy* compatibility with some older games?

[orb85750]

If you have 3.1 have you tried switiching to OCS on the early boot menu?
and trying Relokick is shurely easyer then getting another Amiga.

Strange thing is that Bionic Commando has started working properly on all my machines.  That is a total mystery to me.  Qix still does not load on either of my A600 machines, but it works fine on my A500.  I've tried every possible permutation in the early menu screen, to no avail.

[orb85750]

Hi there. I tried Bionic Commando and it worked on all my machines and configurations, from the 1.3 A500 to the 4MB 3.1 A600 and the 030 A1200s. I couldn't find a working copy of Qix to test, sorry. So I guess maybe your A600 might have dirty heads in the floppy drive, have you used a head cleaning kit?

Cammy:  Thanks so much for your time and efforts!  I'm still astonished that Bionic Commando is now working for me too on the A600, even though I have not changed a thing.  (Can a floppy disk really fix itself?) Qix works only on the A500 not the A600 (weird) -- won't even boot on the A600.