Old Amiga 500/2000 games not working on A1200

[beller]

I tired of trying to figure out how to get very old 1.3 games to work on my A4000 or 1200.  I found a very nice A500 last fall at the Sacto. Amiga show and found an excent Supra A500 HD with memory on the net.  Perfect old school gaming...no hassle.  And likely cheaper than finding an '030 for an A1200!

Bob

[murple]

WHDLoad is incredibly easy to use... dont know why the problems.

First you need the ROM images, either from Cloanto, made yourself, or from warez sites on the net. Install these in DEVS:Kickstarts, you'll want at least the A500 and A4000 (or 1200) ROMs (1.3 and 3.0). If you use the Cloanto ROMS make sure you also copy the rom.key to the Kickstarts dir.

You need to get the SKick package from Aminet and install the *.RTB files from it into DEVS:Kickstarts too.

Install WHDLoad, you really only need the user binaries unless youre going to make your own installs, then get WHDLoad-dev.

Thats basically it. Run any installers you want and stick in the game disk when asked. I dont see how it could be messed up if you follow the instructions. It took me less than 5 minutes to install WHDLoad and a few games.

What does your Kickstart dir look like?

[Tomas]

@murple
It is a bit more complicated than that.. You have to have a specific version of the kickstart for it to work. I recall i had to go through quite a few before i found the right 1.3 kickstart for WHDload.

[murple]

Were you using nonstandard/hacked ROMs? I followed the instructions and it worked on the first try. If you've got Cloanto's Amiga Forever, you can just use those. Failing that, any ROM image made from an Amiga 500 with the recommended AmiNet tool should work, I'd think. Specific programs may require specific ROMs, but WHDLoad itself shouldn't. If the program will run on the computer you got the ROM image from, it will run with that ROM and WHDLoad. I dont know if there's really that many versions of the Amiga 500 ROM. As far as I know there is only ONE version of the 1.3 ROM in Amiga 500s... but I have heard of hacked ROMs floating around which have been modified from the original image.

http://www.whdload.de/docs/en/need.html

[Christian Johansson]

I also had some problems with WHDLoad on my Microbotics 1230/33. I could get most games to run with NOAUTOVEC and NOMMU tooltypes, but i think i never got BeachVolley working on that card.

[vic20owner]

I am familiar with the roms and skick.  I've tested the roms by skicking into 1.3, but of course I couldn't boot because my HD is IDE on a 1200.

I did try no autovecs but I did not try nommu.

So yes, I have the correct kickstart (per the install docs for the state of the art installer), named correctly in the devs:kickstarts dir and I have the skick utils in c:.

Maybe I should make a video and put it on you tube.  Honestly how could anyone screw this up, it's easy.  It just doesn't work on my computer.

Which version of the state of the art demo are you running? There are two... one uses fastram or something, I can't remember the details.. the readme was sort of cryptic.

Today I went through a box of 100 amiga 500 floppies... of those only a few games worked on my A1200, even after setting CPU CACHE DISABLED and ECS chipset before booting.

Didn't try a degrader... didn't have much time today.

[murple]

A YoutTube video of attempting to install SOTA would probably helpful. Considering all the problems you're having... assuming your hardware isn't damaged, you've got to be doing SOMETHING wrong. What version of WHDLoad did you install? How did you install it? Can you show us your ROM directory listing?

I used the SOTA from Spaceball's website, but I believe the WHDLoad installer is able to work with both versions.

With the floppies... did you boot ECS/no cache and go into workbench, then load the floppies? Im not sure that it works the same if you boot from floppy after using the early boot menu.

[motrucker]

There are ways around this, with WHDload being one of the best, however, this easiest is to keep you A500 handy.
I still have an A1000 that I use for old games. There are a few that don't even like the "new" 1.3 OS!

[Eclipse]

Sometimes the whdload game itself is bad.
Speedball 2 just would not work, I downloaded it from elsewhere and hey presto it worked.

[AmigaMance]

@orb85750
 I ensure you that an unexpanded Amiga 1200 can replace an A500 for about 90-95% of the A500 games/demos.
 The best degrader is TUDE. You can install it in your HD. No need to insert a degrader disk first.
 If your amiga is an escom model, you will most likely need to apply the hardware "floppy disk fix" as it came out with a fault. Search Aminet and this forum about it.

[RW222]

Didn't find anything that wouldn't work on my early A1200 with one I got on a PD disk called "kick 1.3" haven't seen that on Aminet, think it might be on some of those PD CDs compiled from BBSes.

[scuzzb494]

Hi

Really depends on your other hardware. I was OK with most games till I got the accelerator. Also a PCMCIA RAM card can cause problems. Sure, you can degrade but often thats tricky when your running the game out of Workbench. The trick is quite simple... I have always had an A500 set up next to my A1200. That was till this weekend when the Joystick port finally died playing Turrican. Anyway I swapped out the CIAs which was sad cus the seals had never been broken. That didn`t work so I swapped the motherboard. A500 bits and pieces are very very cheap and easy to come by. I wouldn`t be without the A500... Specially as loads of games that I seem to acquire come on the back of old copied floppies... ( bad boy )... So I don`t risk the 1200 with old disks I just bang them in the 500 and off I go. The 500 takes a real hammering... Magic machine. Back to Turrican.

PS A copy of Turrican 2 went on Ebay this week for £52. Worth more than the computer you play it on... happy days.

scuzz
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com

[tokyoracer]

I have never experienced games that don't work on a stock 1200. Especially with that "Boot Options - Disable CPU Cache - Use - Display Options - Original - Use - Boot" trick.
Learnt that wise process at a young age. :lol:

[scuzzb494]

Hi

Populous 1989 Bullfrog. Has never worked on my 1200, even with all those things switched off. I just had another go and as ever the game loads but the mouse locks up and then the disk goes in a spin. Has happened on every disk that I have ever had.

scuzz