A2000 questions / problems

[dougal]

I just got an A2000 which is in a very shabby state and I'm fixing it up. The motherboard is revision 4 and it has kickstart 1.3 and I believe 512k ram.

The psu is of an AT PC fitted to work on the a2000.

The machine boots up and loads workbench from floppy but most games are not working or start loading and then stops loading.

Does the a2000 suffer from incompatibility?

Also in workbench it says there is less than 400k free memory. It's like 38 something. Is that normal ?

I must add that I am using a pc floppy drive which I adapted to work with an amiga. I did also use an a500 drive with the same results.

[doctorq]

Most games requires 1 MB ram and Workbench uses memory when loaded. There is nothing that sounds strange at all.

[dougal]

Most games requires 1 MB ram and Workbench uses memory when loaded. There is nothing that sounds strange at all.

Fair enough... But even old games like Chase HQ and Ninja Warriors are giving problems loading.

I tried using an A500 floppy cable and had some more success loading games.

Is it possible that the long floppy cable of the A2000 is somehow faulty?

If so i did try using a PC floppy cable and it worked like the A500 one which is pretty good, but when on the kickstart screen the screen keeps flashing until i insert a disk then it loads ok. I am not sure but maybe the PC floppy cable might need to be modded?

[motrucker]

The floppy cable can be a very touchy spot. Using a "PC" floppy can cause trouble. You really need more RAM too. Very few games will load into 400 Kb.

[save2600]

Depends on the game you're trying to run, but 512kb was enough for many, if not MOST of the games released during the 1.3 and under era. You don't load WB first and then the game though. Insert the game, turn on your computer and enjoy!

Sounds like something's amiss with your PC floppy hack though. Get a real Amiga drive in that bad boy and make sure the jumpers are correct on both the mobo and the floppy drive.

[dougal]

Depends on the game you're trying to run, but 512kb was enough for many, if not MOST of the games released during the 1.3 and under era. You don't load WB first and then the game though. Insert the game, turn on your computer and enjoy!

Sounds like something's amiss with your PC floppy hack though. Get a real Amiga drive in that bad boy and make sure the jumpers are correct on both the mobo and the floppy drive.

Same result using an A500 floppy drive

I guess ill experiment a little with it. You mentioned jumpers on the motherboard. I have no instruction manual and the motherboard gives no indication of which jumper does what

And as for the ram, I just bought and am waiting for a 2Mb upgrade

[rkauer]

A MiniMegaChip/MiniMegiChip/MegaRAM will be expensive. Grab a 4Mb half-length FAST memory expansion for your A2000 and be happy.

 They are pretty cheap and will make wonders for your A2000.

 Better than this is grabbing/renting/robbing/buying a SCSI controller with some memory on it, like the A2091 (auto-boot if ROM is 1.3 or better, have up to 2Mb FAST RAM) or (the better) GVP HD8+ (Fast SCSI, up to 8Mb with ordinary 30-pin 1Mb SIMM).