Old Amiga 500/2000 games not working on A1200

[orb85750]

Well, I was hoping that my "new" Commodore A1200 with hard drive would replace my old A500 completely.  Apparently, this is not going to be the case, because about half my older Amiga games don't seem to work on the A1200, even when I simply attempt to use the floppy only, change boot-up options, etc.  I guess it's mainly a rogue programming issue and/or backward compatibility of the AGA chipset?  (I have the stock A1200 with larger hard drive.)  I had not read much about this issue before purchasing the A1200, except for a couple of posts about a small fraction of the old software not working on the A1200/4000 (certainly not half my collection!)

-Dave

[Homer]

I use a "degrader" floppy to make them work. Take a look an Aminet  :-)

[murple]

www.whdload.de fixes everything.

Also many games will work if you boot up into the Early Boot Menu and select OCS or ECS mode rather than AGA. If most of your games are old games made for OCS machines, I'm not at all surprised half of them won't work right for you if you just try to run them.

[Flashlab]

There are ways to make older software work. Search on this forum for relokick and whdload. I highly recommend whdload. It's a harddisk installer for a lot of games and it also fixes issues that make software break on AGA or higher specced Amigas. You can even run the games from WB and quit back to it! You might need a bit more memory than the standard 2Mb chipram though to make it work more reliably.

[Tomas]

@orb85750
What you need to do is install the games to the HD by using some software called WHDload.
With WHDload, you can run nearly all classic a500 games without problem. Though some games need a bit more ram than the standard 2meg that comes as stock. How much ram do you got? I have a 68020 accelerator with 4meg fast, and i can run pretty much anything.

WHDload will also eliminate the need for swapping disks and will make the games load in just seconds.

[Andeda]

With whdload i have manage to play almost every A500 games that i have tried, i have my A1200 expanded with 68030 accelerator with 16Meg Ram.
The only game i dont have manage to install perfectly is Airborn ranger, but i cant remember anymore what kind of problem i had  :roll:

[Rob]

I think the few games I can't run with WHD load have to do with the 040 and 060 cards I've had in my A1200.

Like others said you really need some fast ram to get most games to run with WHD load.

With extra ram or a 68030 you will get much better frame rate in flight and driving simulators such as F1G and F19.
AI intensive game like Battle Chess spend less time calculating the users moves.
I also noticed that Settlers will take advantage of fast ram by allowing you to have much larger maps.

[orb85750]

I do have just the stock 2mb ram.  I presume that upgrading the ram will be much cheaper and easier than getting a 68030, but I'm not even sure how to upgrade the ram or where to get it.  Any suggestions?  (Note to previous poster: The early boot-up sequence to disable the AGA didn't seem to help at all.)

[Tomas]

I believe amigakit"http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com" had a 4meg ram addon in stock, but it looks like it is gone now.  :-(

But anyways.. All you do is slide the ram/board into the bay underneath your 1200. You do not even need to open the amiga.

[murple]

Get an accelerator with RAM. If youre patient you can find one as cheap as $150 on ebay. If you're impatient, you can definitely get one under $250... but for an 030 paying $250 seems kinda silly. You'll get a lot more bang for your buck than a RAM card.

That said, AmigaKit still has the RAM boards, at least they offer them in their built-to-order Amiga 1200s. Ask them.

[vic20owner]

I see everyone saying this, but I have only succeeded in getting a handful of games working in WHDLoad.

I even got a complete lha'd archive of a WHDLoad demo from another user (which worked), tried it on my amiga and no luck, same error.

I am running an A1200 + Microbotics 1230/50 with 64mb fast ram, 3+1 roms, and OS3.9.

I tried degrading, I tried booting from a floppy, I tried NoAutoVecs in whdload, I tried booting in ECS, removing my pcmcia ethernet card, nothing worked.

Yes, I have the correct A500 rom installed and in the correct location along with sKick tools.

I get the same replies over and over "it should work". Ok great, it should, but it doesn't.

Then of course you get accused of just being an idiot... um... ok I've owned Amigas since 1991, and worked as a software developer since 1992.  I'm not a noob to computers or the Amiga by any stretch.  It's not hard to install Whdload tools to C: and put kickstarts mentioned in the readme in DEVS:kickstarts.

Why it doesn't work is baffling... this is a Rev D (not D.1) motherboard.

Perhaps something is strange with my machine, but I have several WHDLoad games which do not work. Maybe it doesn't like how my memory is configured? I dunno.

SO I dunno... try a degrader before you spend a bunch of money on an accelerator and ram to use WHDLoad.

[dbrads]

Like Homer says, use a degrader... there are several "out there" search "degrader" on Aminet

 I use Relokick, seems to work on most games.

Keep the faith!

[Tomas]

@vic20owner
It certainly sounds very odd, as WHDload here even runs games that dont normally work with a degrader.
With WHDload i dont even have to use ecs.
If i was you, i would try to do a clean reinstall of the OS and see if that might do something.
I also dont know whether or not os3.9 might have something to do with it, as i use 3.1.

[vic20owner]

OS3.9 soft patches the rom on boot... maybe it doesn't liked a patched rom?

[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