Nothing Runs!

[LordSpunky]

As some may know I have an Amiga Inc A1200, with HD running WB 3.1, a trapdoor 8MB card or PCMCIA 4MB.
I can't seem to run any games, I have some floppies with old saved documents that run, but any games ran from WB or even reset boot from floppy don't work! I've tried Super Skid Marks, Total Carnage, Zool etc all original and a couple I have two copies.
Back in the day - 1999- without the 8MB and HHD the A1200 ran fine.
I have got a spare CA1200 which I swapped the floppy drive but it seems to be broke, I also removed the 8MB and put in my original 4MB PCMCIA card but it didn't change anything - any ideas?

[Cammy]

Have you tried verifying the disks with a tool in Workbench to see if they have errors on them? Also you might want to check them for mould or fungus, although it's not usually a problem in England. You may also want to clean out the floppy drives with a floppy drive cleaning kit to make sure the drive heads aren't having trouble reading the disks. Then you could buy a box of blank floppies, download those games you already own as ADFs and write them back to the fresh floppy disks, then see if that works.

To be honest, I don't know why you'd want to play those games from floppy when you have such a nice setup for WHDLoad! You could download and extract the entire collection to your hard drive, all pre-installed and ready to play from Workbench.

[LordSpunky]

I like the idea of WHDLoad....but I need to get it across to the Amiga....it isn't on the net or networked yet ;(......I get so confused over what I need to do! I only just remember the double mouse click boot menu.......it has been over ten years!

[Cammy]

Ohh, okay then what you really need to do is this: Get a double density floppy disk, or a high density floppy disk and cover up the extra hole with tape. Make sure the PC0 DOSDriver is in Workbench: Devs/DOSDrivers/ (not Workbench:Storage/DOSDrivers/). Stick the blank floppy disk in the Amiga and click on PC0:? and select Format Disk from the Icons menu. You don't need a Trashcan so unselect that. Click Format, then Format (again) and it will format the disk as a 720kb DOS disk.

You then need to find a PC that still has a floppy drive (maybe a friend or family member or local library can help) and you need to download a couple of files and save them onto this floppy disk, then bring the disk back and insert it into your Amiga and copy them onto your hard drive.

Once you've got the files on the Amiga, you'll need to extract and install them, and then your Amiga will be able to read SD or CF cards from any cheap PCMCIA card reader, which you may be able to buy at a local computer or electronics shop, or on eBay or DealExtreme for a few quid. From then on, you'll be able to download massive amounts of files on your Mac or PC, copy them onto a SD or CF card and read them on the Amiga (including all those WHDLoad games). Getting files onto your Amiga this way may be a little more convenient than setting up internet software and a network card on the Amiga, which is still fun to try out later on down the track.

Okay so here are the files you'll need to download and get onto your Amiga:

PCMCIA CF/SD Card Reader Driver - http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/cfd
FAT16/32 Filesystem - http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/fat95
LHA Archiver (essential) - http://aminet.net/package/util/arc/lha

I hope this gets you started! If you have any other questions about what you can do with your 8MB A1200 just ask, I had the same setup for years and there's so much you can do with it.

[LordSpunky]

Hi Cammy, well What I did was......got myself a serial cable, and Amiga Explorer, which is now running fine, I downloaded some .info games, which won't run because I need the WHDLoad file to install on WB? So I downloaded it from here http://www.whdload.de/index.html usr.lha, copied it to the Amiga and tried to install, the Amiga returned with not able to run Tool. Grrrr....any ideas on how to install WHDLoad? or was it the right file?

[Cammy]

You need to download and install LHA first to be able to extract the WHDLoad package. If you've done that, then you'll need to download some WHDLoad games, which are usually in Zip format, so you will also need to download UnZip from Aminet and install that (in Workbench:C/).

Once LHA is installed, to extract a file you can double click on it and it should come up with an Execute Command window. In this will be the filename of the file you want to extract, so you just need to add the LHA command and some arguments to extract it. Let's say you want to extract it to a temporary directory in Workbench, you'd have the full command line:

LHA e WHDLoad_usr.lha Workbench:T/

e = Extract
Workbench:T/ = The directory it will extract the archive to

Get LHA here - http://aminet.net/package/util/arc/lha

Get UnZip here - http://aminet.net/package/util/arc/UnZip

[LordSpunky]

Thanks! What I've been doing wrong is when LHA was extracted it the file names was LHA_[CPU], so I renamed it lha.....then it has worked, extracted and installed Installer, and now it is doing WHDLoad.....fingers crossed!