A500 and games (not working)

[nickoteen]

Hiya there ...
 
A noob seeking help here !
Here's the case. I have an A500 unit (m.b. rev 6A), a nice little PC-Amiga Explorer setup, file transfer working, no problems, but ...
 
Some games I transfered to fdds work without a problem (Another World, Dune, Monkey Island to name just a few), some won't work at all (Canon Fodder, Lotus Esprit, Prince of Persia, Turrican(s) ... etc.). The intro/cracktro loads fine, but than the screen (usually) goes black, fdd light glows orange, and nothing happens. The Amiga freezes as far as I can tell.
 
I have a ks 2.04 so I thought, ok, I must be having a compatibility issue here, and got my self a nice little ks switcher board and installed both, 1.3 and 2.04 ks, but to no avail. Games that didn't work on 2.04, won't work on 1.3 either.
 
The ADF's are fine, checked with WinUAE. They work in the emulator, but won't start on a real hardware. Any ideas greatly appreciated.

[spaceman88]

Hi,
How much RAM do you have on your A500?

[runequester]

As he said, how much RAM? A lot of games require 1 MB.

Also, is your machine PAL or NTSC?

[nickoteen]

Ah, yes, 4got to mention, 1 MB of ram. It's a german A500, so It must be a PAL machine.

[runequester]

1 MB PAL machine should be the optimal. Have you tried different disk images?

[nickoteen]

Well, as I mentioned, adfs work in winuae, so  ... no. Although, I DL-ed 2-3 versions of Turrican II (I REALLY wanted to be able to play this particular game on a real hw), but none of them worked. I also tried three different adf versions of State of Art's Spaceballs, but none worked. Won't start. Other demos, like Arte, Elysium (sanity), Mega Demo II (alcatraz) work just fine. Really puzzled here.

[runequester]

I've found that emulators sometimes are less finicky and sometimes more so than real hardware. It's basically black magic.

I'm not sure why multiple versions wouldn't work though. Where in the world are you located? I could probably make you a copy and mail it or something, though I can only test it on my 1200, so that's not a guarantee it'd work.

[nickoteen]

I'm located in Europe. Thanks for the offer of making a copy, but I'm much more interested in why some stuff works and other doesn't.  Could it be a compatibility issue still ? Newer Agnus, Denis, Paula chip(s) ? Maybe ? I'm a noob, so don't laugh.

[runequester]

Some old games are notoriously picky about the setup they'll run on.

For Turrican 2 and Cannon Fodder, I doubt that's the case though, given both runs on a 1200, which would be far less compatible.

[amiga1260]

Did you also try to load the game from another diskdrive?

I had this problem with some diskdrives which are modded PC diskdrives from Amigakit. Most of the games and software works well.

[nickoteen]

Yes, I have. In addition to df0, I also have df1 and df2 external drives. I do have another A500 unit, older one (rev 5A) but without a fdd built in. Will try those troubleing games on this unit. If turns out they work, then I guess there is something faulty with my current Amiga. Then again, I have over 60 disks transfered using Amiga explorer that run just fine. Weird.

[Cammy]

Some games need the full 1MB RAM and refuse to work when DF1 and DF2 are plugged in. Have you tried running those games without any external floppy drives, which each require a small amount of memory for mounting and buffers?

[paul1981]

Cammy's spot on with the DF1/DF2 advise. Although it's strange how your games seem to freeze right after the intro.
May seem a silly question, but are you sure the disks are okay? I'm not sure about amiga explorer and its associated tools, but there are poor disk tools out there that don't even verify what has been written to disk...so that if you have a bad disk this could explain some of your problems. Also recommend you get a diskdrive cleaning kit.

[nickoteen]

Hm, well, I haven't tried unplugging the drives, but I have tried switching them off (I have 2 Cumana external drives which both have small on/off switches located at the back side of the casing). And yes, the disks are (should be) ok becouse they are brand (never before used) new.

[nscaleworld]

The best Amiga 500 setup for classic Amiga games is Kickstart 1.3, 512k chip, 512k fast, normal Denise, 512k Fat Agnus.  Anotherwards, nothing fancy, a stock Amiga 500.  Also, make sure your disk drive can read past track 82.  Newer Amiga disk drives will not read past track 82, so many games, especially with copy protection, will not work, because the copy protection tells the drive to load code from track 83, 84, or 85.  So, make sure that the disk drive in your Amiga 500 computer can read past track 82.  Just google for the drives specs on the internet.