A500 not boot original games.

[knight76]

Hi guys.

I recently picked up an A500.

I've set up the A500 and it boots to kick2.04 - The A500 is from 1990 so makes sense.

The thing is it won't boot original games, any. I understand there will be some issues with some games running on 2.04 but all of them?

The A500 has been modded by adding an Adspeed processor along with a hard wired switch to change the speed of the adspeed. Also, the Adspeed itself has a physical jumper but when this is removed or placed in the jumper position next to it the A500 won't boot, just goes to a greenish screen.

The internal drive in the A500 is not working, will not read any disc, but there was an external drive that works.

It only boots copied games though. Any original game it loads for a moment, and then dumps you back at the kick2.04 boot screen. Original workbench disk worked though and loaded through to workbench.

Any ideas?

Fault of the adspeed or possibly just incompatible with 2.04?

[psxphill]

original games will usually only run from the internal drive
they might not like kickstart 2.04 or adspeed as well

[knight76]

original games will usually only run from the internal drive
they might not like kickstart 2.04 or adspeed as well

Does that go for workbench also? As it loaded from the external fine.

[Azryl]

Workbench will run from just about any bootable device, harddrive, external floppy, cd-rom etc

What you original games were coded to run on were the bog stanbard Amiga 500, ie 512kchip/512fast and KS1.3 from the internal floppy. Some original games will not run if your external drive is active >this is why some external drives have a disable switch bcuz each additional floppy device will eat up 21k of chip ram<

KS2.04 will allow some original games to boot, if you have 1meg chip and some true fast ram on your system. Usually those original games marketed as ECS or A3000 compatible.

Az

[Lurch]

Haven't found a game yet that doesn't work with 2.04+

I even have a 68010, which is also supposed to cause issues. I think the real problem you have is no internal floppy drive. I'm surprised any of the software is working from the external drive, I would get the internal drive working.

[Azryl]

Lurch, he is talking about "original" games.

I had quite a few early games, PAL originals, like wizball, loom, archon, mission impossible, fairytale adventure and some others that failed to work on my a500-v6a with KS2.04

Many more failed when I tried to use them on the A3000

Az

[knight76]

The games are all original and none work, every copied game I tried worked but only from the external drive, nothing at all boots in the internal.

Games like X-out, speedball 2, Gods, Turrican. All original and none working.

The hardware seems to be working fine as it boots the copied games. So maybe the issue is the originals not liking the external drive attached, coupled with the internal drive not working?

Edit> Ok, so when I posted above every copied game worked. I really only tested them to the pirate copy screen. I just tried to load some right through to the game playing and could not get any to run the actual game. All of them load the pirate splash screen, and then fail not much further on.

Could this be an issue caused by the internal drive failing as above?

[TomJ]

How much ram does your system have?
I had a number of games that would not run when I expanded beyond 1mb.
plus as mentioned before many need to be in the DF0: drive.

[runequester]

I'd wager the internal drive being kaput as the culprit. I remember the internal drive dying on my 1200 and I was stuck playing Dune 2 for a week or so, before we got it fixed, when I was a kid.

[knight76]

Thanks for the help so far guys.

I booted workbench and it is showing 304520 graphics mem and 0 other mem.

I checked the trapdoor and there is a metal casing in there so probably a 512 memory expansion, but it isn't being seen by the amiga. I inserted a game disk in the DF0 and it came up as DF0:, tried it in the external and it recognised it fine.

I might try re-seating the internal drive cables to see if that helps also.

Edit> Re-seating the drive cables did nothing. The ram expansion card is faulty also, is not detected at all. Even booted it without the metal shielding in case it was shorting something. No good.

If the battery on the ram board has gone flat for the battery backed clock, would that cause the ram to not be detected? If so, how do you open the metal casing to change the battery, and is that a suicide battery for the ram expansion board? It's possible the battery has leaked acid on the board as well.

[scuzzb494]

The games are coded to run from disk drive 1 DF0 and sadly when it can't find the game it dumps you out. That is my guess. You need to get the floppy fixed. The memory thing is a red herring. I have played all these games on the 1200 with no problem. You can also run degraders to get the machine believing it is running an earlier version.

[kedawa]

Swap the floppy drives and see what happens.

[knight76]

Swap the floppy drives and see what happens.

I thought a A1200 internal drive was not compatible with a A500 drive?

Edit> I just swapped the drive in from the A1200 and it loaded games fine.

Can I ask what you meant by the memory thing being a red herring? You mean it will load games even without the expansion in many cases? Or that it may still be working even though it does not show up in workbench?

[runequester]

I thought a A1200 internal drive was not compatible with a A500 drive?

Edit> I just swapped the drive in from the A1200 and it loaded games fine.

Can I ask what you meant by the memory thing being a red herring? You mean it will load games even without the expansion in many cases? Or that it may still be working even though it does not show up in workbench?

Some games run okay in 512K, a lot of later ones will need 1 MB, it just depends on the game.

I imagine if present, the expansion memory should show in workbench.

[knight76]

Sweet, well I have a replacement 3.5 inch drive and ram expansion on the way from the UK now so hopefully once these arrive the A500 will be going again.

Thanks for the assistance everyone.