WHDLoad on a 68010 CPU: Is It Possible??

[barney]

I know several people have said that a 68000 is too slow to run WHDLoad, and I agree with that.  I was curious though....is it possible to run it with a 68010?  I have used this CPU in the past and saw a slight speed increase on some games but I have never tried it with WHDLoad.  Has anybody ever tried it before.  If you have, please give me your results.  Thanks.

[gaula92]

I know several people have said that a 68000 is too slow to run WHDLoad

Tell those people to know what they're talking about. That's nonsense.
I use Whdload in my plain 68000 Minimig in 7Mhz mode (As I did in my A600) and 68000 games run at 68000 speed.
Whdload is NOT an emulator. If a game is slow on a plain 68000 then it's going to be the same if you run in from floppies or a clean Whdload install.

The ONLY exceptions are a few 68000 games wich have blitter waits inserted in their Whdload installs, wich allow the games to run at the right speed on higher-end machines (James Pond 1, for example). But if you're running those games on a plain 68000 then all you need to do is disable the blitter waits, and presto, you get the same speed on a 68000 as the game has in a... well, a 68000

[barney]

Thanks for the info man.  Thats good news.  This opens up a whole new world for me.  I do have one more question for you.  I'm thinking about installing it on my Amiga 1000.  It only has 512k chip ram and will have 8mb fast ram.  Will WHDLoad still work, or will I have too little chip ram?  Thanks.

[gaula92]

Thanks for the info man.  Thats good news.  This opens up a whole new world for me.  I do have one more question for you.  I'm thinking about installing it on my Amiga 1000.  It only has 512k chip ram and will have 8mb fast ram.  Will WHDLoad still work, or will I have too little chip ram?  Thanks.

You'll be short on chip for many games, as games that demanded 1MB chip RAM in the Amiga 500 period were quite a lot. When a game needs ChipRam, it NEEDS ChipRam. Even if you get 128MB of fastram, you'll have just 512KB of ChipRam

I don't know much about the Amiga 1000, never seen one in person, maybe it's possible to fit 1MB of ChipRam... Other people can help you better with that.

The other BIG problem I see is that kickstart ROM on an Amiga 1000 will be 1.x. That's bad because Whdload won't work unless you softload (softboot?) into a 2.x or 3.x kickstart. But I believe I read about you already doing so in some other thread!

[barney]

Like you mentioned, on my Amiga 2000 with 3 way ROM selector, WHDLoad work with Kickstart 1.3 selected.  Strange but it does work fine.  Maybe I would have similar luck with My 1000.  I'll have to give it a try and see.

This is kind of off topic, but would having Fast Ram installed on an Amiga 1000 make a difference in playing games off floppy disks?  Is the computer able to cache the game in memory resulting in smoother game play and less disk swaps?  Thanks.

You'll be short on chip for many games, as games that demanded 1MB chip RAM in the Amiga 500 period were quite a lot. When a game needs ChipRam, it NEEDS ChipRam. Even if you get 128MB of fastram, you'll have just 512KB of ChipRam

I don't know much about the Amiga 1000, never seen one in person, maybe it's possible to fit 1MB of ChipRam... Other people can help you better with that.

The other BIG problem I see is that kickstart ROM on an Amiga 1000 will be 1.x. That's bad because Whdload won't work unless you softload (softboot?) into a 2.x or 3.x kickstart. But I believe I read about you already doing so in some other thread!

[gaula92]

This is kind of off topic, but would having Fast Ram installed on an Amiga 1000 make a difference in playing games off floppy disks?  Is the computer able to cache the game in memory resulting in smoother game play and less disk swaps?  Thanks.

Well, it's actually up to the game. I know MANY games will show nice screens saying "memory expansion in use!" or something similar, and you'll get a warm feeling, better graphics or more audio effects, etc... But I recall that happened most in the Amiga 500 days and I believe these games were really using my trapdoor chipram expansion (I've been using Whdload for so long I almost forgot those things). I hate floppies.

[alexh]

I know several people have said that a 68000 is too slow to run WHDLoad, and I agree with that.

In the majority of cases WHDload will run fine with 68000. Some of the "fixes" done for 68020+ CPU's can be detrimental on games which relied on exact timing. (e.g. Turrican 3 intro)

9/10 times where people have reported WHDload being too slow on their 68000 Amiga it will be because they don't have enough memory to pre-load the game image + kickstart emulation into RAM. In that situation WHDload will attempt to load the game dynamically from disk. Each disk access requires stopping the game. Accessing the hard drive. Starting the game. Very slow.

So you need between 2 and 4Mbytes of Fast RAM + 1Mbyte of Chip RAM to be able to run most single disk games.

is it possible to run it with a 68010?

Yes and adding a 68010 CPU will give WHDload the ability to quit back to the OS without a reset. But RAM is key... not CPU power.

[utri007]

About a month ago I build myself A500 and GVP HD8+ with 2.0 roms sytems. Changed fatter agnus and soldered 1mb chip hack. Whdload and about 300mb of games.

Generally nice system, most of games work just fine.

Problem of 68000 is that it doesn't have vbr remove command, so about a 1/3 games doesn't have working quit button.

Point of installing 68010 is that quit button will allways work with it, because it has a vbr remove command.

[alexh]

Problem of 68000 is that it doesn't have vbr remove command, so about a 1/3 games doesn't have working quit button.

CTRL+Amiga+Amiga.

Point of installing 68010 is that quit button will allways work with it, because it has a vbr remove command.

Problem with installing a 68010 is that you'll have difficulty playing games from floppy disk due to incompatibility. But no more than say an A1200.

[utri007]

I don' understand why someone would like to play with floppies. I tried to transfer amiga explorer to that machine and I needed to use/format about 5 floppien until I found working one.

Whdload is soooooo much better system.

There is plenty of problems with A500, 68010 is not big problem. Many games requires 512kb chip and 512kp fast, or just 512kb chip etc. Whdload fix them all

[Lurch]

WHDLoad works fine with 2MB Chip / 2MB Fast. Although alot more useable when I went to 8MB.

The 68k handled them fine and speed was okay except for some Sierra games. Alittle laggy.

Went to a 68010 and that was fine too, thought I needed it for the quit to key to work. But tested that on my setup with the 68k and the quit key was still working. So puzzled by that. Might be the games I tried.

My current setup is fine for 90% of the games out there and the speed is fine.

Can run 8 colours in the workbench too :-) No wallpaper though that kills it :-/

[psxphill]

Well, it's actually up to the game. I know MANY games will show nice screens saying "memory expansion in use!" or something similar, and you'll get a warm feeling, better graphics or more audio effects, etc... But I recall that happened most in the Amiga 500 days and I believe these games were really using my trapdoor chipram expansion (I've been using Whdload for so long I almost forgot those things). I hate floppies.

Most amiga 500 games expect the trapdoor ram to be at c00000, which is neither chip or fast. The hardware partly treats it like chip ram, you can't use it for sound or graphics but you can't access it while the custom chips are accessing chip ram either. While the OS treats it as fast ram.
 
I don't know if anyone ever did a memory upgrade for the a1000 that sits at that address, but it should be doable.

[lassie]

Tell those people to know what they're talking about. That's nonsense.
I use Whdload in my plain 68000 Minimig in 7Mhz mode (As I did in my A600) and 68000 games run at 68000 speed.
Whdload is NOT an emulator. If a game is slow on a plain 68000 then it's going to be the same if you run in from floppies or a clean Whdload install.

The ONLY exceptions are a few 68000 games wich have blitter waits inserted in their Whdload installs, wich allow the games to run at the right speed on higher-end machines (James Pond 1, for example). But if you're running those games on a plain 68000 then all you need to do is disable the blitter waits, and presto, you get the same speed on a 68000 as the game has in a... well, a 68000

Yes i also have Whdload on my 2 Amiga 2000, the one with 5 MB ram and the other with 9 MB ram. And they runs almost every game perfect. So 68000 is good for Whdload

[ChaosLord]

@Lassie

What kickstart ROM is in your A2000?

[ChaosLord]

Most amiga 500 games expect the trapdoor ram to be at c00000, which is neither chip or fast.

If you have such an A500 then you can mod it so that the trapdoor RAM is CHIPram.