Too many problems with WHDLoad

[StingRay]

How about reading the WHDLoad docs? It's all explained there. If you have a fully working MMU you can and should enable it.

[Amiga1992]

I did, but I don't see any difference having it or not.
It was enabled, by the way. I had it on because the docs said it should be on if you have an 030 (I read the docs :P).
I am copying all the installs again because I suspect some migt have gotten corrupted.

[Amiga1992]

Well, this has been years now, and I still cannot peacefuilly play any fucking game with WHDLoad on my setup. I am totally stumped and have no idea what is going wrong.

Yesterday I re-did my A1200's CF card. I wiped it clean, put PFS3AIO in it (had SFS before), checked and double checked the Maxtransfer stuff was OK, gave it a lot of buffers because that system has lots of RAM (200 each partition), the partition where games are is less than 1.8GB.

I downloaded the WHDLoad packs again from the FTP, did the updates to the latest version of all installs (Retroplay's version 2.5) and copied it all to the CF card. Took forever.

I tried booting with and without startup-sequence, and I STILL get LOADS of errors on MANY games, all of different types. Resload, Line 1111, and others.

The global prefs I have set are NOAUTOVEC (becasue I keep getting NMI Autovec errors if I don't) and MMU. Nothing else.

At this point I don't know if I am dealing with buggy installs, or some kind of computer problem (which I doubt, the machine has been serviced recently, unless the accelerator is failing which, again, seems not probable, and RAM is fine as I had deep checked it recently).

I'm getting really fed up of this, I can never play games on my computer, which is why I have turned to the CD32 for most of my games since they ALL run there. I wanna know if WHDLoad is just so fiddly that it will never work well in my machine and I should give up because it's meant to run on Blizzard and ACA accelerators, or if I should keep on trying things until it works.

Any help appreciated ;(

[Amiga1992]

Well this kinda shit happens in the emulator too.
Disposable Hero:

[jotd]

Have you tried the problematic installs in winuae? Linef is a bit like illegal instruction. Cpu is executing crap.
And yes, mmu should be on.
Whdload works great. But if input files are corrupt and the slave does not check full game crc then it can crash anywhere.
Give me a game that crashes at once I ll zone you a working install and we ll see if its you system. Disposable hero seems a good example.
Or zone a nonworking one I ll check it

[Amiga1992]

That screenshot came from WinUAE. I am getting pretty much the same issues in WinUAE and my A1200.

[ptyerman]

I had some issues a couple year back where random errors and crashes would happen. After some fault finding I traced it to the kickstart images, just one of them was corrupt or incompatible enough to throw a wobbly at times, it was the 1.3 kickstart image in my case. I fired up the spare 1.3 A500 I had at the time and used grabkick to grab the kickstart from that.
Once I had replaced the kickstart image in the whdload install with that one all my problems went away. It has since loaded and ran all games I have thrown at it.
May be worth looking if that is your problem too.

[Amiga1992]

Yeah today I have suspected the Kickstart images too, I wish most patches would NOT use them but a lot do
I will have a go at trying to replace the Kickstart files but I had no luck in the past using the ones I normally have on WinUAE (two of which are dumped from my own machines).

Thanks for making me check this, ptyerman!

[zipper]

I remember I GrabKicked my a4000 3.1 KS and then compared with another grab done just before and they did differ - so it's an intricate job.

[Amiga1992]

WHDLoad seems to be picky regarding which image it can use and it was my understanding only a certain type works. In any case I'll try.

My system seems more stable today, really no idea what is causing issues.
[edit] spoke too soon

Agony gave me a " Line 111 Emulator" error at $4
Again, what the fuck are these supposed to mean??

[Arnie]

I take your WinUAE setup mirrors your A1200 setup.

Do you use the same Kick files and WHDLoad games on both.

I just tried disposable Hero in WinUAE using the preinstalled game and everything works.

Let me know If you want to try my A1200 config.

[Amiga1992]

I'm testing on my A1200 now. When I tried in WinUAE, I was using the same CF card I use in my A1200's IDE so same setup.

I managed to make Disposable Hero work.

And now I was running Alfred Chicken AGA just fine and after some minutes it gave me another frickin' Line 1111 error at $BF792D2 (Task ' Initial CLI', Expmem $72D2)

This is really driving me nuts.

[edit] Alcatraz crashed when I threw a knife. Exception "Access Fault" ($B008) / PC = $BFEECCA (Resload $2CCA) / Instruction stream fault on $CCCCCCCC
This is really annoying, I cannot play a single game.

[Arnie]

All I can suggest is that you try another CF card with a standard WB Installed and a fresh install of WHDLoad. Copy the games one by one until you're satisfied that they work.

Then add the stuff one by one that you use on the other card.

[Amiga1992]

I mentioned before, that this is a fresh install. I did it yesterday. I installed everything from scratch.
I don't use anything, because nothing ever fucking worked. And if this goes on the same way I'll never use this A1200 for games, or maybe nothing for that matter.

Amnios on intro: Exception " Access fault" ($B008) / PC=$53A2 / Word Read from $80000

I certainly don't want to spend my life copying and testing games one by one. Sometimes they crash at the beginning (desirable), but most times they randomly crash after long minutes of playing. With that in mind, I cannot embark onto playing anything because as we remember most these games have no means to restore from advanced points of gameplay.

[edit] Arkanoid Revenge of Doh: after starting to play, Access fault ($B008) / PC = $BFEECCA (Resload $2CCA) Instruction stream fault on $CCCCCCCC

I seem to be getting that one repeatedly.

[edit2] Exact same error as before on Awesome, while intro was playing. (yes I am going through every single game )

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by jotd

Give me a game that crashes at once I ll zone you a working install and we ll see if its you system. Disposable hero seems a good example.
Or zone a nonworking one I ll check it

Sorry jotd I didn't read this bit because you had edited your post.
What do you want me to send you? The installs I downloaded from the EAB FTP, I am pretty sure they are all alright and working, the problems lie somewhere within my computer. If they are corrupted I don't understand how, since I just reformatted and redid my system CF all from zero.

Two errors seem to be repeating, the one I posted above, and " Line 1111 Emulator ($2C) at$4" . I just got this one again, with Axe of Rage.

[edit] Baba Yaga, three different errors as soon as I start:
- Access Fault ($B008) / PC=$48 Byte Read from $17EE16fC
- Exception "Line 1010 Emulator" ($28) at $46
- Exception " Illegal instruction" ($10) at $68

Seems like these are all happening on installs using kickstarts, am I correct in suspecting the kickstart images once again?

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by Akira

Yeah today I have suspected the Kickstart images too, I wish most patches would NOT use them but a lot do

When a lot of system-functions are used there unfortunately is no other option than using KickEmul with the required Kickstart ROMs. I try to avoid that whenever it is possible (which sometimes is A LOT of work) but often the Kickstart solution is the best option.

Originally Posted by Akira

Seems like these are all happening on installs using kickstarts, am I correct in suspecting the kickstart images once again?

Since you also have problems with installs that don't use Kickstart ROMS (Awesome, Alcatraz etc.) I suspect there is a general problem on your machine. Is there any external hardware connected? If so, try with a "naked" machine first and see if it works better. Try also disabling the "MMU" parameter in your config, any difference?

[meynaf]

Sometimes i got such problems myself : games completely refusing to work. And often i was able to run them nevertheless, by just switching to another, usually older, version of whdload...
As the latest isn't necessarily the best, you could try 17.1 instead of 18.2 for example.

[Galahad/FLT]

Wondering if you have a virus?

I had one on my A1200 that virus killers couldnt get rid of, in the end i had to do a string search on all the hard drive sectors to find it and disable it.

However, have you tried copying an install to ram, CD'ing to ram and running from ram?

Have you done a CRC check on your version of WHDLoad in your C directory to ensure its not corrupted or contaminated by a system virus?

[Nobby_UK]

Originally Posted by meynaf

Sometimes i got such problems myself : games completely refusing to work. And often i was able to run them nevertheless, by just switching to another, usually older, version of whdload...
As the latest isn't necessarily the best, you could try 17.1 instead of 18.2 for example.

Same Here

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by StingRay

I suspect there is a general problem on your machine. Is there any external hardware connected? If so, try with a "naked" machine first and see if it works better. Try also disabling the "MMU" parameter in your config, any difference?

I will try both these options.
The only external things attached are a PCMCIA card reader and a sampler. I am sure I tried disconnecting the sampler before.

My worry is that I also get errors in WinUAE, so I would discard a hardware issue. Not the same errors, but still errors.

About virii, I have no idea, I had checked it before, but I have nothing that could have potentially infected it unless one of these WHDLoad packs has a virus in it. As I said, I wiped the compactflash clean. This is a fresh install.
What is the CRC of WHDLoad supposed to be? How can I check these tings?