Black screen when streaming

[banedon]

Hi guys

I've got a stock Amiga 1200 with a 4GB CF drive (so no extra RAM card/accelerators, etc.) and have set up WHDload with Workbench 3.0

Any time I tried to run an SSI game (such as Curse of the Azure Bonds, Champions of Krynn) I get a flicker-to-black screen issue. I.e. the screen will flicker black every so often. It does come back after a second and the games does work - it's just very distracting.

I noticed that this seems to happen in conjunction with hard disk access, so it seems that the I/O is slowing the machine down?
Other games which I've tried (Defender, BattleIsle) only load on a black screen so it's difficult to if this is happening with them. The SSI games play audio and show graphics during their intro (specially if you choose DEMO mode) and so they suffer quite badly.

Details
Chip RAM: 2MB
Fast RAM: None
Accelarators fitted: None
Workbench version: Classic Workbench Lite v28 (v39.29)
Kickstart version: 39.106

Kickstart ROM images in DEV:Kickstart:
kick33180.A500, kick34005.A500, kick40063.A600, kick40068.A1200, kick40068.A4000 (all from purchased Amiga Forever v2012). rom.key also present.
Have the latest version of WHDload and the WHDload.key is in the S: directory (legit version - key received from Bert this morning via email)

I'm using the minimal WHDload startup option on boot which gives me 1.5MB of free RAM. I can't run the games if I run as normal as I run out of RAM ("Can't allocate ExpMem").

The CF card is the one listed here:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1717470344...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

(Transcend 133x 4GB, partitioned into 3 drives)

Anyone else seen this issue? And it it just a case of having to upgrade to more RAM?

Any advice/help welcome

[Retro-Nerd]

Yes, you need fastram. At least 2-4 MB, 8-16 MB is even better. Then the black flickering during the pre-loading is gone.

[banedon]

Thanks, Retro-Nerd.

Can you recommend a good accelerator which plays well with WHDload+games and is fairly cheap?

[edit] Just looked on ebay. £100+ for an 8MB RAM upgrade? Flippin' heck!

[Retro-Nerd]

The "fairly cheap" ones are sold out yet afair. But there will be some brand new other cards (ACA) in the next few month.

[banedon]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

The "fairly cheap" ones are sold out yet afair. But there will be some brand new other cards (ACA) in the next few month.

Okey dokey. That'll give me something to save for. So far I've made myself poor with this Amiga stuff! Worth it though .

[banedon]

This looks interesting:
http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/...oducts_id=1100

[Retro-Nerd]

Sure, would be enough for WHDLoad games.

[banedon]

BTW what's the attraction or requirement for having such a 128+ MB of RAM? Or is a simply a case of speed and having workbench look as good as it can?