A600/ACA620 WHDLoad Settlers problem

[Solo761]

Hi, has anyone tried running WHDLoad version of Settlers on A600 with ACA620?

I've made few PS/2 to Amiga mouse adapters and decided to use my A600 with ACA620 to try them. To test them a bit more I thought why not play a bit of Settlers, but when I ran it I got "can't allocate expmem" error.

Memory shouldn't be an issue, it has 2MB chipram and cca 10MB from ACA620 (I'm using " ACATune -maxmem -maprom ** " to allocate all memory and map kickstart to ram).
I thought maybe my CF got corrupted or something so I connected it to PC and ran in WinUAE but it works fine, same as Settlers. Even when I set WinUAE to A600 with 2MB chip and 8MB fast, but it worked fine so it definitely doesn't need more memory.

Only thing that comes to my mind is that it doesn't like how ACA620 segments memory, it's not whole ~10MB in a pack, but a little bit of address space here, a little bit there..?

[solarice]

I seem to remember this refusing to work on mine, but didn't look too far into it. I wasn't sure at the time if it was the aca620 or whdload that i needed to fiddle with.

[Solo761]

OK, thanks, so I'm not the only one. I take it it's ACA620's fault. A500 with ACA500/ACA1220 combo run this same settlers and same whdload version fine. So does A1200 with 8MB expansion and with ACA1232.

[solarice]

I would guess (and i stress guess) from looking over the docs it'll have something to do with the ws_ExpMem flag in whdload slave.

settlers needs : Expansion Memory 4352 KiB ($440000)

"If the installed program requires expansion memory, the size must be specified here. WHDLoad will allocate a memory block of this size and writes a pointer to the start of the allocated memory back to this entry.......If WHDLoad fails to allocate this memory it terminates with an appropriate error requester."

And maybe the aca620 not having the ram where its expecting / size. ?

My knowledge is limited on whdload / slave writing so maybe i'm talking rubbish

I've tried the ExpChip / ExpLocal / Exp24Bit options and all fail...also tried turning preload off with the same issue.

[Solo761]

My knowledge of whdload and slave writing is even less . But what you're saying makes sense.

ACA620 memory is segmented, according to sysinfo it's like this

4 MB
0x200000 - 0x5FFFFF

4 MB
0x600000 - 0x9FFFFF

1 MB
0xA80000 - 0xB7FFFF

512 kB
0xD00000 - 0xD7FFFF

384 kB
0xEA0000 - 0xEFFFFF

1 MB
0xC00000 - 0xCFFFFF

And there's the problem I suspect, all combined it's 10,8 MB, but it's not in one chunk and I'd guess settlers slave needs 4352 kB in one chunk.

That's why it works on ACA500+1220 and ACA1232, they have 126MB in one chunk.

[voyager_1701e]

I got a similar problem on an A500 with ACA500. With just the ACA500....seems to be memory related problems with some titles not running (Cannot allocate Expmem etc)....but when I install the ACA1233 also, all the issues resolve.

Continuous memory may be the issue here?

[Solo761]

With ACA620 probably, with pure ACA500 memory size is probably the issue, it has only 2MB, most people say 4MB is minimum for whdload, although some games work even with plain config.

With ACA1233 it has 128MB at it's disposal, and if it's to be judged by my ACA1220 it's in one chunk so there are no problems there.

[rare_j]

If you just want to play the settlers, you don't need to use the whdload version. The origianl game is hard disk installable and the game manual with the copy codes is available on HOL.

[Vot]

Its seems the memory allocation isn't particularly intelligent although. If you look at the address spaces used two of the 4mb chunks are contiguous

[Solo761]

@rare j

Hmm, didn't know that. I'll try it, thanks.
I've noticed that it sees HDD because when I run it on symbol selection screen it shows small system info and says "save Game: to harddisk".

@Vot

I noticed that too. On boot it autoconfigs first 4 MB and that's it. Rest of the memory is configured via acatune. I guess that's because of PCMCIA compatibility, if I'm not mistaken this second 4MB address space is PCMCIA address space. If one needs PCMCIA skip acatune and you'll have chip + 4MB and PCMCIA working, if you need all memory use acatune to config all memory, but lose PCMCIA.

I've just found one older topic with this issue so I guess mistery solved, it's this memory fragmentation that's at fault. It could be "fixed" if autoconfig was configurable to autoconfig all ram, or if it could be disabled so it could be manually configured.

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?...id=4&styleid=1

[Vot]

Originally Posted by Solo761

@rare j

Hmm, didn't know that. I'll try it, thanks.
I've noticed that it sees HDD because when I run it on symbol selection screen it shows small system info and says "save Game: to harddisk".

@Vot

I noticed that too. On boot it autoconfigs first 4 MB and that's it. Rest of the memory is configured via acatune. I guess that's because of PCMCIA compatibility, if I'm not mistaken this second 4MB address space is PCMCIA address space. If one needs PCMCIA skip acatune and you'll have chip + 4MB and PCMCIA working, if you need all memory use acatune to config all memory, but lose PCMCIA.

I've just found one older topic with this issue so I guess mistery solved, it's this memory fragmentation that's at fault. It could be "fixed" if autoconfig was configurable to autoconfig all ram, or if it could be disabled so it could be manually configured.

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?...id=4&styleid=1

I guess Jens is the one to ask for a core that allocates all 8mb (or none). I think it would be trivial for him to do. As to if he wants to do it or has time... Who knows.. He sounds very busy in the prep for the 30th year anniversary event.

[Solo761]

Yes, but I think it would be too much trouble, sending it back to be reflashed and all.

At least now I am a bit more certain what's the issue, at first I though my ACA620 is defective.