Whdload A600 with 2mb Chipram - Tips, Questions and suggestions

[Shatterhand]

Ok, after taking 11 months fo finally get my A600 working properly, I spend lots of hours playing with it today.

It has just 2mb chipram, no fastram, and a 4gb CF card.

At first, I was able to run just single disk games, and very few 2 disks games. Most other games would fail with a "Not enough memory" error. I know whdload preloads the disk images to access the data, so I wouldn't be able to play 3+ disks games with just 2mb chip ram.

Then I had the idea to not load the Startup-Sequence.. just boot the system straight to CLI and run the games from there.

Doing this, I managed to run a LOT of multi-disk games that weren't loading before, like Benefactor, Shadow Fighter, Alien Breed 2, Superfrog, even managed to run Fightin Spirit (this one does a *LOT* of "swapping" before loading and still a lot before each fight... I think it takes longer to load than playing from floppies, hehe).

I know some games won't be playable... Ninja Warriors for example, does the 'swap' thing (black screen while accessing other data/floppy stored on ram) middle-game, making it unplayable.. but most games only do it while loading, so it's no big deal. (Shadow FIghter does it before fights for example, and still loads a lot faster than playing from floppies).

But then Sensible World of Soccer complains there's not enough memory and doesn't boot, even when trying to load it from the CLI.

Cannon Fooder got stuck on a black screen for like 10 minutes before I gave up (didn't even show the title screen), while, surprisingly, Cannon Fodder 2 worked.

Is there anything I can do to make games complaining of not enough memory to run? I think it's pretty wild that Fightin SPirit worked but SWOS doesnt

Another weird thing is that some games aren't working with 2 buttons, even when they did work on the floppy versions without any patches.. both Apidya and Alien Breed 2 just ignored my 2nd button, and I am pretty sure they always supported it (And yes, I turned on the option on Apidya, still no good)

Also, 2 questions about requests for WHDLoad:

1) Many games do exist with F10 or DEL on my 68k A600, but most of them won't. I know I should have at least a 010 to make this work properly, but on many games it's working. Could I make a list of games that this do *not* work and request an update on their patches, or people just wouldn't care enough to do it? It's not a big deal, but it would be nice to be able to quit back to CLI, Workbench or whatever

2) I know WHDload adds support for 2 buttons controllers on games that didn't support it on first place (Battle Squadron is SO MUCH BETTER with this, thank you whoever made this patch ). Is this the kind of thing we can also request or, again, will people just not bother? (I noticed Ziriax, one game I think would really benefit from this, has a request for this for sometime now and no one tackled it)

Thank you for all the help, and thank you guys who code WHDLoad and gives support to it. This is an amazing piece of work

[Sandro]

The A600 with only 2mb chip is not ideal machine for whload, the A1200 + lot of fast memory is

if some game don't work I recommend you to look for a hardisk cracked version,
or if the game is originally hardisk installable : install it on that way

in the case of cannon fodder 1 and sensible soccer there are cracked hardisk versions which surely will work there

the 2nd button issue is because some games are patched to work with lowlevel.library,so if you don't have a CD32 pad, 2nd button will not work

you can solve the 2nd button issue hacking your joystick, adding a 10k resistor between pin 9 and pin 7

[Shatterhand]

I don't want to hack my joystick, since I use it on other systems too

I know the A600 with 2mb chip and a 68k is not the ideal machine, but it's the one I have, hehe. I pretend to buy a fast ram expansion at some point, but I can't afford it right now.

Now I didn't know there were harddisk cracked version of games. I do know I could install games that were installable at first place though

[Sandro]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

I don't want to hack my joystick, since I use it on other systems too

I know the A600 with 2mb chip and a 68k is not the ideal machine, but it's the one I have, hehe. I pretend to buy a fast ram expansion at some point, but I can't afford it right now.

Now I didn't know there were harddisk cracked version of games. I do know I could install games that were installable at first place though

for sensible soccer try this
for cannon fodder check later because I cant found it now

[Shatterhand]

Thank you a lot! I'll try this later when I am back home

[Shatterhand]

No luck. This SWOS version also gave am "Not enough memory" error (With the screen going red for dramatic effect ). Happened both on Winuae with just 2mb chip and my own A600.

Funny thing, I tried to install Lionheart using the Installer that comes with the game, I *also* got a not enough memory error.

UGH and Mikro Mortal Tennins worked nicely though.

Are there any places to get those HD cracked games?

[daxb]

I guess nearly everybody would suggest you to upgrade with an accelrator + fastram. At least then "Not enough memory" and Quitkey problems are gone. About second button support you need to make a request.

[Shatterhand]

Yeah, that's something I've been thinking about.....I just wanted a solution while I can't spend the money.

But I also think an acceleratos it's too much of a big investment just to play games. I may go with just +fastram an live without a quitkey for most games

[alexh]

Get a FastRAM card from kipper2k or a Sakura PCMCIA sram card?

Use tool such as Addbuffers (negative) and add21k before launching WHDload?

Lionheart HD installer works fine with 2mb Amiga. Must be something wrong with your Workbench setup. I.e. something installed which eats RAM Clear up your startup-sequence and user-startup

[daxb]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

Yeah, that's something I've been thinking about.....I just wanted a solution while I can't spend the money.

But I also think an acceleratos it's too much of a big investment just to play games. I may go with just +fastram an live without a quitkey for most games

As far as I know the ACA accelrators aren`t as expensive and I`ve read that plain fastram cards expensive compared to accelrators but I don`t know the prices. The ACA cards are more or less just fastram expansions with a CPU added. Maybe it is worth to save some money for some month. Seems less annoying/time-consuming then get games running on your current setup. However, if you stay with it you can make request for quitkey feature.

[Retro1234]

Lionheart requires Fastmem/slowmem by design? You probably have to run something like fakemem first. Quite a few games can be run in such a manner but not convenient like WHDload.

[alexh]

AFAIR, The Thalion HD installer on the original disks takes care of all of that.

I *believe* it was created to work for A600HD which was available at the time.

Earlier Thalion games with hard disk installers had compatibility issues with A600 kickstart but not Lionheart AFAIR

[Shatterhand]

AlexH , I tried to boot Lionheart with no startup-sequence.. I didn't load startup, just went straight to CLI and loaded the game from there, still got a "Not enough memory" error. I found it weird too.

I am looking forward to buy a Fastram card from Kippers.. I was going to buy one earlier in the year , even begun talking to him, but since my Amiga wasn't working properly, I priorized fixing it first.

Now economy went bonkers at my country and the dollar price skyrocketed, while my wage is still the same, hehe

I took a quick look at the price of ACA boards, and they are way more expensive than Kipper's fast mem card (What I saw was even more expensive than his Vampire A600 board) - they were more pricey than what my A600 costed

But thanks for all the tips, mates! I'll take a look into those programs to free up more memory.

[alexh]

Two things

1) All I can think is when you created your hard drive you did it with lots of buffers and just booting from hard drive eats your memory.

Boot with no startup sequence and type the following

addbuffers dh0: -999

2) Can you launch lionheart from CLI? Have a look and see what is in the Lionheart ICON script. If it is just iconx then yes you can but I have a feeling it has a little script

[Shatterhand]

I am launching it from CLI. Tried the addbuffers thing, it says DH0: has 10 buffers... did it on DH1: too just to be sure, also says it has 10 buffers.

Running from CLI, not loading startup-sequence while booting, still "Not enough memory" message.

[ReadOnlyCat]

Didn't Michael Gibs (apologies if I am mangling his name) create a tiny launcher precisely for this purpose?
I seem to have seen such a thing a while ago but alas I cannot recall anything more precise.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

Running from CLI, not loading startup-sequence while booting, still "Not enough memory" message.

On the Lionheart disk 4 there is an executable called FakeMem_HD which gets copied to the Lionheart install directory.

Try calling that first? Maybe requires a reboot.

[Shatterhand]

I just checked, there's no such file on the installed directory.

I'll look for it on disk 4 later

[Amiga1992]

One more tip: have only one partition on your hard drive and boot straight to a Shell prompt with nothing else loaded.

Each partition you mount will take space in memory, so if you have as is standard a System partition and a Work partition, you're using double the RAM. Stick to one and see the difference.

Also if you boot straight to Shell (early Startup menu -> Boot with no Startup Sequence), you're saving yourself from loading Chip RAM with Intuition bullsht you don't need in games.

WHDLoad doesn't need any patch or stuff to load so booting stright to Shell and loading the games from there should save you a bunch of memory while working just fine. Is i tless convenient than pointing and clicking? Yes, but while you get more memory, it will save you some RAM.

As for memory expansions, kipper2k's 4 or 8MB RAM cards are very affordable and perfect for WHD use. I would recommend them as the cheapest way to build a WHDLoad A600 machine.

[Shatterhand]

Also if you boot straight to Shell (early Startup menu -> Boot with no Startup Sequence), you're saving yourself from loading Chip RAM with Intuition bullsht you don't need in games.

I always do that. It's faster and a lot of games that weren't loading from the GUI are now loading straight from CLI.

As for memory expansions, kipper2k's 4 or 8MB RAM cards are very affordable and perfect for WHD use. I would recommend them as the cheapest way to build a WHDLoad A600 machine.

Yeah, I am planning to buy a 8mb ram card from him. I was going to do it earlier this year, even got in contact with him, but as my machine wasn't working properly, I held up until I actually made it work. Now the economy went bonkers here in Brazil and the dollar price skyrocketed a few weeks ago.. but the dollar price now seems to be slowly "getting back to normal", so I'll wait a little to buy it.

Each partition you mount will take space in memory, so if you have as is standard a System partition and a Work partition, you're using double the RAM. Stick to one and see the difference.

I had two different "pre-setup" hard-drive images, and both had two partitions. I use a 4gb CF card, and I'd believe you can't have more than 2gb for each partition, at least using KS2.0.

I don't know a lot about this and may be wrong. I am planning to do a new, clean Workbench install this weekend, if I have some time .