Help for a new Amiga owner using a CF please

[mancity]

Hi guys,

Just received my first ever Amiga today . I also bought this CF with games on - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1407430373...84.m1497.l2649

The Amiga works fine (very yellowed though ) and I managed to install the CF absolutely fine too, so so far all going smoothly.

The problem I have and am looking for some guidance on, is using workbench and trying to start the games. The instructions that came with the CF leave ALOT to be desired and are very difficult to understand.

The instructions say find the game you want within workbench and then reset the system holding LMB and then choosing 'prompt' and moving to the directory where the games are and I presume finally pressing return on the game you want and it boots. I am ok moving between directories etc as I have knowledge of the windows cmd prompt, however, I cannot find the place where the games are located? Within WB there are two FLOPPY DISK icons on the desktop called 'Games' and 'Games1', but I cannot find them from the prompt? I can find everything else including a DRAW icon called Games, which looks to be completely empty.

Further to this way of 'loading games' (I think that way was to load games, im not sure as I cannot find where the games are and the instructions are poor), I thought id try finding them through WB and double-clicking them, so I go into the 'Games' floppy disk icon and then into 'C' and find Cannon Fodder, for example and within that file is a game image and a manual. If I double click the icon, some of the games (about a quarter at most) load up fine, but for others I get errors like 'Cant allocate Shadow mem' and 'Object not found in Games' and a few others.

Can anybody help me or tell me where I am going wrong? I have no previous experience with Amiga WB so this is all new to me for the moment.

[johnim]

hi

most games will need more memory from a memory expansion

try show all files in the folder to see the games if they are there

[mancity]

Originally Posted by johnim

hi

most games will need more memory from a memory expansion

try show all files in the folder to see the games if they are there

I thought most games will work on a stock AMIGA 1200? A couple of games said it didn't have enough memory, but I would hae thought most will work.

Im sorry, I dont understand the second line mate?

[johnim]

here mate

most should but some maybe multiple games disks so may need more ram to work

[mancity]

So if im starting games through WB that are on the CF and they are multi-floppy games, I would need more RAM than If I used physical floppies?

Also, do you know anything about loading the games from the prompt and why I cannot find the games there?

[johnim]

So if im starting games through WB that are on the CF and they are multi-floppy games, I would need more RAM than If I used physical floppies?

yes as when you use physical floppies no ram is used to load wb

but from cf it copies the slave/game to your ram and then runs it

thats why you are told to reboot and use the mouse button as it use a script to load not wb


also when booted to wb it assigns a folder eg a-games thats maybe why you cant find them in cli

can you take a pic of your wb

[mancity]

Im not at home to take a pic tonight but can tomorrow.

So, what your saying is, if I boot and hold down LMB I can load a game from there and save on RAM?

Any idea on how to find the games from the prompt? I cannot see the two folders with the floppy icons where the games are stored.

Also, would a SRAM card increase the RAM enough to run games or is that just to increase speed rather than RAM?

[johnim]

what amiga do you have 600/1200

i cannot say where they are as i dont know how your card was setupthats why i asked for a pic

you could list your wb and look in all the folders to see were they are try dh1: dh2: DH1: 1.8 gig Games DH2: 1.8 gig Games2from ebay

the sram card do add ram but on a 1200 it is slighly slower ram but on a 600 it speeds it up

you may be better off getting a trapdoor ram expansion 4/8mb

maybe register on amibay.com too to open a wanted thread

[mancity]

I have a 1200 mate.

Do I have directories called DH1, DH2 and DH3 then and the games should be in there?

Would an SRAM card allow me to play the games which require extra RAM?

Thanks for all your help, it's really appreciated.

[mancity]

Had a reply from the seller of the CF saying I need to change the partition in the prompt bit. Do you know I would do this?

[johnim]

type
dh1:
or
dh2:

dir for directory listing

[mancity]

Attached is a picture of my WB.

The games are located inside the 2 floppy disk icons on the left called 'Games' and 'Games1', but when I load the prompt, I cannot find these 2 folders anywhere?

[mancity]

Originally Posted by johnim

type
dh1:
or
dh2:

dir for directory listing

So, am I right in thinking dh1 is 'Games' and dh2' is 'Games1' and if i simply load the prompt and type dh1 first, it will move me to that area? (partition I think)

[thomas]

You can use the volume name, too.

Enter

cd games:

or just

games:

Do not omit the colon!


If you don't like harddisk partitions to look like floppy disks you can enter these commands:

copy wb:disk.info games:
copy wb:disk.info games1:

After a reboot the games icons should look like the wb icon.

[mancity]

Hi Thomas,

When I type 'cd games' it takes me to the 'Games' draw (at the bottom of the picture I attached) rather than the 'Games' partition

If I typed 'cd games:', would the fact that I put the ':' at the end take me to the partition 'Games' rather than the 'Games' draw?

[ajk]

Yes, the colon symbol denotes a volume, ie. a disk drive or hard drive partition. Without a colon cd (or any command in general) will look for the file/directory relative to where the command is issued.

You can use the command 'assign' without other parameters to see what physical and logical volumes exist in the system at that time.

Some of them (such as C:, ENV: etc.) are not physical volumes but rather point to a directory somewhere on the hard drive. You still access them the same way you would an actual disk though.

It might be a good idea to read some kind of AmigaDOS manual or tutorial to get an idea of the basics, should make for a smoother ride when dealing with all this stuff

[mancity]

Thank you.

I ordered a book (all about AMIGA 1200) so that I can get fully to grips

I think im right in typing the below then? (assuming a500_a600 folder is within the 'Games' folder, which has 'a' inside that and a games called 'Archon inside that)

cd games:
cd a500_a600
cd a
archon
Whdload archon.slave

I will try tonight when im back at my AMIGA

[Art]

I bought exactly the same Compact Flash kit as you. When I boot my Amiga 1200, hold down left mouse button, get to Amiga Dos, choose the volume, game, when it reboots I get the error message "Object is not of required type, WB Run failed return code 20". I tried many different games and always get the same message. Even the simplest games like Rick Dangerous won't load. However, when I load Rick Dangerous off floppy the game loads just fine.

Then when the workbench loads and I choose a game and try to load I get another message: "Can't allocate ShadowMem". Is ShadowMem referring to Fast Ram ?

My A1200 has only 2Mb chip memory and 0 Fast Ram. I think workbench is eating most of the chip ram and there is not much left to run games. I purchased Phase 5 Blizzard 1230/50 accelerator board with 32 Mb memory. When I receive the board I will install it and then see and post back.

[mancity]

Ive managed to get everything working now. Just the higher mb games wont load now which is fine.