CD32 games on A1200?

[Michael Doma]

Dear community,

can you play CD32 games on the A1200? The latter emulation is faster for me so how would I need to configure the chipset etc. so I can boot from CD on the A1200? Maybe via floppy disk (CD bootloader, just like the kickstart disks)?

I tend to suspect that this is not possible...

Regards,

Michael

[fryguy]

There are probably some games that you can run directly from cd and some CD file systems included CD32 emulators iirc.

But the most reliable solution would probably be to find whdload installers for the games you want to run. You wont get any cd audio though.

Check here for installers www.whdload.de

[Aardvark]

Why would need to emulate A1200 to run the game faster? Any machine can equally be configured to run at ludricious speed in WinUAE

[jotd]

why not just use CD32 mode if from emulation? what's the point of emulating a A1200 to play CD32 without audio, with possible issues?

[Michael Doma]

Originally Posted by Aardvark

Why would need to emulate A1200 to run the game faster? Any machine can equally be configured to run at ludricious speed in WinUAE

Not when you're on an old 4-core machine which would in theory be fast enough but - since WinUAE isn't multithreaded and therefore can use only one core - is performing much too slow on many UAE configurations.

And who says I have to do without sound? So: If anyone gets this to work, please tell me!

Regards,

Michael

[fryguy]

Didn't notice this was in the WinUAE forum. If using WinUAE you can just emulate a CD32 and run the games directly from cd

[Aardvark]

Originally Posted by Michael Doma

Not when you're on an old 4-core machine which would in theory be fast enough but - since WinUAE isn't multithreaded and therefore can use only one core - is performing much too slow on many UAE configurations.

And who says I have to do without sound? So: If anyone gets this to work, please tell me!

Regards,

Michael

Try older WinUAE. Something changed in recent versions that made CD32 emulation with some games significantly more taxing.

https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=116557

[Seiya]

Originally Posted by Michael Doma

Dear community,

can you play CD32 games on the A1200?
I tend to suspect that this is not possible...

if emulate CD32 with WinUAE, its game run at original speed. Sometimes a game could be little slower or slight litter faster, but if you never had a real CD32 you don't see these difference.

However you can emulate A1200, you install Workbench and then idefix and so you can emulate CD32 inside A1200 (in double emulation), but the speed of CD32 games are identical like you run CD32 games directly from WinUAE quickstart.

[Paul_s]

I guess Akiko chip dependant games may cause problems?

Although I have a suspicion the few games that did support Akiko just took advantage when detected?

[StevenJGore]

Only Wing Commander took advantage of Akiko, I believe. I also believe (I think I read it on here) that actually, even Wing Commander doesn't use Akiko because of an error in the code (i.e. it was supposed to use it, but doesn't).

[jotd]

akiko does c2p through WriteChunkyPixel rom routine, and never called directly in any game. If it's not there, c2p is done by software, which can be faster than CD32 on fastmem-equipped A1200

no fantastic visuals are achieved on CD32 that cannot be done on A1200. The only advantage of CD32 is CD-audio mixed in audio output when playing (for games that provide CD music)

[Michael Doma]

So no one got an idea on how to directly boot to cd on a1200 like cd32...?

[DanyPPC]

At least You must boot from a floppy which has a device CD0 to mount and the pass the boot to it.
Even if you could create a Kickstart file with a cd.device there are many variables to take into account, such as the connection, IDE, SCSI, PCMCIA, the number of drives, etc...
In reality, we would need software in the ROM that tries to guess everything by interrogating the various devices and checking that there is a bootable CD from which to boot.

So, the minimal soluton is a little floppy disk, and keep in mind that loading a device from floppy disk takes up memory, so goodbye to the 2MB of free chips.

[stx2199]

I created a booteable floppy disk long time ago for winuae to emulate the CD32 and play CD32 games
I created it using the idefix97 v3.5 package which contain the CD32 emulator

to make it work make sure you check uaescsi.device option in winuae

works fine using real CD32 games and a real DVD or CD

so here is the floppy disk, report if works on your computer

[Michael Doma]

Originally Posted by stx2199

I created a booteable floppy disk long time ago for winuae to emulate the CD32 and play CD32 games

Now how cool is that!?

Although it doesn't seem to work with emulated CD (cue+bin), see below... any hints?
(Using A1200 Quickstart+uaescsi.device; DOS Device is "CD" - when using "CD0" a second window pops up: "Can't open uaescsi.device unit 0")

[Michael Doma]

Problem solved!
Actually, you don't even have to add a drive to the list. Just need to select the image file and then tick "CDFS automount CD/DVD drives" - et voilà!

Thank you so much, stx!

EDIT: Ticking uaescsi.device is not needed for CD images.

[knightbeat]

Originally Posted by StevenJGore

Only Wing Commander took advantage of Akiko, I believe. I also believe (I think I read it on here) that actually, even Wing Commander doesn't use Akiko because of an error in the code (i.e. it was supposed to use it, but doesn't).

This explains a lot. I had a Zappo CD-ROM PCMCIA that allowed CD32 games to run using a bootdisk. It claimed to offer 'Virtual Akiko' support, though I guess this is nonsense.

[stx2199]

Originally Posted by Michael Doma

Problem solved!
Actually, you don't even have to add a drive to the list. Just need to select the image file and then tick "CDFS automount CD/DVD drives" - et voilà!

Thank you so much, stx!

EDIT: Ticking uaescsi.device is not needed for CD images.

yes, it works with CD images too, once you tick automount CD /DVD drives ,the image selector becomes CD0 and uaesci.device unit 0, otherwise if you want to use real CD32 games you must tick uaesci.device only

also please note that if you make a winuae config with a 040 cpu then you can use the option called 68040.library, this will speedup some games as Alien breed 3d, Frontier etc

btw,
Here is the CD32 emu documentation,copy it to the floppy

[Michael Doma]

Originally Posted by stx2199

also please note that if you make a winuae config with a 040 cpu then you can use the option called 68040.library, this will speedup some games as Alien breed 3d, Frontier etc

Thanks! And I think I found a "bug": CD audio isn't played when a CDTV game is booted (Sim City). Audio works with direct CDTV emulation in WinUAE, but not via CD32emulator. I have selected the CUE file as image and there are separate WAV files for each audio track.

[stx2199]

Originally Posted by Michael Doma

Thanks! And I think I found a "bug": CD audio isn't played when a CDTV game is booted (Sim City). Audio works with direct CDTV emulation in WinUAE, but not via CD32emulator. I have selected the CUE file as image and there are separate WAV files for each audio track.

if you read the doc I posted you will found that this CD32 emulator don't support CDTV games like the real CD32 console does

however some CDTV games will boot anyways, but some issues could happen as CD music not working etc