new to OS 3.9, whdload, amiga web browser

[sovietconscript]

after haveing a less then pleasent expernce with the amiga 3000 i was able to pick up a really nice amiga 1200T with OS 3.9, a cpu accelerator, 32 mb ram and a wireless card today. i'm hopeing this will meet most of my amiga gameing needs but i have a few questions

first off and this may be the dumbest of my questions. how do you check to see what hard drives are installed? I was told there are 2 hard drives on this machine but i'm new to os 3.9 (acually since 95% of my amiga experence is with a A500 i have no idea how this stuff works with the amiga) and on pokeing around a little i can't seem to find the hard drives, how much space is on them or anything. for instance i go to install black crypt but it asks me where to install it...i have no idea. and since were talking about Black Crypt. when i do go to play it the screen goes all crazy, when i load it up via disk though on startup its fine. guessing this is an issue with the machince and can be solved with WHDload?

which leads to my next question. assumeing i figure out the HD locations and how to install to them how do i setup WHDload? can i just burn it to a CD and then copy from there onto the amiga?

and lastly are there any guides for setting up the wireless internet? theres some program named genesis i toyed with a bit but i couldn't get it to work.

any help would be great. thanks.

[Angus]

Originally Posted by sovietconscript

first off and this may be the dumbest of my questions. how do you check to see what hard drives are installed? I was told there are 2 hard drives on this machine but i'm new to os 3.9 (acually since 95% of my amiga experence is with a A500 i have no idea how this stuff works with the amiga) and on pokeing around a little i can't seem to find the hard drives, how much space is on them or anything. for instance i go to install black crypt but it asks me where to install it...i have no idea. and since were talking about Black Crypt. when i do go to play it the screen goes all crazy, when i load it up via disk though on startup its fine. guessing this is an issue with the machince and can be solved with WHDload?

which leads to my next question. assumeing i figure out the HD locations and how to install to them how do i setup WHDload? can i just burn it to a CD and then copy from there onto the amiga?

and lastly are there any guides for setting up the wireless internet? theres some program named genesis i toyed with a bit but i couldn't get it to work.

any help would be great. thanks.

You should have HDtoolbox installed there somewhere, in the Tools drawer I think. That ought to tell you what is what regarding your drives, BUT - GO CAREFULLY, you don't want to change any settings unless yiu are familiar with the program obviously.

Remember that early Amigas had a 4 gig limit and with OS3.9 you have access to beyond that - the wrong tools will stuff your system up or give false readings - so don't svae any changes or anything like that until you are clear on what you are doing.

Actually, if you type assign into a shell doesn't that give you all you drives?

From the manual:
If no arguments are given with ASSIGN or if the LIST keyword is used, a list of all current assignments is displayed. If the VOLS, DIRS, or DEVICES switch is specified, ASSIGN limits the display to volumes, directories, or devices.

Yes, if you're Amiga is not connected to the net and you have a CD drive, burning the user install on a PC CD and then transfering would be a good way. WHDLoad is pretty darn straightforward for the user, that is part of its brilliance - once you have installed the latest version, you can then download the slave for the specific game you are after, then run the slave and install the game via your floppies. So, when you burn the main WHDLoad program, you might download some likely slaves at the same time. And have a look on Aminet for some HD tools that may also come in handy for just peeking at your drives, but again - go steady.

Haven't done wireless, but I was running a 3Com PCMCIA network card which Genesis does very well, this linked me to the internet via a router.

Check out Neil Cafferkey's superb work, he's a really nice guy and I think he also did something for wireless connections, here's a link to his pcmcia driver:

http://aminet.net/search?query=3com


HTH.

[tone007]

There's only one hard drive in that machine, it was either 2GB or 4GB. Two partitions, they'll show up on the Workbench screen on bootup (along with RAM disk.)

(no room for 2 IDE hard drives with an IDE CD drive in there as well.)

To configure the prism2 WiFi, edit s:startup-sequence and change the line that starts with "setprism2defaults" to reflect your WiFi router's SSID and hexadecimal WEP key, save the file and reboot.

[sovietconscript]

Originally Posted by tone007

There's only one hard drive in that machine, it was either 2GB or 4GB. Two partitions, they'll show up on the Workbench screen on bootup (along with RAM disk.)

(no room for 2 IDE hard drives with an IDE CD drive in there as well.)

To configure the prism2 WiFi, edit s:startup-sequence and change the line that starts with "setprism2defaults" to reflect your WiFi router's SSID and hexadecimal WEP key, save the file and reboot.

Hey,
good to see you made it back ok. yhea there are 2 icons on the workbench screen. i'm gonna mess around with it some more today, didn't get to do much last night as i was pretty worn out. other then those few things i need to work out it works great.

thanks

and thanks Angus for the info

[sovietconscript]

ok, what am i doing wrong? i burned some game files and the files for whdload but when i put the cd in the amiga its empty.

i did unzip them and then burn them, was i supposed to leave them zipped?

[coze]

did you check 'show all files' in the icon menu ?

amiga doesn't show all files by default, it shows only files with 'icons'.
an icon is an image/properties file associated with another file. it has the extension 'info'

[sovietconscript]

Originally Posted by coze

did you check 'show all files' in the icon menu ?

amiga doesn't show all files by default, it shows only files with 'icons'.
an icon is an image/properties file associated with another file. it has the extension 'info'

thanks, that did the trick. well have whdload installed...i think but i still can't figure out how it works. there a dummies guide to this thing anywhere?

[TCD]

Cody's FAQ is a good starting point : http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=5267
Put all the files from the WHDLoad archive in the corresponding folders on your system partition and you should be ready to start.

[sovietconscript]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Cody's FAQ is a good starting point : http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=5267
Put all the files from the WHDLoad archive in the corresponding folders on your system partition and you should be ready to start.

well, i'm pretty sure the program is installed. i went through the whole whdload installation process. installed it to the suggested file (c

but now when i run a patcher install for any game i get
"unable to open script"

[TCD]

Hmm, does WHDLoad work when you try it with a preinstalled game from http://www.whdownload.com/ ? (not really needed that you install most games yourself )

[sovietconscript]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Hmm, does WHDLoad work when you try it with a preinstalled game from http://www.whdownload.com/ ? (not really needed that you install most games yourself )

that seems to work...for the most part. a few of the games work but for about 9 out of 10 of the ones i tried i get a error message about not haveing a kickstart files, most are for the A500

i can only imagine what i am going to have to do to pull that from my A500. i love jumping through hoops

all my complaining aside i've made progress. really starting to get back in the groove of working in the Amiga OS. thanks to you guys for all the info and help.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by sovietconscript

that seems to work...for the most part. a few of the games work but for about 9 out of 10 of the ones i tried i get a error message about not haveing a kickstart files, most are for the A500

Good to hear it works (so far) For all WHDLoad games you only need two kickstarts : The 1.3 A500 and the 3.1 A1200 KS. You also need the RTB files from here http://aminet.net/package/util/boot/skick346. Make a new folder in devs called 'kickstarts', put the two rom files in there and rename them (KS 1.3 to kick34005.A500 and KS 3.1 to kick40068.A1200). Now put the two corresponding RTB files in there and that's it.

[sovietconscript]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Good to hear it works (so far) For all WHDLoad games you only need two kickstarts : The 1.3 A500 and the 3.1 A1200 KS. You also need the RTB files from here http://aminet.net/package/util/boot/skick346. Make a new folder in devs called 'kickstarts', put the two rom files in there and rename them (KS 1.3 to kick34005.A500 and KS 3.1 to kick40068.A1200). Now put the two corresponding RTB files in there and that's it.

found and installed kickstarts in the specified drawers. well it did seem to improve the number of games that play. for example "Firepower" and "Silicon Dreams" play without a hitch but now i get a diffrent error for most of the other games

DOS - Error #205
(object not found)
on reading "***"

the *** varies depending on the game (example - it came from the desert the "dshell" is missing, for maniac mansion its "maniac"

also i can't seem to open any of the readme files or manuals that come with any of the preinstalls

i'm thinking maybe my A1200 rom image is corrupt? it seems the real early games run (ones that use the 1.3 rom image???)

*update* tried a diffrent 3.1 rom image and 1.3 image and get the same DOS errors, of the 28 games i've attempted to run only 6 have ran through whdload.

black crypt and smash tv will not run through whdload but do run when booted up via disk so thats 8 games total out of 28 i have gotten to work if we count that. a few games ex wax works just go to black and never even give me an error. just freeze up the entire amiga. and a few others acually start and then promptly crash ex - R-type II and Drakken

[sovietconscript]

mystery apperently solved. problem was due to my simple mistake. i was unzipping the games then burning them to disc for transfer rather then just transfering the zip files over and opening them on the Amiga. all seems well now. thanks guys.

[TCD]

Ah, the 'attributes get lost when burned to CD' bug. Should've remembered that one. Good to hear it works now

[sovietconscript]

i have noticed some speed issues with certain games though. usually this doesn't effect gameplay but it can be annoying. mostly seems to effect sound and music. and example would be the intro to barbarian 2. where the skeletal hand rips through the title screen and says "follow me". it seems to be running at 2 to 3 times the normal speed. i'm assumeing its from my 33mhtz cpu speed but is there any ways to correct this?

[Angus]

Originally Posted by sovietconscript

i have noticed some speed issues with certain games though. usually this doesn't effect gameplay but it can be annoying. mostly seems to effect sound and music. and example would be the intro to barbarian 2. where the skeletal hand rips through the title screen and says "follow me". it seems to be running at 2 to 3 times the normal speed. i'm assumeing its from my 33mhtz cpu speed but is there any ways to correct this?

There are various WHDLoad tooltypes you can put in the slave's icon (or as arguments if you start from cli) like nocaches and I think there's a way of turning off fast mem - have a look through the arguments in the docs.

[sovietconscript]

ah, well i just realized i'm playing PAL games on a NTSC system. would that account for the speed issues? any corrections for this?