Amiga 1200 - TF1260 - ShapeShifter

[derSammler]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Shapeshifter originally predates large device support in Amiga OS. Though the latest versions were released after OS 3.5, I don't see anywhere to say that it was updated to support large devices - none of the Shapeshifter readmes since OS3.5 was released contain this in their lists of updates, and it lists OS 2.1 in its system requirements. It's dangerous to assume it supports >4GB drives.

OK, so you were just assuming. Not sure what OS 3.5 has to do with that. OS 3.5 just included patches for large drives that already existed long before. Since ShapeShifter does raw block addressing over the [whatever].device, it probably does not have to care about that anyway.

And last time someone told me I would scare people.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by derSammler

Not sure what OS 3.5 has to do with that. OS 3.5 just included patches for large drives that already existed long before.

Yes, large drives did of course exist, but the standard device drivers included with the OS prior to 3.5 did not, so naturally if Shapeshifter is doing block-level accessing of the drive through e.g. scsi.device, it does not support 4GB drives either.

[rabidgerry]

Originally Posted by derSammler

There are patches you can install to make chunky-to-planar conversion faster. You should also, when using hardfiles, use a different file system like SFS or PFS, as FFS has terrible performance when seeking in large files. But I doubt you can overcome the bandwidth limit of AGA.

I have BlazeWCP installed and enabled which does this for chunky to plannar conversion. Not sure if that will help those games run better. I think in one video a guy said something about an MMU video driver option for processors that have them which is supposed to help, but I didn't see that in the manual myself.

I always use PFS3AIO.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Shapeshifter definitely supports System 7 on an '060.


Shapeshifter originally predates large device support in Amiga OS. Though the latest versions were released after OS 3.5, I don't see anywhere to say that it was updated to support large devices - none of the Shapeshifter readmes since OS3.5 was released contain this in their lists of updates, and it lists OS 2.1 in its system requirements. It's dangerous to assume it supports >4GB drives.

Aside from that, it's worth noting that the partition size used must also be supported by the version of Mac OS. Earlier versions of System 7 only support 2GB.


FFS seek performance can be dramatically improved by using both extra buffers and a larger block size.

I think I used 100 buffers for that 1gb partition I created. I used 512kb block size however based on the manual stating this. So I can use bigger block size then? I'll re-do thing again.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by rabidgerry

I think I used 100 buffers for that 1gb partition I created. I used 512kb block size however based on the manual stating this. So I can use bigger block size then? I'll re-do thing again.

Sorry, be careful here: Increasing the block size is only for FFS (Amiga-formatted) partitions, so if you're using a hardfile instead of a direct access partition this will make a big difference. But if this is a partition directly accessed by the Mac, you need to leave it at 512 bytes as per the instructions. That should still be faster than accessing a hardfile.

[rabidgerry]

May be I've grossly over estimated what I could achieve with shapeshifter. Looks like the way to enjoy the games in using an RTG card in conjunction.

[Aardvark]

Originally Posted by rabidgerry

So I also continued with the 1gb partition I created. The partition is at the end of my CF hard drive. Not within the first 4gb of the card.

It's just a matter of time before it wraps around and corrupts your Amiga partitions.

Originally Posted by rabidgerry

I have BlazeWCP installed and enabled which does this for chunky to plannar conversion. Not sure if that will help those games run better. I think in one video a guy said something about an MMU video driver option for processors that have them which is supposed to help, but I didn't see that in the manual myself.

BlazeWCP doesn't help with Shapeshifter. MuEVD or Savage video drivers is needed to get decent framerate in AGA.

Originally Posted by rabidgerry

May be I've grossly over estimated what I could achieve with shapeshifter. Looks like the way to enjoy the games in using an RTG card in conjunction.

Games that gives an option to run in 320x200 window can run decent speed in AGA lowres, AitD is one of them. Anything that has to run interlaced are usually not worth it.

The best version of Wolf3D performs impressively with 060+MuEVD
[ Show youtube player ]

[Retro1234]

68060 could easily run Alone in The Dark.

Somethings not right?

I would say system apps that boost graphic speed will affect Shapeshifter because it is system friendly - It might not be significant or what you want but they will affect it.

Obviously the fastest Harddrive speed you can get is to copy the hardfile to RAM if you have enough.

[rabidgerry]

Originally Posted by Aardvark

It's just a matter of time before it wraps around and corrupts your Amiga partitions.

BlazeWCP doesn't help with Shapeshifter. MuEVD or Savage video drivers is needed to get decent framerate in AGA.

Games that gives an option to run in 320x200 window can run decent speed in AGA lowres, AitD is one of them. Anything that has to run interlaced are usually not worth it.

The best version of Wolf3D performs impressively with 060+MuEVD
[ Show youtube player ]

Ok I'll look into moving that partition to the first 4gb of the card very soon then and take the current install as an experiment.


Downloaded those drivers. I think it says Savage is a demo, do you know what the limitation of its uses are?

To be honest, playing the FPS games isn't a deal breaker since I've got the Likes of Duke Nukem and various other ports working really well with the TF1260.

But I would love to get Alone in the Dark working a bit smoother.

[rabidgerry]

Alone in the Dark albeit a bit slow, is so much/a lot smoother using MuEVD. I was actually playing it in the large window size 640 x 480 as well. It's I'd say nearly playable using that driver.

[Calabazam]

Alone 1 should run perfectly fast with a 68060@50 on older hardware than TF like Blizzard which have lower speed RAM, even in AGA MuEVD. Did you set up the mmu libs and the EVD good? If you expect a very fast game though, note that Alone is fixed FPS with somehow clumsy controls and you will never see it flies. Look Youtube for game play on real PC hardware.
About harddrive, a hardfile is only slightly slower than real partition with SFS and a lot of buffers and is more convenient..

[rabidgerry]

Wow! Set up a bit better as per MuEVD guide.

Re-enabled MuFastZero in my Startup

Disabled PrepareEmul A1200 (I was unsure about this one as there is a tool type that I also have disabled called REMAP8K)

Set the refresh rate to 1

So I'd say I have "Alone in the Dark" running in the 640 x 480 window within my 640 x 512 Mac display as smooth as I remember playing Resident Evil on the Playstation waaayy back in the 90's.

As this was one of my primary objectives of installing Shapeshifter, I am very pleased. Thanks Aardvark for those video driver recommendations. Have not tried Savage yet.

Originally Posted by Calabazam

Alone 1 should run perfectly fast with a 68060@50 on older hardware than TF like Blizzard which have lower speed RAM, even in AGA MuEVD. Did you set up the mmu libs and the EVD good? If you expect a very fast game though, note that Alone is fixed FPS with somehow clumsy controls and you will never see it flies. Look Youtube for game play on real PC hardware.
About harddrive, a hardfile is only slightly slower than real partition with SFS and a lot of buffers and is more convenient..

I had MMU installed properly for a long time and always have it on my installs, but MuEVD was not included in my setup as I never needed it before. However I think I have cracked it now.

[rabidgerry]

Prince of Persia in colour runs perfect now ad does Alone in the dark. The FPS games are still unplayable really. Not a big loss to me as I have most of the ones I want running on my A1200 itself.

[wiz12]

Originally Posted by rabidgerry

would you believe, this is exactly what I did first! I had the inspiration to install it myself on my regular HD because of that. But I couldn't get it to run.

Now, perhaps this is because of the things I later discovered, like turning off REMAP8K and enabling.

Initially what I did nicked the roms from that installation.

Anyways I got it running now!

Couple of questions though, Alone in the Dark runs slow, anyways to improve this? I thought 060 would have a significant improvement given I watched videos of it running about the same speed on 030's?

I tried Doom II as well and it was, a "picture", never mind "slide show". I must have some config stuff not optimised.

@wiz12 you were able to lift those installations and run directly on your TF1260 without doing anything?

Glad you got it all working now rabidgerry, I'd say you have got it running much smoother than I ever did and to answer your question I had the same problems as you at the beginning and as you figured out removing REMAP8K was the key to get it running on 060 however I haven't since been able to get the emulator running smoothly, even overclocked to 100MHz games like Settlers 2 run slow and even crash. Testing MuEVD driver in AGA mode didn't yield any performance increase either, so I've since been using ShapeShifter on my V2-1200 and it's working way faster on that, almost perfect.

[rabidgerry]

Originally Posted by wiz12

Glad you got it all working now rabidgerry, I'd say you have got it running much smoother than I ever did and to answer your question I had the same problems as you at the beginning and as you figured out removing REMAP8K was the key to get it running on 060 however I haven't since been able to get the emulator running smoothly, even overclocked to 100MHz games like Settlers 2 run slow and even crash. Testing MuEVD driver in AGA mode didn't yield any performance increase either, so I've since been using ShapeShifter on my V2-1200 and it's working way faster on that, almost perfect.

If you want I can give you my settings? It should work good for everything other than FPS type games I think.

I don't think the clock speed has anything to do with a lot of the speed. Seems to be all to do with the video drivers. I hadn't my TF1260 higher than 63mhz for my Shapeshifter trials. I do regular boost my clock speed though for certain FPSA games on my A1200 itself (Dark Forces, Duke Nukem, Blood etc etc)

[wiz12]

Originally Posted by rabidgerry

If you want I can give you my settings? It should work good for everything other than FPS type games I think.

I don't think the clock speed has anything to do with a lot of the speed. Seems to be all to do with the video drivers. I hadn't my TF1260 higher than 63mhz for my Shapeshifter trials. I do regular boost my clock speed though for certain FPSA games on my A1200 itself (Dark Forces, Duke Nukem, Blood etc etc)

Yes, thank you, maybe your settings are better suited to the TF1260 or perhaps I have something not set up correctly. When I did overclock to 100MHz I did notice a significant improvement in performance overall, it's just it wasn't really that stable for me. I didn't test any FPS games at the time only Settlers 2 but I assume they would have benefited from it too if even only by a small margin. It's just a bit disappointing when it's slow on the 060 compared to Vampire and PiStorm.

[rabidgerry]

Originally Posted by wiz12

Yes, thank you, maybe your settings are better suited to the TF1260 or perhaps I have something not set up correctly. When I did overclock to 100MHz I did notice a significant improvement in performance overall, it's just it wasn't really that stable for me. I didn't test any FPS games at the time only Settlers 2 but I assume they would have benefited from it too if even only by a small margin. It's just a bit disappointing when it's slow on the 060 compared to Vampire and PiStorm.

Ok, attached is my prefs file. Copy this into your Shapeshifter directory and either overwrite yours or swap it out.

You will need to then go to graphics and map to MuEVD unless I happen to have it in same folder as you (goes in the video driver folder of shapeshifter directory).

Then sort out your file mapping either to a partition or hard file.

Try that and see what happens.

Also I have MuFastzero enabled in my startup, MuMove4K and MuFastrom. I believe MuFastzero is one recommended in the MuEVD guide plus an arguement like FASTEXEC or something like that. Check that out.

Give all that a go and see how you get on. Something like settlers should run no problem same way I have Alone in the Dark and Prince of Persia going nice a smooth. Doom 2 and Duke Nukem were slide shows though.

[wiz12]

Originally Posted by rabidgerry

Ok, attached is my prefs file. Copy this into your Shapeshifter directory and either overwrite yours or swap it out.

You will need to then go to graphics and map to MuEVD unless I happen to have it in same folder as you (goes in the video driver folder of shapeshifter directory).

Then sort out your file mapping either to a partition or hard file.

Try that and see what happens.

Also I have MuFastzero enabled in my startup, MuMove4K and MuFastrom. I believe MuFastzero is one recommended in the MuEVD guide plus an arguement like FASTEXEC or something like that. Check that out.

Give all that a go and see how you get on. Something like settlers should run no problem same way I have Alone in the Dark and Prince of Persia going nice a smooth. Doom 2 and Duke Nukem were slide shows though.

Thanks a lot, I'll give it a go and see.

[wiz12]

Alright after looking at your prefs file, I can see I had the EVD screenmode setup wrong, changing the values to yours got it working however after booting up MacOS, there was no colour or everything was in greyscale. If I loaded up a game and then quit the colour would be back, so I've had to set the screenmode to 640x480 to prevent this, ever had this issue?

Another issue I have is when quitting ShapeShifter, by clicking the Apple icon/Shut Down, my screen goes black and I have to reset or the Amiga just crashes and reboots anyways, not sure why this is happening.

Regarding Doom 2 and Duke Nukem, yeah they are pretty much slideshows with me too, overclocking to 100MHz does improve the speed though but only a little. In contrast on the V2 these run pretty much full speed. Not sure if it's got to do with a configuration setting or just the V2 being much faster.

[rabidgerry]

Originally Posted by wiz12

Alright after looking at your prefs file, I can see I had the EVD screenmode setup wrong, changing the values to yours got it working however after booting up MacOS, there was no colour or everything was in greyscale. If I loaded up a game and then quit the colour would be back, so I've had to set the screenmode to 640x480 to prevent this, ever had this issue?

Another issue I have is when quitting ShapeShifter, by clicking the Apple icon/Shut Down, my screen goes black and I have to reset or the Amiga just crashes and reboots anyways, not sure why this is happening.

Regarding Doom 2 and Duke Nukem, yeah they are pretty much slideshows with me too, overclocking to 100MHz does improve the speed though but only a little. In contrast on the V2 these run pretty much full speed. Not sure if it's got to do with a configuration setting or just the V2 being much faster.

To be quite honest, I didn't mind if the OS was in Black and White, so long as games where ok. My video display was set to 640 x 512 as I've a 5:4 monitor. I just booted mine up and the splash screen for Mac Os is in colour, as is the OS when loaded. My prefs should have had 8 bit 256 colours selected. I have tried those installs that came with Caffeine myself and I get similar results to you where the will boot in black and white and when I exit my Amiga will have an error sometimes saying "suspend or reboot".

The install that works for me is the one I created myself and did from scratch. That is in colour etc. When I run those that came with Caffeine using my PIstorm all works as it should. So I dunno, it's been configured to run in Caffeine so don't think that translates well to actual 060 and Amiga OS. I'm running classic WB3.1 still

The PiStorm novelty wore off after a few weeks. Shocking I know! I played Duke Nukem Holiday edition until I got stuck on a level and then after I came back from holiday myself I put the TF1260 back in again.

[rabidgerry]

Ok so I actually seem to get those crashes "suspend or reboot" after I shut down the Mac all the time now it seems. No idea why that is or how to stop that. Seems to work well apart from that though.