Games that required an accelerator (68030, 68040, 68060)

[nogginthenog]

Originally Posted by Fastdruid

The 030 had an MMU but the "EC" versions didn't (eg the 68EC030 fitted to the A4000/030).
Anything with Zorro III needed an MMU.

But a A4000/030 has Zorro III?

[stevsurv]

Dungeon Master 2 comes to mind. Min 68020 but runs more smoothly on 030 or 040 processors. I used to play it to death on my 68030 A2000 b.i.t.d! Responding to orig post.

[Avrovulcan]

For me Frontier Elite II and Wing Commander painfully slow on my bog standard 2000. I think this was the main reason I eventually got an 030 accelerator.

[AmigaHope]

Originally Posted by stevsurv

Dungeon Master 2 comes to mind. Min 68020 but runs more smoothly on 030 or 040 processors. I used to play it to death on my 68030 A2000 b.i.t.d! Responding to orig post.

Haha so you weren't fooled by the "AGA" sticker? =)

How much chip memory did you have though? Like did it work with 512k OCS chip + >2M fast or did you use 1M ECS chip + >1M fast?

Back in the day we thought it required 2M chip ECS minimum but developers weren't exactly crystal clear. =P

[stevsurv]

Originally Posted by AmigaHope

Haha so you weren't fooled by the "AGA" sticker? =)

How much chip memory did you have though? Like did it work with 512k OCS chip + >2M fast or did you use 1M ECS chip + >1M fast?

Back in the day we thought it required 2M chip ECS minimum but developers weren't exactly crystal clear. =P

I had the standard 1M chip and an 8 meg mem card with HD setup in Amigados 2.0. I upgraded the chip mem to 2 meg a while later. The game ran perfectly in both configs. A2000 MB was a rev 6.2.



The docs said A1200 min to run it but the game box had a sticker on the front with "minimum 68020 to run" the game.


I even had a multi option trainer that launched the game. Loved cheating on it!

[AmigaHope]

Originally Posted by stevsurv

I had the standard 1M chip and an 8 meg mem card with HD setup in Amigados 2.0. I upgraded the chip mem to 2 meg a while later. The game ran perfectly in both configs. A2000 MB was a rev 6.2.

The docs said A1200 min to run it but the game box had a sticker on the front with "minimum 68020 to run" the game.

Yeah I always wondered what the actual requirements were. Like, would it work on 512k chipram as long as you had an 020 and 2M fast RAM? I suppose just playing in UAE could answer that...

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by nogginthenog

But a A4000/030 has Zorro III?

Indeed, the MMU isn't needed for Zorro-III, which is all handled by Buster. There's nothing in a basic Amiga setup that requires the MMU, though it can be used for additional functionality like debugging, virtual memory etc.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

There's nothing in a basic Amiga setup that requires the MMU

Off topic Early A3000's used the MMU to load kickstart from disk.

Ambermoon will use a more powerful CPU to add floor and ceiling textures but it is not required to play without.

[Seiya]

At difference from DOS games where some on these ones don't start if you haven't minimun processor required, Amiga Games run with base processor minimun: OCS/ECS games require minimun 68000 and any AGA games require minimun 68EC020.
The only thing to check if these 68EC020 require fast memory to start

[AmigaHope]

Originally Posted by Seiya

At difference from DOS games where some on these ones don't start if you haven't minimun processor required, Amiga Games run with base processor minimun: OCS/ECS games require minimun 68000 and any AGA games require minimun 68EC020.
The only thing to check if these 68EC020 require fast memory to start

We were just discussing Dungeon Master 2, which runs fine on ECS (and OCS possibly?) but requires a 68020+ plus sufficient RAM. The sticker on the box said AGA, but it does not in fact require AGA.

[Seiya]

great! Dungeon Master II is an exception: OCS games that require 68020 to start.
i tryed this game in WinUAE with this configuration:

Kickstart 1.3
Workbench 1.3.2
chipset OCS
cpu= 68EC020
Chip RAM= 512k
Slow RAM= 1 MB
DF0: only

It works, but there is not enough memory to load music and sound effects so the game is totally silent.

With the same configuration, but with 1,5 MB Slow RAM there is music and sound effects

[DisposableHero]

I think Star Trek - 25th Anniversary was the same - the box implied the system requirements to be higher than they actually were. I don't think Interplay thought we were as intelligent as PC owners at understanding system requirements.

I gather that the fastest way to play Sim City 2000 on an Amiga is actually to run a (classic) Mac emulator and play the Mac version through that - proof of just how badly programmed it was

[McTrinsic]

ST:25 will show wrong colours with ECS/OCS last time I tried.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by DisposableHero

I gather that the fastest way to play Sim City 2000 on an Amiga is actually to run a (classic) Mac emulator and play the Mac version through that - proof of just how badly programmed it was

It's not really bad programming, but bad decisions for target hardware. It was intended to run on native screenmodes and an '020, which meant it was limited to AGA and interlace if you wanted it in high resolution mode. This was, of course, slow due to the hardware itself.

The Mac version ran in a standard window, so could be resized to suit any resolution without flicker, and also took advantage of hardware graphics acceleration so wasn't held back by the Amiga chipset. It could also take advantage of Mac emulation tricks for speeding up the display, such as using the MMU to avoid unnecessary refreshing and reducing the number of colours needed (which would need to be explicitly supported in-game to work on the Amiga version). I played the Mac version, but then I had a graphics card so playing under Mac emulation was like a dream compared to the native Amiga version. Running the Mac emulation on a 256-colour interlaced screen with a 68020 probably wouldn't be much fun at all...

So it's not that it's badly programmed as such, but the Amiga and Mac versions had very different target hardware.

[IanS]

As per the original question, did anybody come up with a game that absolutely required an 030, 040 or 060 to actually run, as opposed to games that just ran better on faster a CPU? As I recall, there were full, non ec 020 accelerators available for various Amigas, so some games that wouldn't run on the A1200s ram limited EC cpu may run on a full 020.


Also trying to remember if I tried to run Alien Breed II TKG on an 020... it was bearable on my Blizzard 030/50, and reasonable on my 040/33. Must try it on WinUAE with an rtg patch to see how it should run. ??

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by IanS

As per the original question, did anybody come up with a game that absolutely required an 030, 040 or 060 to actually run, as opposed to games that just ran better on faster a CPU?

The user programming model of the 68030 does not differ from that of the 68020, but the latter is a significant improvement over the 68000. Thus, what works on the 68030 also works on the 68020. However, whatever works on a 68020 does ot necessarily work on 68000.


Hence, it is not surprising that there is no 68030 exclusive software.


There is neither much difference of the 68040 or 68060 for applications, even though the system level is somewhat different.

[IanS]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

The user programming model of the 68030 does not differ from that of the 68020, but the latter is a significant improvement over the 68000. Thus, what works on the 68030 also works on the 68020. However, whatever works on a 68020 does ot necessarily work on 68000.


Hence, it is not surprising that there is no 68030 exclusive software.


There is neither much difference of the 68040 or 68060 for applications, even though the system level is somewhat different.

I understand that, especially the 030, but it still doesn't answer the question.

[AmigaHope]

Originally Posted by IanS

I understand that, especially the 030, but it still doesn't answer the question.

The only reason a userspace program would require an 040/060 is if it used MOVE16 with no fallback. Other than that, if it runs on an 060 it will run on an 020. All the userspace instructions on 040/060 (other than MOVE16) also exist on 020. In fact, the 040/060 have fewer instructions, hence the need for 68040/68060.library, and realtime patchers like Cyberpatcher and Oxypatcher.

It's basically impossible to make an "040/060-only" program that doesn't bang the supervisor-level instructions.

So yeah there were plenty of programs that ran like crap on an 020 and really needed an 040/060 to run properly, but they'd still run on the 020 since there was no technical reason they couldn't run.

[IanS]

But is it possible for an installer/program to query whether you have a particular processor in your Amiga? If it is, then a program can be prevented from running? If yes to both, then we arrive back at the original question. ;-)

[AmigaHope]

Originally Posted by IanS

But is it possible for an installer/program to query whether you have a particular processor in your Amiga? If it is, then a program can be prevented from running? If yes to both, then we arrive back at the original question. ;-)

Yeah you could, but why would anyone do that? "Sorry, your program can run, but we won't let you run it."

The most I've ever seen is a warning "Hey your system seems kinda slow, don't blame us if it doesn't run very well."