3 external floppies can affect compatibility?

[rotacak]

Hello,

I like to use all external floppies with adf disks for all games. My question is - can it broke some games? Is there any game that will crash when I will use external floppies (even when the game does not support these floppies)?

[drHirudo]

Each external floppy takes some memory for the buffers etc.. I remember some games refused to work, because of insufficient memory.
That's only incompatibility that I had back in the 1990-ies.

[rotacak]

Hmm Thanks.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by drHirudo

Each external floppy takes some memory for the buffers etc.. I remember some games refused to work, because of insufficient memory.
That's only incompatibility that I had back in the 1990-ies.

That shows lack of foresight on the developer's part, especially if their game is stored on several floppies. I would think the more reputable companies took the memory usage of external floppy drives into account, even tested their games themselves on such configurations to even see if their code worked.

I myself had an external floppy drive, cos a very few demos refused to run without one. I don't think I had that many multi-floppy games, but they must've been a breeze to run because otherwise I would remember the disk swapping being a nuisance, and especially worried about the main floppy drive wearing out as a result.

[malko]

Originally Posted by drHirudo

Each external floppy takes some memory for the buffers etc.. I remember some games refused to work, because of insufficient memory.
That's only incompatibility that I had back in the 1990-ies.

Same here BitD with two external floppy drive on my A2000.
To be fair 1MB Chip Ram was a bigger problem for game compatibility. And things did not get any better (nor worse fortunately) when I upgraded for 2MB Chip Ram

[jbenam]

IIRC I remember that a lot of games would not even consider looking into DF1, but would just expect you to put the next floppy to be in DF0.

That seriously limits the usefulness of multiple external drives. Add on top of that that on a plain 500 with 512kb+512kb you also start running into memory issues...

System-friendly games will most certainly work with multiple drives, though.

[Tomislav]

Some games wont work because they load at absolute address and that address is what programmer of that game though that is start of free address space. Then, because every expansion and floppy needs additional memory for configuration, game overwrites system data. That's why some games crash, soon or later. Solution is to remove additional floppy drives and/or expansions. That's why exists utility bootblocks which do that software way (removes DF1 and/or Fast memory ...).

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Tomislav

Solution is to remove additional floppy drives and/or expansions. That's why exists utility bootblocks which do that software way (removes DF1 and/or Fast memory ...).

I'm well aware of the Amiga Early Startup Control that let you do all manner of things to free up memory, like disabling external drives and even AGA for those games that didn't work on it, but if I recall, my external drive had a physical switch to disable it. I may be wrong though, it was a LOOOONG time ago.