Christmas Lemmings 94 Issue

Hi all, my name's Tom and I'm new to the forums. I'm also relatively new to the world of Amiga, I bought myself an A500 a few years ago and have been steadily growing a games collection for it.

One of my favourite games is Lemmings and I just picked up both Christmas versions. I've got no problems playing my Christmas Lemmings 93 but I'm having no look with 94.

Firstly I can't boot it properly. I usually just pop the disk, turn on the Amiga and it just starts up. Instead it asks me to put Workbench in, which I do. Then once loaded I try again. Now I can see Xmas Lems 94 on the desktop. I can't open it though. After a number of attempts I can't even get the game to appear on the desktop now. Instead I see an icon that says BAD or something to that effect, like the disk is unreadable.

I'm a little concerned as I seem to have made the problem worse. Can anyone help?

Thanks in advance!

[Arnie]

Hmm, sounds like a corrupted disk. Is it a retail version or a copy?

You could download another copy off the Internet and write over your disk or to another disk. It all depends if you have the hardware or knowledge to do it.

One of the easiest ways is to buy a Gotek drive that uses a USB stick to read adf's but you have to flash it with new firmware first. Some come pre flashed but can be a little expensive.

Alternately you could send me the disk and I'll write a new image to it for you.

If other disks show signs of read errors then your Diskdrive heads could need cleaning.

Thanks for getting back to me. It's a retail copy, and I think I must have corrupted it myself somehow, if that's at all possible?

In order to download the game from the net and copy it to a new disk can I use a PC? Is it a very difficult process?

I don't think it could be the drive as it's been working fine with most other games.

It's interesting how I couldn't get it to work before it became corrupt though, it is a double sided disk if that could have anything to do with it? The Amiga would certainly recognise it in Workbench, as it appeared on the desktop to begin with, with a large Psygnosis logo, which once I clicked on it led me to a Christmas Lemmings image that I could click on, but it wouldn't do anything.

Thanks again for your time, I'm eager to learn a little bit more about using the Amiga so I at least don't mess up and corrupt more disks!

[s2325]

Try to show all files in WorkBench as there may be something wrong with icon-shortcut.

[Bugala]

Someone needs to fill the blanks, but, you can transfer stuff between Amiga nad PC with disks only, supposing you have a diskdrive in your PC.

PC cant read Amigas disks, but Amiga can read PCs disks. Amigas floppys are 880Kb in size (if i correctly remember) while PC is only meager 720 Kb.

Notice, to not use HD disks, but DD disks.

First of all, you need to format your disk to PC disk.

Then comes the next part. Get that Lemmings in some form and make sure it takes less than 720 Kb, otherwise it wont fit. You could for example download ADF file and then LHA or ZIP pack it to fit if it doesnt fit otherwise.

Then you move that disk to Amiga.

Since you are dealing with A500, Im not sure if A500s workbench had PC disk reading by default. Its been long time since I last did this, but if i correctly remember there were on one of the Workbench folders a folder names... could it be Datatypes or something like that. Then there is this PC0 file. You click that, and after taht you are able to read those PC disks.

Then you move that PC disks stuff to Amiga formatted floppy and if necessary of course unpack it and so on, and there you have it.

Not the easiest possible solution, but it works.


Then there is the another possiblity of connecting them with cables, but i have never done that myself, so someone else can advice you on that one.

[alexh]

If the disk was write enabled (i.e. the little tab over the hole in the corner) then you may have accidentally overwritten parts of the disk. However most commercial disks don't have that tab.

Sounds most likely the disk is broken (it is very old).

If it is physically broken you won't be able to over write it to fix it and could potentially break your disk drive.

If it has bit-rot (i.e. the magnetic information is now unreadable) you *may* be able to re-write the disk.

However I would use a "new" disk if I were you.

If you want to write the disk from the PC you can use a null-modem serial cable and AmigaExplorer.

http://www.amigaforever.com/ae/

All you need is a workbench disk to load AmigaExplorer onto the Amiga over the cable, which you have.

P.S. If you only have HD floppy disks (1.44mb) cover the hole opposite the write-protect with tape. I've done it many many times. It has always worked for me.

P.P.S. CrossDos (the tool for reading DOS format disks on the Amiga) only comes with Workbench 2.1 or higher. This didn't ship with any A500, A500+ or A600 AFAIK. It was an upgrade only. (i.e. you don't have it)

[Bugala]

But I think there is some Crossdos thing that works for A500 too, since if i recall right, the day i received my A1200, I came home with a friend who had a PC, and he had downloaded me some stuff from internet and had those disks with me. I suppose I meant to use them with A500 (since i didnt know i had A1200 then yet), and I think we had done the same already before. But memory can remember things wrong.

[zipper]

MessyDos. http://aminet.net/disk/misc/MSH-1.58.lha

Thanks all so much, going to spend some time looking into these options and see what I can get to work and learn a little more about Amigas in the process! Really appreciate the help!

[alexh]

The ADF images for Workbench 2.1, CrossDos Gold v7.04, even MessyDos are easily found but Toodlebug has no way to get them onto physical discs.

The free version of AmigaExplorer is fully useable. The only expense is the null-modem serial cable (and maybe a 25 to 9 pin adapter). If your PC doesn't have a serial port a USB to Serial port is very cheap.

Much cheaper than Kryoflux, Supercard Pro (usb devices to write Amiga disks on a PC)

Or a Gotek (a replacement floppy drive which uses a USB key instead of disks.

[Arnie]

I don't know the specs of the OP's A500 but It's probably safe to assume that it has no more the 1mb ram.

Given that the image file is around 880kb and he will need something like TSGUI and workbench running, will he have enough Ram for this?

I haven't use AF in over 20 years and that was on an A1200, I've never used it on an A500.