The WHDLoad '040 compatibility problems list

[Graham Humphrey]

Thanks for the information - the Lotus games do work with Nocache as you say so there's no need to add them to the list - only if the games don't work (or work as they should) full stop will I add them.

Pinball Mania will be added though, cheers!

[Wepl]

Originally Posted by Dwyloc

Here's some more for your list with problems on my Blizzard 1240/40 Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge, LotusII and Lotus 3 all need the NoCache tooltype or they crash.

Are you sure about Lotus 2? Using latest Slave?
It runs with full caches on 68060 and should also on 68040.

[Dwyloc]

Originally Posted by Wepl

Are you sure about Lotus 2? Using latest Slave?
It runs with full caches on 68060 and should also on 68040.

Yes but it now works without crashing when I tested it again just now. Lotus 2 would start fine but it always crashed just as the race started.

But I made a some changes to my A1200 tower setup over the weekend so one of them may have fixed the problem.

1. I removed my Elbox FastATA 1200 and drivers and replaced it with IDE-Fix Express instead as I was unhappy with the way my mediatorSX fitted on top of it, and I had to remove it to fit my Subway USB adapter anyway (I plan to fit it to my desktop A1200 at some point in the future). Removing it also allowed me to refit my Lyra keyboard interface with I much prefer to the elbox adapter.

2. Updated my Mediator drivers from update 3.9 to update 3.10 (I was already using Multimedia CD UP 1.26 as that was the version supplied).

3. Installed whdload 16.9 beta instead of release version 16.8.

I had not expected to have to have to set nocache as I did not require the setting with my BlizzardPPC 060 card in the past.

[Graham Humphrey]

Update time.

I tried Pinball Mania for myself and it appears to work fine (not that I can stand to play it for very long; I only tried two of the tables) with no tooltypes set or anything - for what it's worth I'm using an Apollo '040 card.

Zool 2 ECS has its problems too - it does slow down a fair bit but it's not as severe as the AGA version and it is still playable.

Also Trolls AGA slows down a hell of a lot so that's another one to add to the list.

[Graham Humphrey]

Another one for the list - Wiz 'n' Liz. It runs fine except for quite a few graphical glitches. Using nocache does away with the glitches but it replaced by slowdown whenever it gets busy

[Graham Humphrey]

Time to bring this thread back to life

Recently I received a PM from Irek `72, who has had problems with various games on his Blizzard '040 and asked me to try them on my Apollo.

Here are the games that have problems on both cards:

Mean Streets: Works up until you start the game, and then it freezes on that pic after you start and you can't do anything, even quit or soft reset. With Nocache set, you just get a black screen and nothing else.

Future Basketball: Game crashes after the intro with this message:



Universal Monsters: Heavily corrupt graphics, and crashes early on as well, with this message:



Theatre of Death: Already covered in another thread, fails to work properly on a Blizzard but is fine on an Apollo.

The following games suffer from graphical errors:

Alien Storm: Corrupt intro and score panel graphics, however otherwise it appears to be totally fine.

Charlie J Cool AGA: Contains some corruption, usually while the screen is scrolling.

Crackdown: Contains some serious in-game graphics corruption.

Apparently Enchanted Land has graphical errors too but I haven't tried it on mine yet (it would be great if anyone could confirm). Also Switchblade 2 was reported to have graphical corruption on the Blizzard (but not on the JST version, curiously) but I found it to be fine here. Likewise, the JST version of Paperboy works fine but there appears to be some corruption after game over on the WHDLoad version.

If anyone can confirm these problems on other processors if possible (I suspect it'll be fine on others though), or if anyone has any solutions to these bugs then please post them here, it would be appreicated. Otherwise they'll end up being added to the main post.

[Retro1234]

I dont know if it worth testing but I get slow down in Zool 2 even on my 030 but If I run the CD32/Dos version theres no slow down - plus it got an extra world.

[Graham Humphrey]

Cheers, I'll try and play the CD32 version at some point and see how it goes.

[Graham Humphrey]

Another update - Irek kindly tested some of the current problematic games in the list on his Blizzard which gave some interesting results - for instance, Pinball Mania works fine on his. I don't have the time right now so perhaps he'd be kind enough to post his findings.

I also started a user group dedicated to such things (Irek's idea, not mine); if you own an '040 please join so we can see how many people these problems affect.

As usual, anyone else finds any new problems/solutions do use this thread and/or the new user group to report them

[Irek´72]

I wanted to thank Graham, for his kind support first. As already mentioned would, I have a few days ago some games from the "black list" on my CPU with 040 Blizzard tried out. The results are in the 040 WHDLoad user group to see.

[Graham Humphrey]

Cool, great you've posted for all to see, thanks.

[mfletcher]

@Graham,

Ive joined yer group as well... Ive got a Blizzard / DCE 040 card for my A1200 and Im seeing some problems with demos from Killer Gorilla's demo packs.

[Graham Humphrey]

Cool, thanks for joining!

Must admit I've never been a big fan of demos, but hopefully sometime this week I'll get to try the demos you've had problems with.

@Irek

Sorry, no time to test Evil Dawn yet

[cybernoid]

With my A4000 040 25mhz, decided to put all demos except AGA with nocache in the .info

The only exception I found was copperdemo.
I think AGA games should work fine with nocache enabled too.

... a good (and should be not very difficult) way to fix incompatibily was to add the nocache option in the whdload s: startup list. If there's noautovec option, why not nocache?

An ultimate solution was to make some kind of script that recognize if the game/ demo is ocs or AGA. If OCS then nocache.
That could be set with a variable in the wdload s:startup with a name like accelerator_mode=1 or so...

...But I'm not a coder, I don't know if whdload.slaves tells whdload what chipset to use, etc, etc

[Graham Humphrey]

I still have problems with the odd AGA game though - have you tried Zool 2 AGA on your setup, that had big problems on mine.

It does appear to be the case that everyone seems to have slightly different problems on some games which makes things even more awkward.

[Mad-Matt]

For the most part 'chipnocache' global setting works wonders on my blizzppc 040/25. no idea if its relevent to other 040 cards.

There should never be a need to set 'nocache' icon setting since this is controlled in the slave itself if the game is compatable with caches or not. although im sure there are cases where it can help but then the 040 becomes slower then a standard 500/600 then so usualy not a good option for me.

Quite alot of slowdown in Zool, but zool2 is mostly ok in game, but quite slow on title screen drawing the logo.

[Graham Humphrey]

Chipnocache, now I didn't think of trying that with many games, thanks for reminding me of that one.

[Dwyloc]

Originally Posted by Mad-Matt

For the most part 'chipnocache' global setting works wonders on my blizzppc 040/25. no idea if its relevent to other 040 cards.

The strange part is that a lot of games that work perfectly with whdload on my blizzardPPC060 with cache on require the nocache tool type to work on my blizzard040/40. But I do use the chipnocache option on my BlizzardPPC card but it did not seem to make much difference on my Blizzard1240/40 card.

I am now begining to wonder if the problems are CPU clock speed/ram access speed diffrence issues rather than strate 040/060 compatibilty diffrences.

[cybernoid]

Originally Posted by Mad-Matt

For the most part 'chipnocache' global setting works wonders on my blizzppc 040/25. no idea if its relevent to other 040 cards.

There should never be a need to set 'nocache' icon setting since this is controlled in the slave itself if the game is compatable with caches or not. although im sure there are cases where it can help but then the 040 becomes slower then a standard 500/600 then so usualy not a good option for me.

Quite alot of slowdown in Zool, but zool2 is mostly ok in game, but quite slow on title screen drawing the logo.

Tks, I will try chipnocache next weekend.

About nocache option, with a 3640 3.0 it really works - The speed is pretty much the same of a real A500, but more compatible. Some demos just don't work without nocache option. I believe same happens with games - with E-UAE with same config/Kick/Wb, found a lot that need to put nocache to run.

[Irek´72]

Well, I think the nocache option is the most widely used and most successful local option on 040/060 CPU. It is not always necessary to use it can even happen that the option for some games or demos can cause problems. Of course there are some games or demos that require a different option to work (CACHE, EXPCHIP or NOMMU) but generally this is an exception.