Advice to get an Amiga for old games

[Tiago]

Advice please!

Have a friend who wants to create a Amiga console, (for games only).
He wants:

- no floppy. It could have HD or compaq-flash. only use floppy for games that he could not run thru hd/compaq flash
- games only
- be able to play the maximum number of games possible, old ones (A500).
- no cash for extra memory, so it will be a standart Amiga



So what do you advice?

1) A600 with 2MB ram + HD/compaq flash with Classicworkbench with whdload??
2) A1200 with 2MB + HD/compaq flash with Classicworkbench with whdload?

A1200 with ram card would be better, faster, but less compatibility with old games, but easy to run whdload
A600 bigger compatibility but less power to whdload?

So what % of available games (exclude 030/040/060 games) will it be able to play?

1) A600 2mb w/ cw +whdload ---- about 80% of A500 games ??
2) A1200 2mb + w/ cw +whdload about 65% of A500 games ??

Is there any study about this?

I can get both A600(1mb ram) and A1200 here in Portugal at reasonable prices, but the extra 1mb for A600 is difficult...

I think The A1200 is a better solution because is faster for whdload, but it would play less games.

[Buleste]

A minimig might be a better idea as they have a CF reader and are essentially a mini 500.

[Tiago]

A minimig might be a better idea as they have a CF reader and are essentially a mini 500.

Yes it's a good idea, but minimig compared with a standart A600 or A1200 is expensive, he dont whant to expent so much...

[Harrison]

To run WHDLoad software on an A600 you need at least 2MB of chip ram (so will need the trap door A601 ram expansion), plus at least 2MB fast ram (via a PCMCIA Sram card). When I was experimenting with my A600 during my upgrade project I set the system up to run WHDLoad games with just 2MB chip ram and most refused to load and run. But with the extra 2MB fast ram many more now work well. However some do still fail to start due to a lack of ram available.

An A600 with an SRAM PCMCIA fast ram card is really the lowest spec you can go to run WHDLoad games. But it isn't ideal and is far from compatible with all WHDLoad installed games and demos.

You can improve the number of games that will load if you disable the WHDLoad precache which normally loads the whole game into ram. However this slows things down quite a lot while the game loads compared to the full cached loading.

You would be much better off going for an A1200, but it will have to have some fast ram. A standard A1200 will not run most WHDLoad installed games. And WHDLoad installed games will all run on an A1200 with some fast ram. Even very old games as WHDLoad installers fix the incompatibility for older games by emulating the 1.3 kickstart when needed.

As you don't want to be spending enough money to build the ideal setup for running WHDLoad, which is an A1200 with a 030 accelerator and 16mb fast ram, the next best option is an A1200 with a fast ram expansion and CF card reader. That isn't going to be too expensive to build.

I did find some games would not load on one of my A1200's with 4MB fast ram, but when this was switched for one with 8MB pretty much all then loaded.

[Tiago]

Thanks for the info

[loopy]

Hey to you Tiago,
Just curious but what would a 1200 cost in your monies. Just roughly mate.
loopy.

[Tiago]

Here in Portugal, i can get an A600 for +/- 45 euros, and an A1200 for 55/60 euros.
In can get from EBay for less money, but i would have to pay for the shipping... and that would be 30-45 euros....

[loopy]

Hey Tiago,
Yeah. The A1200 seem to be similar value here as thats about AUD $120 and you often see them about that cost.
loopy

http://www.xe.com/ucc/convert.cgi

[Bloodwych]

Harrision, have you got rid of "preload" from the tooltypes or the universal WHDLoad prefs file in the S drawer?

I'm sure you can get many games working with lower ram once you remove preload. 4MB overall should be enough for the vast majority of games. I can't say for certain as my A1200 has 10MB. Some testing required in WinUAE me thinks!

One disk games should work ok with 2MB, other games depend on the number of buffers used for the hard drive even if you boot without a Workbench. Some games are just impossible to get working, but there must be work-arounds as the 2MB CD32 has those games disks (although it doesn't suffer the problem of losing RAM to hard drive and disk buffers).

Either way, I think your friend will get frustrated with a 2MB Amiga for WHDLoad hard drive games. The current ClassicWB packs do have boot options, including a RAD: boot, to free maximum memory but without playing around with such a setup myself I can't say how many games will work. Again, it will take some testing in WinUAE.

[Tiago]

Thanks for the info. :-)