Amiga 600 and putting ADFs to floppy.

[GarbagePailKid]

Hello! My problem is that floppy disks written from an ADF via the PC are often failing - showing the guru meditation error, or a variation of #8000000B or just some other glitch... It seems like about 2/3 of the disks I write run properly.

I have used both the CF card method, using the software "EasyADF" and a CF reader in the side slot (from Amigakit.com), as well as Amiga Explorer from Cloanto using the cable. Both seem to work, it's just the disks don't always run. I understand old floppies go bad, but I dont think this is it. The ADFs are fine in WinUAE.

I have an A600 with a CF card as a hard drive. The machine is newly re-capped too.
I am using Kickstart version 37.350, and it says Workbench version 37.71 (but its Workbench 2.0 so I am not sure what that means). Up the top of the screen it says "1652576 graphics mem and 0 other mem".

There was an old post on this forum about a similar thing. (I cant link but its called "Amiga 600HS problems") But his problem seemed to be with WHDload and I'm not sure what that is. I am not trying to run anything from workbench off the HD, I'm just talking about running the disks. The games he listed as running successfully also worked for me. Most coverdisks and things work fine too.

Why is the A600 incapable of running these disks? Is the file transferring faulty or is the A600 itself running badly because of the hard drive? Any help hugely appreciated, and obviously I'm an amateur so please talk slowly.

[Demon Cleaner]

The #8000000B refers to an FPU error. You would need a Furia accelerator card to run those games on your Amiga 600: https://amigastore.eu/480-furia-33mh...amiga-600.html

Wait for Harrison, he probably has a more thorough explanation

[Harrison]

Hi and welcome.

The error code you are getting is a general memory error. It just means the Amiga has encountered a problem and can't continue.

What games are you trying to run?

The A600 uses the ECS (Enhanced Chip Set) and as you mentioned a version of Kickstart 2. Many older games were written for the older A500 which had the OCS (Original Chip Set) and Kickstart 1.2 or 1.3.

The A500 also came with 512KB of Chip ram and the A600 came with 1MB chip ram. With the A500 when the ram was expanded to 1MB the extra 512MB of ram was fast ram. With the A600 the extra ram expansions normally added an extra 1MB of chip ram.

The difference in the ram is the most common reason you will get the A600 crashing with that error message. Many game developers on the A500 ignored the developer notes from Commodore and instead wrote their games bypassing the OS and making the code faster. But such older games expect to find only 512KB chip ram. It finds more or expects any extra ram to be fast ram and the memory addresses the games coders have used are wrong. So the game crashes with that error message.

Sorry if that was an over complicated explaination, but that is the whole reason.

If this is what's happening there are programs and utilities you can run to make older games run on the A600. The best is a disk called ReLoKick 1.3. You boot the A600 with this disk and it loads the older Kickstart 1.3 into memory and reboots to its loading screen. You can then put the game that's not compatible in and it will load. Works for 90% of older disks.

The other issue might be the disk images themselves. When you write ADFs back to floppy disk, most methods of doing this won't work for all disks. Many games have their own special filesystem format that isn't the standard FFS Workbench system and will not write back to floppy disk using most programs. The only guaranteed way to write all disks back to floppy is a piece of hardware called Keyoflux.

These days I wouldn't recommend trying to keep using real floppy disks. The easiest alternative is to buy something called a Gotek floppy drive emulator. This is a device you replace the internal floppy drive with. It has a USB stick slot, and number display and a couple of buttons. You put all your ADFs onto a USB stick. Put that into the drive. Then boot the Amiga and use the buttons to select the ADF you want to load. The Gotek then loads the disk images and the Amiga thinks it's loading a real disk.

There are sellers who 3D print mounting brackets and sell them with the Gotek drives already setup to work on the Amiga. You just open the Amiga and swap the drives over.

WHDLoad.

You mentioned this, but said you were unsure what it was. It's a project that's been running for ac long time. It's software you install on an Amiga HDD and it allows you to install nearly all Amiga floppy disk based games on hdd. Even games that could not originally be installed on floppy disk. The WHDLoad project make disk installers unique to each game so they can read and copy the game to the hdd, even if normality you can't even read the disk in Workbench. Once installed a WHDLoad game will have a game icon in Workbench you can double click and load the game really quickly from hdd.

There are full game packs available, allowing you to setup a whole hdd full of nearly every game every released on the Amiga in A-Z folders all installed and really to run at the click of a button.

The only limitation with the A600 is you need Workbench 2.1 or 3.0 to run WHDLoad, and you need a minimum of 2MB chip ram and 2MB fast ram for it to run. So unless you want to start getting extra hardware to get it working the Gotek usb drive is the easiest solution.

Hope that helps answer some of your questions.

[GarbagePailKid]

Hi and welcome.

The error code you are getting is a general memory error. It just means the Amiga has encountered a problem and can't continue.

What games are you trying to run?

Hi Harrison, thanks for your really detailed reply! I was confused as to how the superior A600 would not run even simple games that ran on the A500. The games that fail are pretty basic games - Rick Dangerous for example or Axel's Magic Hammer. Some of the more complicated ones like Turrican 2 run fine.

Thanks for the advice about ReLoKick 1.3 and Keyoflux. Do you reckon the A600 4MB fast ram expansion would help with the memory error? https://www.amigakit.com/a600-fast-m...n-p-12696.html

I know about the Gotek but for me the disks are part of the experience. Crazy maybe, but nostalgia isn't logical is it. When I sold my old A500 it was the disk collection I regretted selling the most.

Anyway, cheers for the detailed response. It makes more sense now.

GPK

[Harrison]

The memory guru error in some games won't be fixed by a fast ram expansion. The error with some older games is just because it finds more chip ram than expected so the memory addresses are wrong. Try the ReLoKick 1.3 disk first as that solves the problem for the majority of games with the problem. It also works with the A1200 too.

But that 4MB fast ram expansion would let you run WHDLoad, and that has a clever feature. It has a Kickstart 1.3 rom image in thy software, so if an older game that isn't compatible with a newer version of kickstart is run it boots into the kickstart 1.3 rom as it loads the game. Just the sane as using the ReLoKick 1 3 disk works.

BTW, if you can't find a copy of the ReLoKick 1.3 disk PM me and I will see if I have an ADF of it.

[J T]

I was confused as to how the superior A600 would not run even simple games that ran on the A500. The games that fail are pretty basic games - Rick Dangerous for example or Axel's Magic Hammer. Some of the more complicated ones like Turrican 2 run fine.

It was a wild time for compatibility back then and things didn't always work as expected - there was also the A500+ (released between the A500 and the A600) which introduced further headaches as some stuff worked, some didn't, and IMO there were minimal benefits to the user so it was a bit of a pointless machine really. Not exactly a coherent or smooth customer experience but hey, Commodore sounded like a bit of a disjointed basket-case back then anyway. Little surprise it all went tits up.

[Harrison]

The A500 Plus was actually a really nice upgrade from an original A500. It came after the A3000 and shared the same upgraded ECS chipset, 1MB chip ram as standard, with support for 2MB, and Kickstart and Workbench 2.04.

The A600 is near to identical to the A500 Plus in hardware capability. Only difference is the A600s 2.05 rom. Having additional support for the IDE HD port and the PCMCIA side slot.

So game compatibility is about the same for the A500 Plus and A600, with some older games that don't expect the 1MB chip ram, or sometimes the changes in the newer ECS chipset fail.

Strangely, at the time I had an A600 and a friend the A500 Plus and there were some games that booted and ran fine in the Plus but refused to run in the A600. No idea why. The ReLoKick 1.3 disk solved the problem.

[GarbagePailKid]

But that 4MB fast ram expansion would let you run WHDLoad, and that has a clever feature. It has a Kickstart 1.3 rom image in thy software, so if an older game that isn't compatible with a newer version of kickstart is run it boots into the kickstart 1.3 rom as it loads the game. Just the sane as using the ReLoKick 1 3 disk works.

BTW, if you can't find a copy of the ReLoKick 1.3 disk PM me and I will see if I have an ADF of it.

Cheers! I just ordered a copy of ReLoKick, and a game. I'll try that 4MB expansion down the track coz WHDLoad sounds like a good thing to have.

[Harrison]

When you want to try WHDLoad let us know a we can help you setup a preconfigured build.

Also take a look at ClassicWB. The 68k builds are for the A600 with a memory expansion. They are a very nicely preconfigured Workbench HDD build and a lot of nice utilities and applications already installed and setup. And WHDLoad installed, setup and ready to go.

https://classicwb.abime.net/

[J T]

The A500 Plus was actually a really nice upgrade from an original A500. It came after the A3000 and shared the same upgraded ECS chipset, 1MB chip ram as standard, with support for 2MB, and Kickstart and Workbench 2.04.

Was it though? I suppose as an Amiga Power reader that was only interested in games, my focus was quite narrow and it didn't represent much of a difference to me.