"Bubble Bobble" crashes with guru meditation

[avelor]

Hello, playing "Bubble Bobble" game on a recently acquired A600 I get quite often a guru meditation error (typically after a few minutes, in the middle of the game).

Error code is #00000004 "Illegal Instruction". I don't own so many games, so I don't know if the problems occurs with other software.
However the same game disk works fine on my A500.

I tested memory (standard 1 MB chip RAM) using the Amiga Test Kit with no errors.
Could it be due to bad capacitors (I am planning to do a recap soon)? Any other test software that could help me diagnosing the issue?

Thanks!

 

[comraider]

Are you using any accelerator on your A600? That error code usually means the program was expecting a different CPU etc. A stock A600 has the same CPU as the A500 (a 68000), but if there is any addon to your A600 then that might be clashing.

In any case, you should definitely do a recap before any leaking caps damage the motherboard.

 

[avelor]

Are you using any accelerator on your A600? That error code usually means the program was expecting a different CPU etc. A stock A600 has the same CPU as the A500 (a 68000), but if there is any addon to your A600 then that might be clashing.

In any case, you should definitely do a recap before any leaking caps damage the motherboard.

Hello. No it’s a stock A600 without any accelerator. The only mod is a double switchable kickstart ROM (1.3 and 2.0). Error occurs with both ROMs.

 

[miggygossip]

It might have an issue with the v2.05 rom in the A600. Try using Relokick then bubbleb disk when booting.

 

[miggymad]

Go get the Bubble Bobble rewrite called TinyBobble ... just google it and it should be near the top of the results.

The original can be a picky so & so to run in my experience. It usually works great on Kickstart 1.2/1.3 A500 machines, but the only way I can get it to work on any of my Kickstart 3.2 based A1200's is to go via the WHDLoad route.

​

 

[avelor]

Hello, thanks everybody for all your answers and suggestions.
My A500 where it runs correctly has Kickstart 1.2. I can switch the ROM of my A600 to Kickstart 1.3, but that does not solve the issue.
On the other side, I tried TinyBobble above (nice port!) and different other games like Rainbow Island, PacMania, Toki with no problems so far.
Anyone running the original BubbleBobble successfully on a stock A600?

 

[comraider]

Using relokick is a good idea and might work.. although I have a hunch that the issue with Bubble Bobble may be the ECS chipset on the A600 (and not the kickstart). If so, the original won't work and you'd have to either find a patched version or use WHDLoad.

 

[avelor]

I also suspect that issues with my A600 have something to do with ECS, kickstart > 1.2, and/or memory configuration.

I found a well known fix (the Nomad/Krypt version) that needs 1mb chip and is supposed to work on all kickstarts, including AGA machines.
However it still does not work properly on my A600.

Note that I also tried with WinUAE emulator, A600 base configuration, and it works well.

Now it might be that the game is so badly coded that it’s not possible to fix it for all platform variants (I guess that the Nomad/Krypt fix was primarily targeting A1200).
Or there’s still something wrong/special with my A600 (by the way I just discovered it has an early A300 rev 1 board!).

In the coming days I will try on a different A600 and let you know…

 

[zcacrgw]

Bubble Bobble is surprisingly compatible overall given its age. I'm 99% sure that Bubble Bobble plays absolutely fine on A500+ so that should rule out ECS, KS>1.2 as causes. If my A600 or A500+ were actually working properly I'd have demonstrated it to myself now but unfortunately they have different problems. With my A4000 w/ 68LC060 it gets to the logo screen and then dies completely but that's not saying much. BTW, are you sure it was a 0000 0004 and not a 8000 0004 you were getting? The latter being much, much more common in my experience.

 

[avelor]

Hi, I’d like to give an update about this issue.
I still do not manage to run BubbleBobble on my A600.
Since my last post, I did a full recap, added 1 extra Mb of Chip RAM and 4Mb of Fast Ram, and a Compact Flash as HD, to boot directly with WB 2.1.
I downloaded a WHDLoad version of the game, but it doesn’t work neither.
WHDLoad exits with Exception "Level 5 Autovector (RBF/DSKSYNC)" ($E074) at $309C occurred.

I start thinking that there is something wrong with my hardware.
Anything else I can try?

 

[miggymad]

The original was a swine to get to run on anything above Kickstart 1.2 in my previous dealings with it.

 

[lilwashu]

You can try using the tool type NOAUTOVEC on the whdload icon.

 

[avelor]

You can try using the tool type NOAUTOVEC on the whdload icon.

Thanks for the advice!
I just tried it: I don’t get the above exception anymore, however the game hangs at title screen.

I have a question: is there an option for WHDLoad to force a different kickstart rom for this game (i.e. like relokick)?

 

[miggymad]

There's no option within WHDLoad to force a different kickstart ROM I'm afraid.

You could ask the writers of WHDLoad to look at the .slave program to see if anything can be done but you might have a long wait.

Can you say which version of Bubble Bobble you are trying to run ... Original release, Hit Squad, etc? It might be something as simple as this - change for another version which might work.

<Edit>

I have 2 different Bubble Bobble slaves for WHDLoad - a vers. 1.3 and 2.0

Perhaps a swap solves your WHDLoad woes.