WHDLoad A600 2MB chip RAM

[AmiNeo]

Hi all! Excited to be back...

I'm struggling a bit, and wondered if anyone may be able to help. I'm a bit out of my depth.

I have an old WHDLoad setup on an SD card from a long time ago. It boots fine in WinUAE if I set it to an Amiga 1200 with 8MB RAM. However, the only physical machine I have nowadays is an A600 with 2MB RAM (base plus 1MB in the trap door).

Is there any way I can change something on the drive to make it work on the A600?

 

[AmiNeo]

I think my poor A600 is going to struggle to reach the former glory of my old A1200 actually... Shockingly, I've just done some research and noticed that the accelerator I had for my A1200 at the time had 64MB of RAM (ACA 1230/28). The drive I have was likely made for this.

Anyone able to advise what my best options are? It already has a 3.1 ROM, 2MB of chip RAM and an SD to IDE adapter.

I'm thinking its just going to be a floppy emulator at this point...

 

[uniquefreak]

Morning buddy,

An A630 or Furia would help. The A630 should provide 64MB of Ram and an 030 processor. The Furia is likely the next best thing currently, with an 020 processor and 9.5MB of Ram (4MB if you put it into PCMCIA friendly mode, which you don't have to do with the A630).

I've also got some clips on my A630 to hold it down (not that it needs it). So no worries about it popping off! It turns the A600 into a beastie.

 

[AmiNeo]

Morning! Thanks for the info. Nice.

Where can I get either of these. Not clued up on best places to buy stuff these days. Budget is a little tight right now but wouldn't mind getting this up and running. Which one I get depends on what's available and how much I can scrape together.

 

[uniquefreak]

Morning buddy,

An A630 or Furia would help. The A630 should provide 64MB of Ram and an 030 processor. The Furia is likely the next best thing currently, with an 020 processor and 9.5MB of Ram (4MB if you put it into PCMCIA friendly mode, which you don't have to do with the A630).

I've also got some clips on my A630 to hold it down (not that it needs it). So no worries about it popping off! It turns the A600 into a beastie.

Morning! Thanks for the info. Nice.

Where can I get either of these. Not clued up on best places to buy stuff these days. Budget is a little tight right now but wouldn't mind getting this up and running. Which one I get depends on what's available and how much I can scrape together.

I've got both on the shelf, a used Furia and a brand new A630 V2 (the V3 will be out soon with FPU - that's the main difference to my knowledge).

If you don't mind a DM I can dig them out tomorrow and ping prices over. Probably £169 for the A630 and £100 for the Furia, both plus postage.

The A630 will require you to install:

http://main.aminet.net/util/libs/MMULib.lha
http://main.aminet.net/util/libs/MMULib.readme

(The optional plastic clips for the A630 - just a nice to have - are £19.99 per set).

Some games might require you to disable CPU CACHE on the A630 for better compatibility.

Best,

Ady.

 

[fragment]

What is the problem running it on the A600? Any error messages? The RAM you have should be enough.

Or is the problem with some other part of the setup than WHDLoad?

 

[fitzsteve]

Recommend one of the 5.5mb ram upgrade you clip over the CPU, it's enough for most whdload games and PCMCIA friendly, various sellers on ebay. Easy to install just be careful not to break the case clips when you open the A600

 

[AmiNeo]

What is the problem running it on the A600? Any error messages? The RAM you have should be enough.

Or is the problem with some other part of the setup than WHDLoad?

The disk was created with my old A1200. Sadly its not booting on the A600 at all. I put it in the adapter and connected it but the HDD light just stays on and I get a black screen. No error messages or anything. I've left it half an hour and it just sits there. Blank screen, HDD light on. It works on UAE however when set up as a physical drive and configured as an A1200, but not as a 600 with any amount of RAM. In fact it does exactly the same when connected to an emulated A600 too.

Guessing it IS something in the setup I cant get to if it should boot. I could possibly boot it in UAE as a 1200 and edit some settings if I knew what to look for...

Is there anything I can change if I boot it in emulation as a A1200 that may make it compatible with the A600?

Edit: Oddly, I've just put the SD back in WinUAE and when adding a workbench disk to boot from in the A600 config, it boots and all the WHDLoad drawers show up.

 

[AmiNeo]

Recommend one of the 5.5mb ram upgrade you clip over the CPU, it's enough for most whdload games and PCMCIA friendly, various sellers on ebay. Easy to install just be careful not to break the case clips when you open the A600

Hi Steve! Nice to see you're still around

Thanks, I'll have a look.

 

[AmiNeo]

Right, I've set the WinUAE config to the same as my miggy would have if it had the Furia, and it loads. I guess it needs an 020 processor for some reason.

Just ordered the Furia. RetroLemon had some in stock so was a no brainer really.

I'll post back once I've got some further results! Thanks for all the help so far guys. I forgot how good it is to be on Amibay!

 

[AmiNeo]

Furia turned up but it's still not booting even with that. I'm beginning to suspect either the SD adapter or the ide adapter may be at fault.

I'll get them replaced as I only have the one miggy to try them on.

 

[uniquefreak]

Furia turned up but it's still not booting even with that. I'm beginning to suspect either the SD adapter or the ide adapter may be at fault.

I'll get them replaced as I only have the one miggy to try them on.

Try a KA47 SD adaptor with an IDE2SD adaptor. It sits at a right angle to clear the Furia and as it doesn't have a cable, it's more compatible. (I respect this is what you may already be using).

 

[AmiNeo]

Try a KA47 SD adaptor with an IDE2SD adaptor. It sits at a right angle to clear the Furia and as it doesn't have a cable, it's more compatible. (I respect this is what you may already be using).

It IS in fact what I'm using already, sorry, couldn't remember the name of it. But yeah, I think either that or the IDE2SD may be faulty and I don't have the means to test each sadly.

 

[uniquefreak]

Sounds like the SD card config. Might be the Max Transfer Rate set when the Card was formatted.

I'd try another fresh SD card and set it up purely for the A600.

 

[Bladejack]

Furia can be a fussy one for what brand of SD card it uses,

Making sure you're not a bot!

I use a Sandisk one in mine and never had an issue with it, would not work with a lot of the eBay "SD Images" I have, so I cloned the card to the Sandisk

 

[AmiNeo]

Furia can be a fussy one for what brand of SD card it uses,

Making sure you're not a bot!

I use a Sandisk one in mine and never had an issue with it, would not work with a lot of the eBay "SD Images" I have, so I cloned the card to the Sandisk

In the middle of this process now. Furia doesn't seem to like any of my SD cards.

I'm loving the tools on Amiga Forever for disk imaging and writing though. Such a godsend.

 

[AmiNeo]

Sounds like the SD card config. Might be the Max Transfer Rate set when the Card was formatted.

I'd try another fresh SD card and set it up purely for the A600.

Sadly I don't recall how to do this from scratch. Especially not with WHDLoad. I'd have set this up maybe 11 years ago.

Is there a way to change the max transfer rate? If say, I boot it in WinUAE? How does this affect card compatibility? Do I need a card faster than this setting?

I don't actually have any workbench 3.1 disks either which is a bummer as I have the ADFs and a license via AmigaForever. I'm pretty sure I don't have any more funds to throw at this project now either.

 

[Bladejack]

Sadly I don't recall how to do this from scratch. Especially not with WHDLoad. I'd have set this up maybe 11 years ago.

Is there a way to change the max transfer rate? If say, I boot it in WinUAE? How does this affect card compatibility? Do I need a card faster than this setting?

I don't actually have any workbench 3.1 disks either which is a bummer as I have the ADFs and a license via AmigaForever. I'm pretty sure I don't have any more funds to throw at this project now either.

I found it didnt matter what I had the max transfer as, it's all down to the card your using. Doug uses Sandisk as well... go to around 23mins

 

[AmiNeo]

All the cards ive tried thus far are Sandisk. And I have 4 of them.... Okay so I also picked up a 5.5mb expansion to replace the furia 020 with and lo and behold I'm still having the same issue.

I have noticed the caps lock light is blinking constantly. I'm not clued up enough to know what that means but this doesnt happen every time. Maybe ive just not connected sometjing properly when it happens.... I can soft reset using A A and CTRL but I can't get to the boot menu holding both mouse buttons down while the KA47 is connected. I can however and everything seems to work fine if I do not have the drive connected. I can get into boot menu and load workbench from floppy without it.

 

[miggymad]

If the caps lock is only blinking when the KA47 and SD card are connected then the chances are is that the SD card itself is not properly configured causing the lockups.

Try connecting it all back up, boot from the HD install floppy disk and start again from scratch. Much easier (and faster) than diagnosing filesystem errors.