Archon 1 and Amiberry

[sirhenrythe5th]

@20hinten: i have Archon I & Archon II-Adept running fine with Amiberry.
I use WHDLoads / *.lha-files of these (and all other) games.

Do other games run on your setup?
If so it cant be the Kickstart IMO, Archon was one of the very first games for the CBM Amiga and even runs on the very first A1000 with Kickstart 1.0.

[10vorne]

@sirhenrythe5th I use ADFs. Yes, other games run fine. Maybe a beginner's question, but do I have to choose a kickstart for each game (via the Amiberry Gui?) or does the selection of the appropriate kickstart happen automatically?

[Ashpool]

@10vorne Not sure whether there is a functional .adf for archon 1 out there, but all that are using the TOSEC naming convention I know of, are taged with a [b] for bad dump.

[sirhenrythe5th]

@Ashpool said in Archon 1 and Amiberry:

@10vorne Not sure whether there is a functional .adf for archon 1 out there, but all that are using the TOSEC naming convention I know of, are taged with a [b] for bad dump.

Thank you for that information, did not know that.

@10vorne just for interest: have you ever thought of using *.lha with amiberry?
The support of WHDLoads is one of the outstanding features of amiberry:

• shorter loading-times as they are based on HDD-installations
• no disc-changing, the complete game-data is stored in one file (ever played "Willy Beamish" on a real Amiga back in the 90s? Disc Jockey! :D)

Maybe worth a try, at least you could play Archon (& Adept) as the lhas are no bad dumps.

[10vorne]

@sirhenrythe5th How about the different Kickstarts that are required. Are they included in the whdload-file?

[sirhenrythe5th]

@10vorne no, kickstarts have to be in the BIOS-Folder as usual, there is no difference if you want to start Amiga-Code from Floppy-, Disc-(Amiga32), or HDD-Images.

Concerning Archon i guess the default Kickstart 1.3 will do its job, this one runs about 99% of all (Floppy-)Games that we had in the 90s.
There were no Kickstart/Firmware-Updates during lifetime back in these days, my Amiga2000 had Kickstart 1.3 from the moment i bought it until the Motherboard burnt 3 years later :)
I played A LOT of Archon I+II with this machine!

EDIT: i have a collection of kickstarts saved in the BIOS-Folder, but to be honest...in the end it is only v1.3 that i need and use.
With additional Kickstarts you can emulate upgrades of the CBM Amiga (3000/4000/CD32/..) with AGA and so on. You can - but you dont need to. And you surely dont need any other Kickstart than 1.0 to 1.3 to play Archon ;)

[10vorne]

@sirhenrythe5th I found a Rompack for WHDLoad with lha files AND zip files in it. In the zip files are no adf-files. There is an info-file and a folder with .slave .info and a data-folder. Are this also whdload file that are working out of the box with Amiberry?

There are also more than one version of the game. See screenshot. Do I only need to keep the newest version of AGA?

[sirhenrythe5th]

@10vorne i dont know these packages, i cherry-picked the WHDLoads by name as single-files.
They could run, just try (Note: to use the AGA-Version you might need kickstart 3.x).
If not - just search for "whdownload" in google.
In general you only need the *.lha-file, no info- or other files are required to start the images in amiberry.

[Ashpool]

@sirhenrythe5th said in Archon 1 and Amiberry:

There were no Kickstart/Firmware-Updates during lifetime back in these days

Not quiet right... the "bios" chips where sold and you could have replaced the chip on the motherboard, or more easily - for my Amiga 2000 I had bought an expansion card (Edit: for the 8 bit ISA slots/the 2 shorter ones of the 5 slots available) with a switch and a Kickstart 2.0 on it. So I could've run my old Kickstart (sadly an 1.3) or the 2.0. I say sadly an 1.3 as some Applications/Games had some strange quirks with anything above 1.2 (Edit: which I was used to on my A500, but that one "died" and was replaced by the A2000 ). One example was the MS-Dos Emulator where every keystroke was doubled, same happened with Ultima 5 (by that I've speculated that Ultima 5 on the Amiga could well have been the MSDos version running on an emulator instead of a real port - but that was just my guessing and I am not sure about it (and never researched it later on)).

[Thorr69]

@Ashpool I solved that problem rather easily. My A2000 had KS1.3 but my fav stuff needed 1.2 only (and I am almost positive that Archon 1 was one of them). I put KS1.2 and 2.1 on my hard drive and used ReKick in my startup-sequence to choose which kickstart I wanted to use. It was a pretty easy script to make. If my current kickstart was 1.3, it would pop up a simple menu and ask which one I wanted to use (1.2, 1.3, 2.1). ReKick stayed memory resident on soft resets, so if I chose 1.2 or 2.1 then it would stay at that kickstart until I powered off.

[Ashpool]

@Thorr69 Haven't heard of it before, but sounds pretty cool!

[10vorne]

@sirhenrythe5th I got lha files now and copied them to the Amiga Rom folder. ES doesn't load any of the lha files. I either get "Unknown command runme" or "Unknown Command FAILAT". When I go to WHDLoad Quickstart in the Amiberry-GUI, select the lha-file and press Start, I only get the Amiga hand with the workbench disk. What am I doing wrong? I can start ADF files from the ES...

[sirhenrythe5th]

@10vorne to be honest: i have no idea :/ It worked for me right out of the box: fresh installed amiberry + lha-Files -》 ready to go.
I did not have to setup anything, everything is on default.
Did you test several games? None of them worked?

[10vorne]

@sirhenrythe5th I've been experimenting a bit, I've downloaded other, relatively up-to-date lha-roms (such an Amiga 500 mini package) and with that I've got games running, out of the box. However, only with amiberry 1200, i.e. Kickstart 3.1. With 1.3 I always get said error. But I had already tried different kickstart rompackages. Now I'm not sure if my Kickstart 1.3 is defective or what's going on there. But at least something worked...

[10vorne]

@10vorne

To understand everything better. If I select on runcommand amiberry 500, which of the two A500 kickstarts that are "connected" via symlink is then used?

lrwxrwxrwx 1 pi pi   37 Jul 16 17:40 kick33180.A500 -> /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/kick33180.A500
-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi pi 3882 Jul 16 01:11 kick33180.A500.RTB
-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi pi 3882 Jul 16 01:11 kick33192.A500.RTB
lrwxrwxrwx 1 pi pi   37 Jul 16 17:40 kick34005.A500 -> /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/kick34005.a500
-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi pi 4020 Jul 16 01:11 kick34005.A500.RTB
lrwxrwxrwx 1 pi pi   37 Jul 16 17:40 kick37175.A500 -> /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/kick37175.A500
-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi pi 5000 Jul 16 01:11 kick40063.A600.RTB
lrwxrwxrwx 1 pi pi   38 Jul 16 17:40 kick40068.A1200 -> /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/kick40068.a1200
-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi pi 5008 Jul 16 01:11 kick40068.A1200.RTB
lrwxrwxrwx 1 pi pi   38 Jul 16 17:40 kick40068.A4000 -> /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/kick40068.A4000
-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi pi 4976 Jul 16 01:11 kick40068.A4000.RTB

[Thorr69]

@10vorne That's determined on a per rom basis. WHDLoad setups (the LHA files) have a configuration built into them that Amiberry uses. WHDLoad will use the newest compatible kickstart it can. You have 3 valid A500 kickstart options in your list:
33180 = 1.2
34005 = 1.3
37175 = 2.04

You woul dhave to check the game's WHDLoad configuration to see what it wants to use. If you are choosing the 'A500' config from the internal Amiberry config menu then you woul dhave to look at the various submenus to see what it is defaulting to.

If you are having trouble with specific older games, you also might need to seriously lower the specs of the machine. You might need to use OCS chipset, 500meg Chip ram, and NO fast ram (the most basic A500 configuration).

[10vorne]

@Thorr69 OK good to know. I'm just surprised because when I select amiberry 500 via runcommand, I get "Unknown command FAILAT" with every game. And if I use Amiberry 1200 most of the games are working, that I tried yet. Do you know what this error message means?