User avatar
guitarbloke

Posted Mon Dec 09, 2019 7:21 am

Although I had an A500+ as a 12 year old boy, I only ever used it as a gaming ‘console’ – insert disk, play game, reset, put new disk in, play game – rinse and repeat.

I recently (now as a 39 year old boy!) bought an A500+ to rekindle my lost youth, but I’m almost a virgin when it comes to using Amiga Workbench and the associated programs that fall under it.

I bought an ACA500PLUS to go with it, and then grabbed a CF card on Ebay which had everything installed via WHDLoad, (apparently in a nice menu).

The issue I have is when I fire up my miggy, I allow the ACA5000PLUS to boot it into Workbench, and rather than having a game menu, I just see a bunch of drawers – Games, Games 1, etc. Not the end of the world, but I’d like to be able to select games from a central menu rather than go hunting through various drawers to find what I’m after. Most of the games work fine, but some crash out with various errors.

The main problem I have is I’d like to be able to add WHDLoad games to the CF card to replace the games that don’t work (ideally with a different version of the same game). I formatted a new CF card in windows as Fat32, and copied the .lha file for the games I wanted to it. I then popped the card into the Aux slot on the ACA500 and dragged the games over to the primary CF card. However I have no idea how to extract them on the Amiga and have them work with WHDLoad.

Is there an idiot’s guide (and I do mean idiot!) anywhere? The guides I’ve found so far all assume a basic level of knowledge and as I’m basically beginning all over again I need a bit of hand holding.

Any suggestions would be gratefully received!

Thanks :)

User avatar
McTrinsic

Posted Wed Dec 11, 2019 1:25 am

Hi Guitarbloke,

I am not really convinced that there is a concise "how to" with regards to all the information that you need.

One of your main topics seems to be File Management. This is understandable, as Workbench does not come with its own filemenager like e.g. windows comes with Explorer. The other topic is aboput mastering WHDload installs.

FileManagement
There is a LOT of debate about the question which the best filemanager for Workbench could be. For beginners I usually suggest to use DosControl, which recently became freeware. It is an extremely powerful program, don't underestimate!
It's here:
https://www.mengelke.de/Download;dc60mf ... 7cb3cc3807
or as an adf:
https://www.mengelke.de/Download;dc60mf ... 7cb3cc3807

As you can see, you quickly run into hen-and-egg problems. These files are packes as an archive with an archiver that was popular on the Amiga back then and was there before there were zip-files.
Grab the two most important Amiga unpackers lha and lzx here:
http://lha.a1k.org/

However, after that, you should be able to unpack (and pack) archives to any destination with DosControl and get everything under control ;) .

WHDload
The other big thing you mention is a launcher for all the WHDLoad installs you seem to have acquired. The original idea of WHDLoad is to manage individual games. It was not mentioned to manage libraries.
So the things you need are:
- the WHDLoad program itself fomr here: http://www.whdload.de/whdload/WHDLoad_usr_small.lha and
- the Amiga 500 KickROM for which the game was written.
WHDLoad is something between emulator and wrapper. While it requires the original hardware to run on (or [Win]UAE), it also allows to run a game under AmigaOS3.1 even if it was written for Kick1.3 or 1.2. Or theoretically 1.1 or 1.0 if there really was a program requiring this special kickstart version. In any case WHDLOad always needs the respective ROM file.
If you have those ROMs installed, e.g. via a ROMSwitcher, you can grab them by yourself: http://aminet.net/package/util/misc/GrabKick . Otherwise you need to obtain them somewhere else, a legal source would be AmigaForever. Please be aware that the AmigaForever ROMS are encrypted and need an additional file to work with WHDLoad. See WHDLoad documentation.
To manage the growing number of WHDLoad games / installs, you need a WHDLoad launcher. I mentioned two of these launchers here in this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1274&p=8017

Any more questions? :)

Have fun!
Cheers,
McT

User avatar
guitarbloke

Posted Wed Dec 11, 2019 8:43 am

McTrinsic wrote:
Wed Dec 11, 2019 1:25 am
Hi Guitarbloke,

I am not really convinced that there is a concise "how to" with regards to all the information that you need.

One of your main topics seems to be File Management. This is understandable, as Workbench does not come with its own filemenager like e.g. windows comes with Explorer. The other topic is aboput mastering WHDload installs.

FileManagement
There is a LOT of debate about the question which the best filemanager for Workbench could be. For beginners I usually suggest to use DosControl, which recently became freeware. It is an extremely powerful program, don't underestimate!
It's here:
https://www.mengelke.de/Download;dc60mf ... 7cb3cc3807
or as an adf:
https://www.mengelke.de/Download;dc60mf ... 7cb3cc3807

As you can see, you quickly run into hen-and-egg problems. These files are packes as an archive with an archiver that was popular on the Amiga back then and was there before there were zip-files.
Grab the two most important Amiga unpackers lha and lzx here:
http://lha.a1k.org/

However, after that, you should be able to unpack (and pack) archives to any destination with DosControl and get everything under control ;) .

WHDload
The other big thing you mention is a launcher for all the WHDLoad installs you seem to have acquired. The original idea of WHDLoad is to manage individual games. It was not mentioned to manage libraries.
So the things you need are:
- the WHDLoad program itself fomr here: http://www.whdload.de/whdload/WHDLoad_usr_small.lha and
- the Amiga 500 KickROM for which the game was written.
WHDLoad is something between emulator and wrapper. While it requires the original hardware to run on (or [Win]UAE), it also allows to run a game under AmigaOS3.1 even if it was written for Kick1.3 or 1.2. Or theoretically 1.1 or 1.0 if there really was a program requiring this special kickstart version. In any case WHDLOad always needs the respective ROM file.
If you have those ROMs installed, e.g. via a ROMSwitcher, you can grab them by yourself: http://aminet.net/package/util/misc/GrabKick . Otherwise you need to obtain them somewhere else, a legal source would be AmigaForever. Please be aware that the AmigaForever ROMS are encrypted and need an additional file to work with WHDLoad. See WHDLoad documentation.
To manage the growing number of WHDLoad games / installs, you need a WHDLoad launcher. I mentioned two of these launchers here in this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1274&p=8017

Any more questions? :)

Have fun!
Cheers,
McT
Oh wow!

Thank you So much McT! This is amazing information for someone like myself, returning to the Amiga after so many years. Every forum I’ve looked at has assumed a level of knowledge (which I still need to re-acquire!), so I really do appreciate you taking the time to reply - Thanks a million!

ROM-wise, I own a fully paid up version of AmigaForever, but there are also some ROMs built into the ACA500PLUS card (1.3 and 3.1) – though I’m still figuring out the finer points of the ACA card so I need to play with that a bit more.

I’ll run through the suggestions you’ve made above and see how I get on, I’m really looking forward to getting stuck back into all things Amiga once again! :D

User avatar
McTrinsic

Posted Wed Dec 11, 2019 8:57 am

You’re welcome. I’ve been there as well :) .

Take some time to read through the lha and lzx readmes. It’s worth it few minutes and saves you some time afterwards.

For the ACA500+ I think I remember that the AUX slot is hot-pluggable. Does a drive-icon appear on workbench when you insert a CF?

User avatar
guitarbloke

Posted Wed Dec 11, 2019 9:38 am

McTrinsic wrote:
Wed Dec 11, 2019 8:57 am

For the ACA500+ I think I remember that the AUX slot is hot-pluggable. Does a drive-icon appear on workbench when you insert a CF?
Yes - it is hot-pluggable, I had been planning to use it to transfer across some WHDLoad games from my PC (although I until today, I hadn't been aware how to extract the lha files!). It shows up instantly as a drive in workbench when I plug it in.





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