I've written a little-little article about Alien 3 CD32 Edition, a new fan-made overhaul of the original Amiga game by Mister_Grave, featuring improved AGA graphics, parallax scrolling, reworked audio and a bunch of other enhancements.

What caught my attention was how it reminded me of the film itself, and the extraordinary lengths fans have gone to over the years to revisit and improve David Fincher's pretty troubled Alien 3. From the official Assembly Cut to fan restorations like the Legacy Cut, there's something fascinating to me about how people keep returning to this particular entry in the series.

This is not my usual space to write articles, but I've been having fun with NeoCities these last few weeks, and this one felt pretty appropriate to go there. I just go into the new CD32 version, what's changed, and why I think there's an interesting connection between the game and the film's complicated history.

I have no doubt all of you here are far more expert on the topic and know the game already, but for anyone interested, here it is!

Hello everyone. Hope you're all doing well.

I'm the developer behind a few Amiga games, by Psygnosis and Team 17. I made Nitro (pub. by Psygnosis), Qwak and All Terrain Racing (both pub. by Team 17).

I'm still making games, mostly modernised versions of the above. It's not like the good old Amiga days anymore though, hard to get noticed etc, I guess people's tastes and expectations for games changes over time. I currently also have a version of Qwak ready to go on Steam, hope you can check it out!

Anyhow, nice to meet you all, please feel free to ask me anything!

All the best,
Jamie

Current Games: https://mrqwak.com/games/

Qwak Reborn on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4704570/Qwak_Reborn

Retro Racing 2 on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3739960/Retro_Racing_2/

UPDATE: The AGA version is available now ... https://neilericson.itch.io/starwinder-amiga

Starwinder: My old Amiga shooter comes home. Free AGA version (A1200 / A4000 / CD32) out Nov 24, with the OCS/ECS version (A500 / A600 / A2000 / A3000) *hopefully* alongside it. I'm still trying to get the 12.5 Hz steady on it (AGA is 25Hz) without dropping anything or changing gameplay (logic runs at full speed.. only picture may slow down). Hopefully I'll get it done in time. Hand optimizing is time consuming (but interesting.. I love 68k assembly.) When it's overloaded, drawing is cut by a deadline in the pass. Effects go first; the ship, enemies, shots and pickups are never cut. Even so, the heaviest ACE and co-op moments still dip below 12.5 Hz. I'm investigating further speed-up of the per-player code.

Starwinder started life on the Amiga back in the day. It's since grown into a modern PC shoot 'em up (on Steam Nov 24), and now it's coming back to the Amiga in two versions, both free on itch.io (pay what you like).

AGA: A1200 / A4000 / CD32 (ready)

- Runs on a stock A1200: 2 MB chip, no fast RAM needed. Steady (mostly) 25 Hz, with dips on the final boss with weapon 4, leeches and power shots about 2% of the time.. I did that instead of reducing or changing the gameplay (no less objects on screen, etc.)

- 14 worlds, 14 mini bosses plus a final boss, and 16 original ProTracker-style tunes playing on Paula alongside the sound effects

- 1 or 2 players (taking turns or co-op), Boss Rush, Practice, achievements, a high-score table

- Three releases:

- 9 standard ADFs: work with Gotek / FlashFloppy and the A500 Mini (.m3u included)

- A hard-drive installer: Kickstart 3.0+; the game reads the internal IDE itself

- A CD32 ISO: saves to NVRAM

OCS/ECS: A500 / A600 / A2000 / A3000 (in the works, aiming for the same day)

- The same game, same rules: not a cut-down spin-off

- Needs 1 MB (an A500 with a 512K expansion is enough)

- Fewer colors than the AGA version, same worlds and bosses

Bare metal: all assembler, with its own trackloader, drive and CD code. No OS once it's running.

Footage captured in WinUAE on a stock A1200.

Testing note: so far it's the AGA version I've tested most, as I test-compare it to the PC, then I compare the OCS/ECS version to the AGA version, but less often. If you try it on your Amiga (or emulator) and have any issues, please let me know!

Technical details, for the curious

The screen

- Resolution: PAL lores, 320x256: a 320x208 playfield plus a 48-line panel, in 256 colors (8 bitplanes, FMODE 3)

- The palette is split four ways: 64 colors for the ground, 160 for the objects, 16 for the sprite layer and 16 for the panel

- No tiles: each world's ground is one tall painted bitmap (World 1 is 320x2806). It's packed with a custom 2-D pixel coder (a context model with ANS entropy coding), streamed off the disk during play and unpacked into a ring buffer just ahead of the scroll.

- Two screens: double-buffered, 448 pixels wide with hidden margins so things can fly off the sides. The copper handles the buffer wrap and the split to the panel.

Objects

- Ship, enemies, bosses and explosions are 8-plane BOBs, one cookie-cut blit each. An interrupt-driven blit queue keeps the blitter busy while the CPU runs the game logic.

- All the bullets (enemy shots, your shots, beams, sparks) live in a separate layer made of hardware sprites. Sprites 0-4 are 64 pixels wide each, side by side, forming a full-width 3-colour overlay in front of everything, which the CPU draws into. That's how it carries a screen full of bullets without the blitter.

- The mini bosses are animated from drawn frames, blitted a plane at a time straight from memory. The final boss bends its 13 legs, and its hitboxes follow them.

Speed

- Frame rate: a steady 25 fps on a stock A1200. The game logic runs at the PC version's rates in fixed point (60 Hz for the ship, 30 Hz for everything else), so the game never slows down. In a very heavy moment a picture is shown one frame longer, but the logic catches up.

- CPU: everything is 68020 specific assembler. On a stock machine the chip bus is the real limit, since the CPU and the blitter share it.

Sound

- The music is a ProTracker-style player on a CIA timer. The 16 tunes were written for the Amiga version.

- "3+1": the song plays on all four Paula channels. One sound effect at a time borrows a channel. A new effect takes the other side from the last one, alternating left and right, while the same effect restarting stays where it is. The borrowed voice picks the song back up at exactly the right spot, and every song doubles its melody across both of those channels, so no part is ever lost. Drums are on one channel, bass on another, and the melody plays on both channels an effect can borrow.

Loading: no OS anywhere

- Floppy: 9 standard AmigaDOS-format ADFs, read by its own trackloader (a whole track per DMA, sectors decoded in whatever order they arrive).

- It uses DF0-DF3 and only asks for a disk when no drive has it.

- The title screen loads first (about 10 s after the bootblock), and the first world loads behind it.

- A bad track gets retried and you get a DISK ERROR message instead of a crash.

- Hard drive: the AGA installer runs on Workbench 3.0+ and copies the floppies into one data file. The game then reads that file with its own A1200/A4000 IDE driver and saves your scores into it. Other controllers get an OS-swap loader. It runs on 68030/040/060/080(? maybe) too.

- CD32: reads the disc through Akiko itself, saves to NVRAM and supports the CD32 pad.

- Memory: everything fits in 2 MB of chip RAM. Fast RAM or a faster CPU changes nothing: it's the same game on every AGA machine.

Content: 14 worlds, 40 enemy AI types, 96 enemy attack patterns, 14 mini bosses with their own signature moves, and a three-phase final boss. Two players can take turns or play co-op.

A few notes:

- No exact code size: the last figure I have is (about 87 K) is from before the 14 worlds went in.

- ECS details kept out on purpose: its engine isn't finished - the AGA version is optimized for 68020 code, so have to reoptimize for the 68000, so a number given today could change by the 24th. If you want a line, the safe version is: "The OCS/ECS version is a separate engine for a 7 MHz 68000 with 1 MB: fewer colors, the same game logic."

Only the hard-drive install ever needs AmigaOS or extra RAM. The floppies and the CD32 never do.

Version: Floppy (9 ADFs)

AmigaOS: Never. The Kickstart only loads the bootblock, then the game takes over the machine.

Extra RAM required: None: Works on a stock 2 MB AGA machine

────────────────────────────────────────

Version: CD32 ISO

AmigaOS: Never. The CD32's ROM boots the disc, then the game reads the CD itself through Akiko.

Extra RAM required: None

────────────────────────────────────────

Version: Hard drive, on the internal IDE port, FFS partition (A1200 / A4000)

AmigaOS: Only for the installer and the launcher: Workbench / Kickstart 3.0 or newer. The game itself

then reads its data file with its own IDE driver; no OS used during gameplay.

Extra RAM required: None

────────────────────────────────────────

Version: Hard drive, anything else (SCSI, an accelerator card's IDE, PFS / SFS or another filesystem)

AmigaOS: The installer and launcher as above, plus the 'OS-swap loader': AmigaOS is parked in fast RAM

while you play and brought back only to load a world and to save the scores.

Extra RAM REQUIRED: About 3.2 MB of free fast RAM (more with Workbench open). The installer says how much it

needs before it copies anything.

Other things to know:

- Disk space: the hard-drive install needs about 8 MB free (the data file is about 7-ish MB).

- How the installer decides: it checks whether the drawer you pick is on FFS on the internal IDE port by actually reading it back through the game's own IDE code. So an unusual setup (an IDE adapter with a different numbering, a translated geometry) safely falls back to the OS swap rather than failing.

- No way back to Workbench: once the game is running you leave by resetting, in all versions.

To Sum Up Minimum Requirements:

- Amiga AGA Floppy and CD32: a stock AGA machine (A1200, A4000 or CD32, 2 MB chip). No OS, no fast RAM.

- Hard drive on an AGA A1200/A4000 internal IDE (FFS partition): Workbench 3.0+ to install and launch. The game then reads the drive itself, so it still runs on a stock 2 MB machine.

- Any other drive or filesystem (SCSI, accelerator IDE, PFS/SFS...): it parks AmigaOS in fast RAM while you play and brings it back only to load and save. That needs about 3.2 MB of free fast RAM; the installer tells you up front.

- Disk space: about 8 MB for the hard-drive install.

AI usage:

- I made the graphics myself, then had them 'polished' with AI (ComfyUI), then hand-tweaked them. this process was repeated multiple times until I got the look I wanted for everything.

- The music and sound effects was also me but also AI fixing things to make them actually sound good ;) then me tweaking them again over and over

- Code was me on the Amiga, then me in C/SDL3 with Claude helping me port to the PC, then continuing on between both of them (PC/Steam and Amiga), trying to keep everything in sync and playing the same. No C++ or OO for me ;)

- NOTE: A big thanx to Petri Häkkinen, the maker of the AWESOME game Legend of Grimrock for the great advice to use ansi C, never C++/OO as it slows everything down and increases complexity for zero good reason. I agree 100000%

- Also, I use Claude for playtesting, finding bugs and optimization help and profiling where I can optimize best. Honestly, without his help I couldn't have done this. At least it would have taken longer (and it's already been a long time ;) If you don't like the game because AI helped, sorry but it really did help me. Like figuring out how to get the game working with the CD32 working properly, etc. was super helpful!

Any comments, questions or bug reports, please let me know.

Also, if anyone has any other Amiga configurations not listed here, could you try it and see if it works correctly and let me know? If you've got enough RAM I'm fairly certain it can be made to work on it :)

Neil

Here's RoboCod recompiled from the Amiga's 68000 code into a native program: the original game, playing from your own disk image.

• True widescreen, redrawn from the game itself (not stretched)
• Smooth scrolling, Amiga 500 sound, CRT filter and scanlines
• Quick saves, save slots, level select and the cheats in a menu

Windows, macOS, Steam Deck/Linux and PS5. Get it here: https://github.com/griches/JamesPond2RobocodRecomp/releases

edit:

Hopefully people try this and see some time and effort went in to it.

Looking at the downvotes and DMs I’ve received from this community I won’t be doing any more Amiga games as I see they’re not welcome.

I purchased this DB23 to DIN 6 cable from someone on FB. It’s an original commodore cable of some type with commodore logos. Problem is that my Magnavox 8CM515, which is supposedly an exact OEM match for the 1084S-P expects a different pin out on the DIN end.

This cable is extremely fragile and multiple wires already broke off their pins. I can solder but these are tiny as can be and with almost no extra wire.

I would prefer just a premade cable that is properly wired. Where do I find it? What’s it called exactly so I know it’s the correct one

I was going through my old Amiga collection and rediscovered my copy of Siegfried Copy (originally retailing for hefty 79 DM back then).

It comes with the original box, the manual, the bonus disk, and... that, hand-soldered hardware adapter for the external floppy drive. To be honest, I never fully tested all its advanced features.I wonder if this specific adapter is an original from the manufacturer or a clever self-soldered DIY build, because it looks super handmade!

Did any of you ever use this tool to crack stubborn copy protections, or did you rely on other tools like X-Copy?

I've been working on a browser remake of Substance by Alliance Design / Quartex - 2nd place in the Amiga demo compo at the Amiga Summit Convention 1991 (Static Bytes / Prologic party, Nykøbing Falster). Code by Corto, music by Moby (Alcatraz), graphics by Mack, additional graphics and objects by Loom. All credit for the demo goes to them; this is a non-commercial fan tribute.

Link: https://saulofpadovan.itch.io/substance-amiga-demo-remake

It has two modes, and you can switch at any time with T:

• ORIGINAL - the demo's own unmodified 68000 code, unpacked from the disk, running on a 68000 interpreter plus an emulated OCS chipset (copper, blitter line/fill, dual playfield, EHB, HAM, sprites). Original pixels, palette and 50 Hz. I checked it against FS-UAE with 39 reference shots across all parts.
• REMASTERED (default) - the same code runs underneath, but each frame is redrawn in WebGL2: high-res antialiased vectors, the copper gradients rebuilt per line, HD vector fonts with the original colours, lit 3D scenes with shadows, per-pixel plasma and Mandelbrot, and motion interpolated to your monitor's refresh rate (the logic stays at 50 Hz). It fills a widescreen display without stretching; where geometry goes past the 4:3 frame it's drawn into the sides. Add ?mode=original to the URL if you'd rather start in ORIGINAL.

About the music, to be upfront: by default it plays an optional HD remix of Moby's module - the original samples cleaned up, the lead line re-voiced as a real guitar through an amp model, and kick/snare/cymbal layered with real CC0 drum recordings. That's my take, not the original. The original Amiga music is always one key away (A), in either mode, and your choice is remembered.

Controls: click/key to start, LMB skips a part like on the Amiga, Enter = fullscreen, M = mute. Arrow keys/Ctrl/Space or a gamepad act as joystick and fire.

I'd love feedback, especially from people who know this demo well: anything in ORIGINAL that doesn't look or sound right compared to real hardware, and whether the REMASTERED choices respect the spirit of the original. Thanks for looking!

Hello, I have released the first version of AmiJa, a cycle-exact Amiga emulator written in Java. Here are its features:

• OCS, ECS and AGA chipsets, PAL and NTSC. AGA runs on an emulated A1200 board
• 68000, 68010 and 68020 processors
• An automatic mode that builds the right machine around whatever you load: a stock OCS Amiga for floppy games, an expanded one for hard disks and WHDLoad, and an A1200 for AGA software
• Floppy drives DF0–DF3 with reading and writing, ADF and IPF images, and multi-disk sets in a .zip file
• Hard disk support (.hdf, Zorro II autoconfig) and WHDLoad .lha auto-run
• Save and load state, with five slots and a thumbnail for each
• Audio, real joysticks (via GLFW), mouse, and full keyboard mapping
• A software renderer or an OpenGL backend with RetroArch CRT shaders. The .glslp presets are included, while .slangp ones are supported but must be installed by the user
• Remote play: a second player joins over the network and takes one of the two game ports, without needing a Kickstart ROM or a copy of the game

Here is the website:

https://zolfrik.github.io/amija-amiga-emulator/

Here is the repository:

https://github.com/zolfrik/amija-amiga-emulator

Here is a playlist of games running on the emulator:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snUG0_t85QE&list=PLdkiRBBNki2g

Any feedback is welcome.

AmiJa would not have been possible without the projects below, although it does not include any of their code:

• TomHarte-style JSON tests for the Motorola 68000: per-instruction test vectors covering registers, flags, bus activity and cycle counts.
• Scripted Amiga Emulator by Rupert Hausberger: a complete Amiga in readable JavaScript, easy to instrument.
• vAmiga by Dirk W. Hoffmann: a meticulously written and documented chipset model.
• vAmiga Test Suite: the collection of test programs that turns "it looks right" into a pass or a fail.
• WinUAE by Toni Wilen: the result of decades of reverse engineering, and the final authority.

This project is NOT vibe coded. It is the result of about a year of work, which also made use of AI tools.

Hi all,

I'd like to show you a personal project I've had a great time making: Trasfondo. It's a graphical "top" painted right on the Workbench backdrop, behind your icons and windows. You don't click on it and it doesn't get in the way: it just sits there in the background, telling you what your Amiga is up to.

It shows the date and time, CPU load with a two-minute history, the six busiest tasks, free Chip and Fast RAM, your disks and network traffic (any stack: Roadshow, MiamiDx, AmiTCP...), with WiFi signal if the driver reports it. On a PiStorm it also shows the Raspberry Pi's temperature, which was one of the things I was most excited to see working. It's a commodity, it has its own prefs, and it keeps itself up to date from GitHub.

What I like most is how it's built. Trasfondo is written entirely in Dash, a high-level language for the Amiga I've been working on for a while. It translates to C and compiles to a native 68k executable, and the whole program is about 500 lines, with no hand-written C at all. Every time Dash was missing something (drawing on the Workbench backdrop, measuring each task's CPU, reading disks, asking the network, the PiStorm temperature), I didn't hack around it: I added it to the language. So Trasfondo has helped Dash grow, and now any Dash program can do all of that.

And it stays small and light: any 68k from AmigaOS 3.0 up, no FPU, 116 KB, on native chipsets or graphics cards. Sampling every 2 seconds, it uses about 8% of an A1200.

I'd love for you to try it and tell me what you think: whether you like it, what you'd add, and what breaks. So far I've tested it under emulation (OS 3.2.3 on AGA and RTG, and Coffin), so I'm especially curious how it does on real machines, on a 68000, on OS 3.0, 3.1 or 3.9, on OCS/ECS, and with real networks and WiFi cards. Tell me here or in the GitHub issues.

Download: https://github.com/FreeMEM/trasfondo/releases/tag/v0.11

Source: https://github.com/FreeMEM/trasfondo

Website: https://trasfondo.freemem.space/en/

Video: https://youtu.be/asdHx5MZsJA

I'll talk more about Dash in another post. Thanks for reading!

Campaign Update

The campaign surpassed its funding goal less than 24 hours after its launch. It has also achieved its first two stretch goals (€2,500 and €5,000), which means the following features are now guaranteed:

1. Original soundtrack by Allister Brimble

The composer of Team17's Alien Breed, Project-X and Superfrog scores Eldemar. The soundtrack plays in the game and is also on the CD as 16-bit audio tracks, playable on any CD player.

2. Four new levels and a new graphic set

Eldemar grows from nine to thirteen levels, with a fourth graphic set alongside forest, village, and dungeon.

Watch this thank you video by Paolo D'Urso, the project manager / programmer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC4SB9aYnJw

Want Better Graphics?

Due to popular demand, Paolo has introduced this new stretch goal:

If the campaign reaches €7,500, a high-resolution mode will be included in this AGA / RTG game. Christophe will redraw all of Eldemar's graphics in high resolution and Paolo will add a new 640 x 400 screen resolution to the engine. These enhanced graphics will be of particular interest to users of Vampire, TheA1200, and emulators.

The campaign has close to 120 backers, and has already surpassed €5,000 in funding. There's an excellent chance of that hi-res stretch goal being met if we all pitch in:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/darkagesoftware/eldemar-a-new-first-person-rpg-action-game-for-the-amiga

Thanks for helping!

Hi r/amiga,

I've been working on a browser port of Traps 'n Treasures, the Starbyte pirate platformer from 1993, together with Claude Opus 5.5. It's not an emulator wrapper. The engine is written from scratch in plain JavaScript, based on reverse engineering the original 68000 code.

What's in it

• All four stages, the shop, the island map, the treasure run, the ending and the Hall of Fame
• Enemies run the game's original actor script format
• Touch controls (it also runs as an Android app), English and Polish texts

How it's verified

The same random joystick sequence (same seed) is played in vAmiga and in the port. A harness compares the player's position and animation frame on every single frame. There are 120+ such recordings, most of them 5000 frames long, across all four stages. Player movement and animation now match pixel for pixel and frame for frame in almost all of them. The few known differences are listed in RESEARCH.md. That file also lists every rule the port implements, with the 68000 address it comes from and the recording that confirmed it (the notes are in Polish).

No game data in the repo

The repository has no original graphics, maps, music or code. It ships a small demo pack (my own graphics and four test stages), so it runs out of the box. To play the real game, you load your own two ADF disk images (PSG release) right on the game page. An extractor written in JS (including a PowerPacker depacker) builds all 107 asset files in your browser, from the game's own files and the tables in its main program. Nothing is uploaded anywhere.

How to run it

1. Code -> Download ZIP, then unpack
2. Windows: double-click start.bat (nothing to install). macOS/Linux: ./start.sh
3. Click "Load ADF disks" at the top and pick both disks

A few things I didn't know about the original

• When spikes bounce you into a long flight, the normal fall routine keeps running during the bounce. Land too late and you die from the fall, even on the spikes.
• Swing your weapon in the exact frame you grab a ladder, and the pirate uses his ground attack pose. Then he stands as if on the floor until you press a direction.
• The joystick handler snaps you to the middle of the ladder one frame before you actually start climbing.

Repo: https://github.com/SychPL/traps-n-treasures-port

Feedback is welcome, especially from people who know the original well or still have the disks to test with.

Hi all,

For a while now I've been writing a web browser for classic Amigas. It's called Tachyon and it's still alpha, but it gets far enough that I'd like other people to try it and tell me what breaks.

It does HTML and a fair part of today's CSS (flexbox included), runs JavaScript with QuickJS, and does HTTPS through AmiSSL 5. The interface is MUI, 3.8 or 5.

It needs a fast machine. Think 68030 or better with an FPU and plenty of Fast RAM; I mostly test on a 68040 setup and on a PiStorm with Coffin. On an A500 or a bare A1200 it won't be any fun.

Lots of sites still look wrong, and some don't load at all. That's exactly what I'm after: if you try it, tell me which sites work and which don't. GitHub issues are the best place for that, and pull requests are very welcome.

Download: https://github.com/FreeMEM/tachyon/releases/tag/v0.7.4-alfa

Source: https://github.com/FreeMEM/tachyon

Website: https://tachyon.freemem.space

Video: https://youtu.be/HLoaIwRBwMo

It's written in Dash, a language for the Amiga I'm also working on. More about that in another post.

Hi there. Just wondered if there were any people interested in bringing a few amiga titles to the modern age (via windows, mac or linux). Either a faithful recreation or (to avoid copyright issues) a game inspired by the original. I have played a few amiga games recently and noticed some still stand up well today (Particularly a pinball game and a top-down racer). The priority would be keeping the same atmosphere/playability of the original with tweaks like HD resolution and 4 player capability etc.

Im probably more of a presentation and quality testing guy so people good with coding skills etc would be required. I dont have much money upfront but happy to give a share of anything down the road as necessary. Im based in the SE of england.

My recapped Amiga 1200’s keyboard seems unresponsive. Any recommendations? Are 2nd hand ones reliable? Thanks!

I hope some of you remember the classic Amiga shoot-em-up Sidewinder. Maybe you played it at home or in the arcade.

It's back! It doesn't need an Amiga, you can play it right in your browser. Available in 100% faithful-to-the-original and remastered flavors. Press tab to toggle between them.

For free. Have fun! https://sidewinder.darrinm.com

https://reddit.com/link/1xelca9/video/l9e5qp6imhxh1/player

Hello all,

First, thanks for all your comments and support on the initial post. It helped me narrow it down to the correct solution!

I messaged the seller on eBay and explained that, indeed, there was an unsoldered joint on the memory module and that even after several thorough cleanings of the Amiga pins, my A500 was refusing to accept the memory module.

Their response was that they test everything and that I should email their customer services.

I was then loaned an original A500 memory module from a friend ( Hi Lee! ) who posted it to me and, what do you know? Worked first time.

So I messaged them again, displaying the issue, sending photos, and now with the working module, I requested a refund or replacement. I was told to email their customer services...

I emailed them the same information and several working days later received no response.

I have gotten a refund on eBay and have posted them back their defunct module. Never, in my long and tired days, have I ever had this much trouble and lack of support from a clearly borked product. I have left them a review as such and have opted to buy my mates memory module off of him!

Has anyone else had issues with Amiga kit?

2 générations

I played it as a kid, on our Amiga 500 or 600 perhaps.it was a block smashing game, you had a paddle and used to mouse to move the board to hit the ball back in the air. You had power ups including lasers, slowing the ball etc.

My parents want to have a bit of a sort out of their attic so I said I would go up there and have a look around and see if there is anything worth ebaying...... I just found my old A1200 (built my first website on that) along with the previous A500 and a C64.

I was heavily into the Amiga back in the day and even ran my own scene BBS on Amiexpress and just for a bit of nostalgia i'd like to have a play on them but the end game will be to sell them on.

Now here is the question. I know I'll probably need to get them recapped but if you were me and the idea is to sell them on. Should I get them retrobrited, recapped, floppy drive checked etc. before selling or should I sell as is and keep it all "genuine" rather doing things prior to selling like HDMI conversion, change the IDE hard drive to a CF card drive mod etc. etc

So really the question is ..... keep it true or make the changes before selling.

Hi all,

I'm hoping someone recognises this one. Certain WHDLoad games hard-freeze the instant they launch: no WHDLoad message, no Guru, and the mouse locks. Others run fine. R-Type is my test case.

Setup:

• A1200 Rev 2B, recapped (Retro Passion sticker shows "Recapped" ticked, "Fixes applied" not ticked, so I don't think the timing fix has been done)
• Kickstart 3.1 ROMs, SetPatch 43.7
• TerribleFire TF1232 "A1200 030 SDRAM FPU" rev 1b (2023): MC68030RC50C, no FPU fitted, 128MB SDRAM, XC95288XL CPLD, ENA030 and CPU25MHZ jumpers. Firmware version unknown.
• SD card on the internal IDE: two PFS3 partitions, Mask 0x7FFFFFFE, MaxTransfer 0x1FE00
• WHDLoad 19.0 (build 6812), kickstarts in Devs:Kickstarts
• New CA-PSU (replaced the original Commodore brick, with no change)

What I've tried:

• Freezes at both 25MHz and 50MHz
• NoMMU and NoCache on the command line: still freezes
• NoFastMem (fast RAM shows 0): still freezes
• Bare boot (no startup-sequence), 030 on, 25MHz, game copied to DH0: still freezes
• Bare boot with ENA030 removed (stock 68020): R-Type loads and plays

One oddity: on a cold bare boot with the 030 on, my second partition (DH1, PFS3) shows "no disk in drive". With the 030 off it seemed to mount. In a normal boot it always mounts.

Questions:

1. Is this a known issue with TF1230/TF1232 firmware and WHDLoad?
2. Does a Rev 2B board need the timing fix for this card, and could it cause this?
3. Anything else worth testing before I go down the reflash route?

Photos of the board and motherboard attached. Thanks!