Commodore Amiga CD - Autoboot?

[spotUP]

Has anyone worked on this?

If not, I have an idea on how to get it to work.

 

The Amiga CD games where not autobooting on the Amiga, you launched them from an icon on the workbench.

However, there are not so many of them, a boot disk could be created for each of them.

 

I am ready to work on this, but i wanted to know if anyone had worked on this already.

[Dubbloseven]

I have this setup in WinUAE emulator. there is a kickstarter rom set for this, and they should auto load with that I believe. you can find the kick starter roms some where on the ftp or google em. was fairly easy to setup with the right kick starters for each system that needs them.

[spotUP]

You are confusing it with cd32 or CDTV.

The other amiga games released on CD did not autoboot.

[dark13]

Amiga CD (non cd32) games does not automatically boot and yeah, there are some amiga-cd exlcusives as t-zero and genetic species.

 

I have a solution, it's not THAT simple though, have tested with Winuae3000 and t-zero. First, install a workbench (i'm using os 3.9, not tested on 3.1), then install the game. Go to system/s (make all files visible from WB) and add a line at the end of user-startup with the path of your installed game

 

es dh0:T-zero/T0/T-zer0

 

obviously let CD image automount in winuae with the iso of the game you'r going to play

 

BTW music in t-zero works even if many say you can't have it in winuae; click t0setup after install and set audio to uaescsi.device with the correct id you're using in winaue.

 

I guess you can launch specific winuae version with HL/RL or load specific settings in winuae . The downside is you must have 1 HD image per game but amiga installations don't take too much space and there are not many amiga cd exclusives.

 

P.S. make a copy of your original amiga installation (it's better to use hardfile), if you screw up startap sequence you might have to re-install

[spotUP]

I know the amiga very well. I had something similiar in mind yes.

is it possible to mount a disk and a cd from the winuae module?

[dark13]

I've never used winuae module, so this is a question for .ahk guys

 

The .ahk should simply load a different winuae configuration while calling a specific game, you can select disc image and hardfile from winaue. Honestly, I think this is the only solution to boot into games unless someone don't find a method to launch amiga's command in WB with AHK. And user-startup method, anyway, is more polished as you won't see workbench (actually it will load in the background).

 

I guess an amiga CD system could be made... do you know how many games were released on cd format excluding compilations without addition? I can think only to t-zer0,genetic species, entrapped2, wipeout (ppc only) and one or two rubbish racing games. As far as I remember there are also clickboom conversion of doom, quake, etc

[brolly]

We are working on an Amiga CD database already, most of the grunt work will be on actually testing the games to see which ones will autoboot, which ones need to be installed, etc. Plus what system configuration is needed since some of the more recent games will require a 040 or 060 cpu that kind of stuff.

If you want to help on this let me know. There are around 120 Amiga CD games so not that many (and some of these also had floppy releases). Please only offer help if you know your way around Amiga, WinUAE, Workbench, etc. very well so you can do most work on your own.

 

I think most games can be installed on HDD though? So I'd do just that.

For the ones that require manual booting from the CD, dark's solution is probably the best one, I'm sure I can make it work with a single HD image with some smart scripting though.

[dark13]

Wow, 120 games for amiga CD I guess most of them are compilation or PD

 

As you said games must be ALL tested. Haven't tried so many amiga CD games, basically only genetic species (WOW) and T-zer0 but played a lot with games demanding an hi-end rig in winuae (the decent ones lol). 060 and 030 are a bit messy, you need to drop the library in your installation, and as far i remember alien breed 3d 2 TKG (the most demanding amiga games, even a 060 can't run it properly on the real thing) runs faster with a 040 rather than with a 020 or a 060. JIT is another variable: it is useful with demanding games but it can create problems. Most games should run directly from the Cd (no autoboot tough) but install would be needed for games with .wav soundtrack as you need to set audio to uaescsi.device.

 

For .ahk scripting you must consider that you can install in a folder or in an hardfile, when installing in folder probably you can overwrite user-startup file before launching winaue. Configuring the system will be a mess, anyway BTW there are some pre-configured WB needing only amiga forever files http://classicwb.abime.net/ BTW CD games works even in WB 3.1, I tested it, this is good as installing 3.9 on winuae is a mess.

Also whdload should be checked, some cd games may work with it. Hoping they don't work as cd32 games (without audio)...

 

A bit busy with aeon nox XIII but for some testing I'm in, I can also create the theme I had only an amiga 500 without HD but played a lot with winuae

[brolly]

Nope, no compilations and only a handful of homebrew that I'd like to check, left all the crap out.

 

For this purpose (launching into games directly) I prefer to do my own WB installs and only install what's really needed, those classicwb packages normally come with a lot of crap installed which makes booting way slower than desired. They are useful if you actually want to use the WB, but not so much for playing games. Games will always be installed in hardfiles for this project, 1 game per file it's something we can assume and will make everything much easier.