Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    This seems to be a common problem. While many of the High End
    productivity software has been rewritten to run on the 3000, and
    WB 2.0 most of the games haven't. You have two problems. The hardware,
    and 2.0 . Yuo may have noticed an increase in used software available
    well now you know the reason. 
    							bill 

    You should definately *NOT* be having problems with all of your game
    software.   It is true that some games will not run on the 3000 but 
    there aren't *that* many.  You might be having some problem with the
    2.0 kickstart.  Try booting with 1.3 kickstart and see what happens.
    
    Try running some programs that are certified to run on the 3000 with
    2.0 (like Professional Page 2.0 or similar) that use most of the 3000
    hardware to see if possibly you have a problem with your 3000.  Maybe
    you have some bad memory?
    
    Is all of your RAM configured as CHIP RAM?  I know that can cause a 
    problem with some programs.
    
    Try using a different SuperKickStart disk, the one you have might be 
    corrupt.  I had that problem with my 3000.  The store I bought it at 
    gave me a copy of the latest KickStart disk (a couple revs newer than
    the one Commodore put in the 3000's box) and I had multiple strange 
    problems with the system.  After spending an entire weekend
    troubleshooting, I decided to use the "official" KickStart disk.  Every
    thing has worked fine since then.  Since the store said they had no
    problems with the newer KickStart, I can only assume that the copy I
    had was corrupt.  It did not report any errors when loading (the
    KickStart disk is not AmigaDos so I don't know what kind of error
    detection/reporting it has).
    
    You might list specific examples of programs that do no run and how
    they act.  That way, those of us who have 3000's and those programs can
    check them out and report the results here.  That would tend to isolate
    whether the problem is in the program, the 3000's in general or your
    specific 3000.  
    
    Or, you could go to your dealer and ask him to try running some game
    software on his demo 3000 (hopefully he will have some of the same
    programs you have.).
    
    Ken
    

re .2

Sounds like your dealer gave you a copy of one of the developers kickstarts.
The ones between 2.03 (the last official release) and the current version
have had a number of "interesting" bugs in them, that would break a lot of
software.

The dealer did you a disservice, and violated the non-disclosure agreement.

	<mike

This is sort of along a similar line...


Can someone tell me about the enforcer? I know what it is, but I don't
seem to see it anywhere in my 3000 2.0 kit. How can I get it (or do I have
it somewhere and don't realize it)? This isn't something on the
developers kit was it.?

Keith
PAMSRC::BARRETT

Enforcer is a programmers tools. If you're not writing code, it's not going
to do much but make you nervous.

CBM has distributed it on various distributions only available to registered
developers, and the latest version is available on BIX in the topics for
said developers.

It was also distributed with SAS C 5.10a. I suspect that means that it's
not covered by ND. However, it may still require a license from CBM (ala
the one required for the includes) before it can be distributed.

	<mike

I believe it's also online on TAPE:: somewhere

Re: .5, .6

Enforcer is also available on the disk that comes with a recent Amiga
World Tech Journal or Amazing Computing Tech Journal (I don't remember
which).

>Enforcer is a programmers tools. If you're not writing code, it's not going
>to do much but make you nervous.

I don't know about that: I think that such things can be consumer tools as
well.  I remember my reaction to a demo version of a commercial program when
Gomf started reporting that the program was smashing low memory...

re .7

Yeah - you can use it to check on new software (I almost always have it
running).

But what do you do when you discover that some critical application of
yours is generating enforcer hits? If you're already running the latest
rev, all you can do is quit running it, or live with the hits. If you're
going to live with the hits on old software, why not do it for new
software? And once you're living with enforcer hits, all running it does
is put garbage on one of your ports, slow things down, and make you nervous.

	<mike

	I've been trying to help Gail out with her new 3000, however
I know very little about it(I have a 2000). Still having LOTS of problems
with almost all of  the purchased programs.  Last night we discovered
the "holding the two mouse buttons down while turning the system on"
method, and managed to get the system to boot up kickstart 1.3 off
of the harddisk instead of 2.0. This helped get some of the fish
programs to run, and a "discover math" program.  However, most of the
other purchased program still won't run.

The following are the programss we tried (all under 1.3 kickstart), and what
they did:

Tower by US Gold          - Won't boot up under 1.3 (drive just runs forever)

Bubble Bobble by Taito    - Gurus on boot

Donald Duck's Playground
by Sierra                 - Gurus on boot

Marble Madness            - Won't boot up under 1.3 (drive just runs forever)

Solitaire Royale
Spectrum HoloByte         - Can't remember what it does, but we don't
                            even get into the program (I think it Gurus)

Deluxe Paint I            - Won't boot up under 1.3 (system just hangs)

Fred Fish programs that didn't work:

DRIP                - Joystick won't move the figure

FlySnuffer          - drive just runs forever (This doesn't surprise
                      me because it needs BASIC)



	The above software all ran fine on a 2000 (1 meg/two floppy
drives)  with 1.2 and 1.3.

Pen Pal 		Seemed to work OK.


	The dealer didn't give Gail a 1.3 kickstart disk, so we're going
to get one.  All we have is the 1.3 kickstart installed on the
harddisk.

	The system has 6 meg.  Could the 2 meg of Chip ram instead of
1 meg of Chip ram confuse older software? Is there a way to make the
system appear to only have 1 meg of chip memory?

	Will older software developed for 1.2 Workbench run under 1.3
on the 3000?

	Any other ideas of things to try?


							Jeff

    Well! I spend quite a bit of time at my dealers. One of the things I 
    see is the large amount of software that will not run on the 3000,
    mostly games. I have seen the "most of the games will run comments"
    and feel they are out of context. Maybe most of the games these 3000
    owners run but then again they go out of their way to buy stuff that
    runs. Then, what is "most" ? If you have access to a limited dealership
    that carries the top ten then most will possibly run, but if you go to
    a dealer with a very large supply of games many, many will not run.
    I may not have a 3000 but I do see a greater mix of software tried 
    on a 3000 than many 3000 owners will see. Then the person upgrading has
    a larger problem, in that much of the software they own was may not
    even have been written to run with an 030 at all. Bottom line is many
    games are targeted toward the 500, and the 2000, 3000 markets are an
    afterthought. we all faced this when moving up from 1.0 of the OS
    to later versions and at that time we were only dealing with 68000
    based systems. This will change (hopefully very soon) but I don't
    expect many of the favorite games will never be updated . If I am asked 
    by someone about 2000 vs 3000 I tell it the WAY I SEE IT, If you have a
    familey, and want to run a great mix of stuff buy a 2000.
    							bill

    
    	I agree with .10 . Most games do NOT run on a A3000. I bought an
    68030 card a long time back. The only thing to save me was the ability
    to disable it to run games. When I upgraded to a A3000 I knew that
    the software I had/wanted worked on a 68030 system. I have not found a
    single piece of software that worked on a A2000 with a 68030, that doesn't
    work on my A3000 running 1.3 .
    
    		Steve P.
    

Re: .9

>	Will older software developed for 1.2 Workbench run under 1.3
>on the 3000?

There are very, very few changes between Kickstart 1.2 and Kickstart 1.3.
The big difference between Kickstart 1.2 and Kickstart 1.3 is autoboot
support.  My experience is even software written for 1.1 runs beautifully
under 1.3, if the software tolerated the existence of fast RAM.  (1.2
recognized fast RAM automatically, where as 1.1 did not support autoconfig.
Some programmers assumed all memory was chip RAM, and so screwed themselves
when they encountered a system with expanded memory.)

However, older programs frequently do not tolerate the faster machines
or machines with newer 680x0 processors.  The faster speeds frequently
cause delicate timing in copy protecting schemes to break.  The newer
CPUs make some of the instructions privileged, which causes programs
that were not written according to the published guidelines to fail.

Of course, this stuff is the sign that the game producer didn't know
his stuff.

About Deluxe Paint I not working:  The failure could be copy protection.
Also, I remember that early versions of Deluxe Paint did have a small
problem with chip memory: some of the images in requesters were not allocated
to chip memory, and came out garbled on a system with fast memory.

The best solution is to call up Electronic Arts and ask about upgrading
the DPaint III.  It will work (at least it works on my A2500), and it
adds enough new features to make it worthwhile.

Quick note, same topic:

	Can someone tell me where (on the enet) I can get the patch to enable
 the "*" wildcard character under 2.0?

Thanks!

PAMSRC::BARRETT

    I'll upload to tape::amiga:[upload] a couple of programs that
    will enable the "*" under 2.0....
    
    look for Wildstar.lzh
    
    
    John
    

I agree - if your critical applications don't run on a 3000, then you shouldn't
buy one. If your critical applications are games, and you can afford a 3000
for them, how about buying one for me?

There are things that break on a 3000 that don't on a 2500 (try AmigaBASIC).
Besides the faster CPU and more chip ram, the 3000 FAST ram is outside the
24-bit address space the 68000 (and hence Zorro II) memory lives in. So
anything that purposefully used the high order byte of an address for flags,
or overwrote it with arbitrary values, will break.

I don't have any problem finding games for the 3000 under 2.0, and I'm
a lot picker than  "It has to run on my machine". I won't buy it if its
got disk-based copy protection, or if it doesn't multitask. Then again, I
don't consider any single game to be critical, and wind up eliminating
more because they are otherwise unacceptable than because they don't run
on the 3000.

Oh yeah - the version that's gone to ROM (2.04) has had a lot of things added
in to make it backwards compatible when compared to what's you get if you
buy a 3000 now (2.03). You might hang onto the things that don't work and
see how well they work when you install a ROM.

	<mike

    re. .9
    
    The only game you listed that I have is Marble Madness and it
    definately DOES run on my 3000.  Maybe you have a disk drive problem
    and it's failing the copy protection?
    
    re: all replys stating that most games do not run on the 3000.  Well,
    almost all of my games were purchased while I had my 500 and almost all
    of them run on the 3000.  I'm not going to list them here but I
    personally haven't had much problem with compatibility.  The only
    compatibility problem that irks me is AmigaBasic.  I also have had *no*
    problems with any of the programs I've pulled off of the Fred Fish
    disks.  Maybe I've been lucky or maybe I just happen to like quality
    written programs.  I still believe that .0's problems are
    hardware or kickstart related and have nothing to do with
    compatibility.
    
    Ken
    

    
    Hey; as it turns out, the 3000 installation disk DOES come with the
    enforcer (it just doesn't get copied to the system). Enforcer reports
    the following command line options:
    
    	enforcer  [on | off | quiet | fprotect]
    
    I have no other docs on it, so I have a few questions I hope someone
    can answer:
    
    1) What exactly are "fprotect" and "quiet" ?
    
    2) Can I run enforcer as a method of protecting low memory without
       requiring it to perform the dup to parallel or serial? (Sort of like a
       replacement to the MEMGUARD program)
    
    3) How does it "choose" which device to dump to? Is it smart enough
       to handle that device already being used?
    
    Thanks
    
    PAMSRC::BARRETT
    
    

How does one change a KS file into one that the 3000 can directly boot from
the harddisk? Copying it to DEVS:KICKSTART doesn't do it.

Keith

    There should be a program on the Install disk that will do it.  The 
    KickStart disk is not in standard AmigaDOS format so you can't copy it
    directly.  The program on the Install disk is a CLI command file that 
    does invokes a special program to copy the info over.  I'm sorry, but I
    don't recall what the programs name is, but I think it is something
    like "KickInstall" or "InstallKick" or something like that.
    
    Ken
    
    

    >There should be a program on the Install disk that will do it.  The 
    >KickStart disk is not in standard AmigaDOS format so you can't copy it
    >directly.  The program on the Install disk is a CLI command file that 
    >does invokes a special program to copy the info over.  I'm sorry, but I
    >don't recall what the programs name is, but I think it is something
    >like "KickInstall" or "InstallKick" or something like that.
    
Thanks for the response, but that doesn't describe my senerio. I have a kickstart
FILE (not disk), and it seems there's more to replacing your system kickstart
boot info than just replacing devs:kickstart. I believe what you're referring to
is the MAKEFILES command that takes a KS disk and creates a kickstart file.

    
    	I don't know how you do it from files, but I have replaced the
    kickstart a couple of times. Each time I have used a Kickstart floppy
    and the program in the "TOOLS" directory on the install disk.
    
    		Steve P.
    

    Well, I don't understand why you are having a problem then.  I have
    copied my kickstart file many times to the devs: directory and it
    works fine.  ARe you using the SuperKickStart, I don't think a 1.3
    KickStart will work.
    
    Please tell us the exact symptoms you are experiencing.
    
    Ken