Elite / Frontier Problems loading/saving Frontier Elite 2 - Amiga 1200

ritchielee666

R
Hey guys,

I'm new but I'm a big fan of Elite as all the other members here so I really need some help or advice on this.

Frontier Elite 2 crashes on me quite frequently now whilst saving the game.
It does it when saving a new file or overwriting an older one. That's really annoying.. I was really far into the game and had just bought a new ship etc. And then I saved it and it hung, lost all progress as the file was then corrupted.

It's done it a couple of times when loading games too but that doesn't corrupt any files so that's not a big issue.

Does anybody know what I could or should do about this?

I run it on an Amiga 1200.

Cheers,

Ritchie
 

M-Saunders

M
Hi,

Are you running it from a floppy disk? I had (and loved) an A1200 back in the day, but the floppy drives were notoriously unreliable, I recall. Does your drive have any problems elsewhere?

If you're just looking for a Frontier fix and have a PC spare, DOSBox is the way to go I think. Better framerates and texture mapping (although worse sound effects!).

M
 

ritchielee666

R
M-Saunders said:
Hi,

Are you running it from a floppy disk? I had (and loved) an A1200 back in the day, but the floppy drives were notoriously unreliable, I recall. Does your drive have any problems elsewhere?

If you're just looking for a Frontier fix and have a PC spare, DOSBox is the way to go I think. Better framerates and texture mapping (although worse sound effects!).

M
Click to expand...

Hey thanks for your reply.

Yes I am. The A1200 is amazing apart from it being quite old now. Have you heard about the NEW Commodore 64?
But to answer your question, no I've never had any problems with the floppy drive before. (or with anything else..)

I have tried playing Frontier Elite 2 on DOSBox but it's just not the same.. I loved sitting in front of the tv on the couch with my joystick and I really aim to keep it that way..

I hope there's some way to fix this.

Thanks!
 

Spacegamer

Spacegamer
Always have preferred the flat shaded Amiga game myself.
As to you problem if you are saving the game on floppy disk maybe your disk drive needs a clean, if it’s on hard drive try saving to a different draw.
 

Geraldine

Geraldine
Hi ritchielee666
And a special welcome to you (as a miggy owner;)) to the Frontier forum. :)

Anyways to your problem. Spacegamer could very well be right about your floppy drive needing a clean. Even the floppy disk itself might be suspect. I have had to throw a fair few out through the years as they eventually become full of read errors. So try using another floppy disk if cleaning the drive doesn't work. Really though, I reckon you would be much better off running the game and saving it to hard drive. You could also try using a CF drive too as they use less power and are silent in operation.

Finally, if you have an expanded 1200 with an accelerator card for example, you might have power supply problems. The standard (white) power supply is woefully inadequate for anything but a standard 1200. Try the better A500 PSU or make one yourself from an AT PC power supply. Plenty of guides on the net about this or you could try Amibay for advice too.

Anyways great to see another miggy in use out there! :cool:
 

ritchielee666

R
Geraldine said:
Hi ritchielee666
And a special welcome to you (as a miggy owner;)) to the Frontier forum. :)

Anyways to your problem. Spacegamer could very well be right about your floppy drive needing a clean. Even the floppy disk itself might be suspect. I have had to throw a fair few out through the years as they eventually become full of read errors. So try using another floppy disk if cleaning the drive doesn't work. Really though, I reckon you would be much better off running the game and saving it to hard drive. You could also try using a CF drive too as they use less power and are silent in operation.

Finally, if you have an expanded 1200 with an accelerator card for example, you might have power supply problems. The standard (white) power supply is woefully inadequate for anything but a standard 1200. Try the better A500 PSU or make one yourself from an AT PC power supply. Plenty of guides on the net about this or you could try Amibay for advice too.

Anyways great to see another miggy in use out there! :cool:
Click to expand...

Hi Geraldine,

Thanks for your advice.

I have actually tried saving on other floppy disks and that doesn't seem to solve the matter. However cleaning the drive might be a good idea! How do you suggest I do this? What is the best way?

No it's not expanded in any way. It's a standard (NO HARD DRIVE..) Amiga A1200..

Same here!

Thank you.
 

Geraldine

Geraldine
Well, without a hard drive being present and being an non-accelerated 1200, its not likely to be a power issue. It could still be an outside chance of it being dodgy capacitors on the motherboard. They tend to leak after many years in use and are fixed by replacing them (kits are for sale on Amibay for a few pounds, but you would need to know what revision of motherboard your 1200 has, found out by opening it up and taking a look, and have to be handy with a soldering iron), but I wouldn't consider that until you try cleaning the drive. What you need for this is a 3.5 inch floppy drive cleaner. Basically these look just like a normal floppy disk but have a cleaning fabric inside them instead of the usual magnetic disk. They also come with cleaning fluid that you drip onto the cleaning fabric.

Ebay would be your best bet and should only set you back a few pounds. I got one recently for £3.00 odd

Mmmmmm, lets have a look, here is one http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3-5-Flopp...uting_FloppyDiskDrives_SM&hash=item256534bf9e

Certainly worth a try and much cheaper than replacing the drive itself. But just in case it is the drive here is a link for that http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=28&products_id=294

Also you might also consider getting an external drive. These can be cheaper than buying a new internal unit. Again Ebay or Amibay would be your best bet, but you would likely be buying something that is second hand, although I hope the cleaner works ;)
 
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ritchielee666

R
Geraldine said:
Well, without a hard drive being present and being an non-accelerated 1200, its not likely to be a power issue. It could still be an outside chance of it being dodgy capacitors on the motherboard. They tend to leak after many years in use and are fixed by replacing them (kits are for sale on Amibay for a few pounds, but you would need to know what revision of motherboard your 1200 has, found out by opening it up and taking a look, and have to be handy with a soldering iron), but I wouldn't consider that until you try cleaning the drive. What you need for this is a 3.5 inch floppy drive cleaner. Basically these look just like a normal floppy disk but have a cleaning fabric inside them instead of the usual magnetic disk. They also come with cleaning fluid that you drip onto the cleaning fabric.

Ebay would be your best bet and should only set you back a few pounds. I got one recently for £3.00 odd

Mmmmmm, lets have a look, here is one http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3-5-Flopp...uting_FloppyDiskDrives_SM&hash=item256534bf9e

Certainly worth a try and much cheaper than replacing the drive itself. But just in case it is the drive here is a link for that http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=28&products_id=294

Also you might also consider getting an external drive. These can be cheaper than buying a new internal unit. Again Ebay or Amibay would be your best bet, but you would likely be buying something that is second hand, although I hope the cleaner works ;)
Click to expand...


Okay cool I'll order one of those drive cleaners! I'll also look into ordering an external floppy drive.

Thanks again for your detailed advice!
 

zmurf

zmurf
ritchielee666 said:
No it's not expanded in any way. It's a standard (NO HARD DRIVE..) Amiga A1200..
Click to expand...

If I were you I would definitely install a hard drive in your A1200. Any standard 2.5" IDE hard drive will work... even IDE SSDs and most compact flash cards connected to a CF->IDE converter will also work.

So It will be really easy to get hold of one. Just ask any computer nerd you know and they can surly throw a couple of 6-80GB 2.5" IDE hard drives at you. (I have a whole stack of old drives in sizes between 6 to 80GB that I've been given from people that don't use them any more... and I have myself been giving away a lot of hard drives to other Amiga users that have had needed to install hard drives in their A1200, A600, A4ks and so on... :) )

And they are really easy to install. Just unscrew all screws on to underside and along the rim of the A1200. Crack open the top shell. Fold the keyboard backwards. Remove the hard drive cradle (just lift it out... no screws) and mount the hard drive to it. Connect a 2.5" IDE cable to the IDE port in the A1200 and to the hard drive. Put the cradle back to its original position. Fold the keyboard back to its original position. Put the shell back on. Screw back all screws. Turn computer on with Workbench install disk in disk drive. Install Workbench. Install Frontier to hard drive.... ready to go... :)

There is a quick video tutorial here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ41jIJtWlo

Remember: The system partition shouldn't be larger then 2GB, otherwise you won't be able to boot from it. But that's ok... you usually never need more then 50-60MB for the system partition anyway. I usually have my system partitions in the size of 200-500MB, and that's a rather big overkill... (With some hacks you can use larger the 2GB boot partitions... but that's a whole different question).
And on an unexpended A1200 I would recommend to have any partition larger then 2-4GB since bigger partitions can get very slow to access.
 
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Geraldine

Geraldine
zmurf said:
With some hacks you can use larger the 2GB boot partitions... but that's a whole different question
Click to expand...

Correct, you would have to update the filesystem. I had loads of "fun" with this in installing my 70 gig SCSI drive in my A4k :rolleyes:. Took me ages to get it working right. A little 2 to 8 gig drive would be fine for a miggy 1200. More space than you would ever really need.

Although I would recommend a max of 300 megs for a system partition using the standard file system that comes with Workbench 3.0 or 3.1. Again this is overkill. The amiga has a great way of dealing with hard drives once you get it all set up and working. So easy to install stuff on it ;)
 

zmurf

zmurf
Geraldine said:
A little 2 to 8 gig drive would be fine for a miggy 1200. More space than you would ever really need.
Click to expand...

Yepp... it's usually a good idea if you get a larger then 20GB hard drive to not partition up more then about 16-20GB... And totally useless. I have a 16GB CF-card as harddrive in my A1200... I have installed an almost complete WHDLoad archive with every good (or at least playeble/watcheble) Amiga game and demo there is. And I'm still not up to more then about 12-13GB of data.

I have a 30GB hard drive in my A4k... and that is partitioned 500MB (system) / 1.5GB (work) / 2GB (demo partition) / 4GB (game partition) / 8GB (other)... skipping the rest of the the remaining 14GB... And I have never missed them.
 

zmurf

zmurf
Also. By getting a hard drive, you will be able to install the CD32 version of Frontier, which is probably best version available for Amiga (if you don't consider that the wormhole bug has been removed, which sucks... ;) ).

This will, of course, include that you'll have to get the nonvolatile.library installed to be able to save games.
 
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zmurf

zmurf
A.. nice. Didn't know about this version.

Although it sounds like the CD32 version, and therefore also this version has a couple of unique bugs:
Djay on the English Amiga Board said:
According to Stuart Wilson, the CD32 version has a unique bug (the 'CD32 joypad/mouse bug'), whereby the front lasers will fire intermittently when using the mouse. It also has another new bug (the aptly-named 'Flying Instructor' bug, discovered by Paul Roberts) whereby the ship's computers will dutifully attain approximately 50% of your set speed, whether it's high or low, and whether you're flying in space or in an atmosphere.
Click to expand...

Sounds a little annoying...
 

Geraldine

Geraldine
Yes that is true those bugs are annoying. They are the last ones left in the game which is why I put out an appeal for coders to take a look at it. Some have also said that they get low frame rates with using 060s, although I didn't encounter this on my (updated Phase 5 firmware) CSMkIII, Apollo 040 or Viper 030. It might be an issue with Blizzard boards. Why not try it on your systems zmurf, your got a PPC miggy havent you?
 

zmurf

zmurf
Unfortunately no.. I sold my CS-PPC604e@180/040@25 card. I got a CS-060@50mkII, a PIV and some money in exchange, which I believe was a fair trade since I never used the PPC and thought that I could have more fun with a 060 instead of a 040 in my A4k. I also sold my µAmigaOne since I never used it and I honestly think that AmigaOne and OS4 doesn't really feels like Amiga. I.m.o. it's more Amiga to run UAE on a wintel box since you then actually can run the old Amiga stuff.

You have my hardware collection here :) :
http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showpost.php?p=17464&postcount=11

So I don't have any PPC Amiga any longer.

But I can test if its a Cyberstorm or Blizzard problem. I have a Blizzard060 in my A1200. So I'll just have to run it through both machines.
 
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Geraldine

Geraldine
Welcome To Amiga Corner

Ah, that's right you did post your system specs. Still a nice collection though zmurf ;)

Hey I just noticed this thread seems to be turning into "Amiga Corner" :D
 
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