pouët.net

It's a joke -- he's Sir Garbagetruck, and all of his systems couldn't get the demo to run, so he thinks they put "anti-Truck" code in it.

Starport 2 by Future Crew has anti-rad code in it.

I recently tested Guardian dragon which i downloaded from
ftp.funet.fi/pub/amiga/demos
(funet has a old amiga demos collection which should be fine check it out )
It ran on my PAL amiga 500 but i had weird random pixel error sometimes. Sometimes the error went away after a reset

I also tried to run Desert dreams but it refused to start :(
I was ceatain that it was the memory expansion begause its new.
But the real problem was the diskdrive i tried three diskdrives (two were masushita crap) but all were bad.

I then took an old diskdrive from my A1200 (chinon the best brand) and Guardian Dragon 1 and 2 ran fine so did desert dream.

You can try to exchange the diskdrive from your NTSC A500 and put it on the Pal A500 and see if that solves the problem.

Hmm, one might think that some people wouldn't know who was SUPPOSED to code the follow up to Jesus on E's, or what group he was in at the time.

I do know there was a HD fix afterward which I believe either Maximan or Shagratt did for Jesus on E's.

Though, all that being said - yeah, classic demo and whatnot from MY history, but - it's 45 minutes long, surely we could have up to 10 smaller great demos in that space?

The NTSC A500 had similar problems, but I do have an A1200 and I'll try swapping the drive tonight. But is the drive at fault if it formats a disk just fine? Hm...

Also, can I put any 3.5" drive in there, or does it have to be double-density? I'd rather buy a brand new chinon drive if possible...

You'll notice that Jesus isn't officially on the list, but I was going to try to squeeze it on as an easter egg. With only minimal visual artifacts, I am pretty sure I can get it down to about 400MB. We'll see. Maybe just the audio or something, since that was the real innovation anyway.

But I'm much more concerned with Guardian Dragon since it (and some others) simply don't run.

For anyone still following this thread, here's another question: Would you rather watch Arte / Sanity as captured on an A500 or A4000? The end vector scene runs more fluid on an A4000...

Trixter: About the Amiga archives, you might want to contact Redhound, this is what he said about 10 days ago on #pouet.net :-)

[8-1-2005 15:22] <Redhound> uh oh :)
[8-1-2005 15:22] <Redhound> just received all 'The Scene Archives' CD's by snailmail
[8-1-2005 15:23] <skrebbel> who made that? and what's on it?
[8-1-2005 15:23] <Redhound> 16 CD's packed with ancient amiga demos

I'm not sure... a fluid vector scene is cute... but we can watch that all day long with our PC demos.
Perhaps it's more 'authentic' to show the A500 speed. Especially since it is essentially an A500 demo anyway.
So I vote A500.

Trixter: I would try out another diskdrive anyway. Begause i could format disk with my old faulty diskdrive but sometimes it said error checksum something and other times it said ok but the disk was crap anyways and sometimes it worked. Maybe there is a diskdrive diag program somewhere.
Or you could make a dms or adf file of a the demo and check if it any differens.

I would also try to clean the head of the diskdrive with thos old disk cleaner disk. You can't imagine the dust that accumalates after a couple of years.

When you connect a A1200 diskdrive make sure its from a Commodore A1200 and not a Amiga tech A1200. The diskdrive is different betwen those two.

Another problem with using a A1200 diskdrive is that is smaller than the A500 diskdrive so you will have diffilculty screwing it together. I would just have the amiga open thats how i have it now.
Cheers

kinda weird to use pouet to discuss the dvd with the team, but.. okay. we should use faster machines to produce better framerates, as long it doesn't change the actual rate of movement. it's what we did for vol 1 and it looked good.

and regarding this 45 minute easter egg business, don't worry, i'll smack some sense into trixter when he needs it. :)

Well, Jesus on E's is only 27 minutes long... I consider stuff like that a challenge ;-)

Okay, I posted a more detailed account of what is going wrong (and right) at www.demodvd.org/blog. Comments welcome!

trixter : there is so much to say, i send you an email

Perhaps you should at least WATCH the demos on both systems to see if any screwups happen on newer hardware.

Oh, and Trixter... if in your opinion EVERY old Amiga has this luminance problem - isn't it exactly the way those demos are supposed to look then anyway?

kb, i'm having serious trouble believing your average amiga scener had any real clue about how stuff was "supposed to look" :-)

phoenix: still can't reply to the weblog, bouncy bouncy mails...

truck: ? my email on the demodvd.org contact page shouldn't be bouncing anymore. dunno about trixter's, assuming it still works.

Sounds <3, could I get a copy please? rm//@//32x//.//de :)

Your problems cause me these questions :

Is your A500 an OCS or ECS version ?
Does it manage 1Mo Chip ?
Have you an 1.3 or 2.0 kickstart ?

Note that the most possible problem is a bad diskdrive or crap floppy disks (by experience).

kb: I'm not sure if that's how the demos were supposed to look because I'm not sure what the majority of people who watched them had as an output device: Monitor? TV? Did people adjust brightness and contrast until "things looked right" or did people actually care about calibration? etc. (I know I didn't care about calibration until late 1990s) I will probably post some captured screenshots for people to evaluate soon.

Zone: Thanks, I'll read my emai lin about 8 hours (I just got to work :)

DP: I think my A500 is ECS but how to check? Kickstart is definitely 1.3. As for disk problems... up until I got Guardian Dragon working I would have disagreed with you, now I'm not so sure. I'll do some more testing tonight.

Thanks to all for your help!!

Apparently you can check Rev 8/ECS based A500s by checking the logo near the LEDs. If it's an A500 logo instead of a commodore logo, then it's a newer A500. But it is not the nice method: see the Agnus component number (I don't know the corresponding Agnus number / OCS-ECS).
Do you have tested if the expansion card (512Ko) is recognized?

I remember that the use of High Density disk cause me many many problems. DON'T USE HIGH DENSITY DISKS. ONLY DD DISKS. Especially with the internal A1200 models. These ones are very sensitive.

trixter: if your amiga500 is kick1.3, than it is OCS.
amiga500 with ECS were called amiga500+ and had kick2.0

noname : true A500 OCS have not the same blitter than the ECS version (and perhaps the Paula chip i think). OCS can have a kickstart 1.2 or 1.3, ECS can have kickstart 1.3, the difference is not only the kickstart

I never had kickstart 2.0 (cept with zkick) and my A500 had a 'fatter agnes' in it. My A1000 of course has the OCS Agnes. Ok. not HAD, HAVE. But they are not HERE. Nor can I send them to Trixter which might help.

Trixter: I believe that the program 'sysinfo' (on aminet) may help a LOT here. You'd need to get it on a floppy, luckily there is crossdos which can read 720k ibm formatted floppies. While there, look for a better 'degrader' program.

Course, we can tell easily if your NTSC Amiga is OCS - does it do PAL? If it doesn't do PAL, it's OCS.