@4{INSTALL OLD A500 GAMES TO HARD DISK @1}Hercules @3About: @5 You can use the basis of this tutorial to install any old Amiga 500 game to your hard disk. Enjoy! This tutorial details how to install old A500 games to your hard disk. How often have you wished to install your favourite game to your hard disk, but couldn't because the game didn't have a hard disk installer to do it for you? This tutorial I have written exclusively for THE CRYPT shows you step-by-step how to: @5 1) How to write an iconx script for setting up assignments to run the particular A500 game which will then launch Run500 degrader to degrade your system in order for 100% compatability. Ideal if your Amiga is fitted with an accelerator. Saves you messing around with disabling CPU caches, turning off the AGA chipset, etc trying to get the particular game running from your hard disk! Run500 does all of it for you! @3 What's required: @5 1) You will require some knowledge with Amiga Workbench. 2) a Directory utility such as Cli Master or Directory Opus. 3) An old A500 game (which can be read normally through Workbench). 4) Run500 degrader (get it off an Amiga Format CD!) 5) An A1200 with hard disk, preferably with an accelerator card. 6) A text editor such as Cygnus Ed or Ed (which is supplied with Workbench). 7) Follow this tutorial word-for-word and you can't go wrong! @3How to do it:@5 I will use Crazy Cars 3 as an example of how you can go about installing old A500 games to hard drive. I managed to get the game running successfully on my A1200T 040/25 with 18 megs from my hard disk using the methods described in this tutorial. @5 Firstly you need to create a new drawer to copy the game files into. In this case, on my DH1: partition of my hard disk I created a directory called 'Games' in which I've created a sub-directory called 'CrazyCars3'. I copied all the files from disk 1 and disk 2 into this drawer. You should use a Directory utility such as CLI Master or simular to copy the files into this newly-created drawer. The next step obviously, is to examine the disks startup-sequence. The original startup-sequence for Crazy Cars 3 reads as follows: @3 Anim CCIII @5 The 'Anim' entry of the startup-sequence is responsable for executing the games intro sequence. The 'CCIII' entry in the startup-sequence starts the game. Obviously if you copied all the files to your hard disk, opened up a shell and tried to execute the game, you wouldn't be able to get it running, mainly because the game was only ever written to run successfully on an old A500 with 1.3 kickstart. The game also expects to find the files on two disks labelled CCIII and CCDAT. Some cunning is required here: What we need to do is fool the Amiga into thinking that the game is on two disks labelled CCIII and CCDAT, so that it will run from hard-disk without asking for you to insert disk 1 or disk 2. This can be done by using Assigns. @5 I will now show you now to write an iconx DOS script which will set up the assigns and execute Run500 which is degrader program. Run500 will fool the game into thinking it's running on an A500. Run500 is a 68060 degrader, but in tests I found it also worked on my 68040 18 meg equipped Amiga 1200 Tower system successfully. @3 You can write this script using a text editor: @5 ;Stop game asking for disk 1 or disk 2... Assign CCIII: "" Assign CCDAT: "" ;Execute Run500 degrader and load the intro sequence... Run500 >NIL: Anim ;Execute Run500 degrader and loads the game... Run500 >NIL: CCIII @5 Alternatively, you can use this DOS script (listed below) instead, which uses the AmigaDOS requestchoice command to provide you with a nice system requester: @5 ;Bring up system requester requestchoice >ENV:Choice "Crazy Cars 3" "This game will reset your computer!*nRun game?" "Yes" "No" @5 ;Choice is YES, skip to yes routine IF $Choice EQ "1" Skip Yes ENDIF @5 ;Choice is NO, skip to NO routine. IF $Choice EQ "0" Skip No ENDIF @5 ;Choice was YES, load the game. Lab Yes assign CCIII: "" assign CCDAT: "" ;Execute Run500 degrader and load the intro sequence... run500 >NIL: anim ;Execute Run500 degrader and load the game... run500 >NIL: CCIII @5 ;Choice was NO, close down the requester. Lab No EndCLI EndIF @5 Decide which of these scripts you want to use, and save this script you have just created with your text editor to the same directory you copied the Crazy Cars 3 files into, and save this script with the filename Crazy_Cars3. You will also need the system degrader Run500 (get it off an Amiga Format CD) and copy it either to your Workbench:c/ path or in the same directory as Crazy Cars 3. The >NIL: entry after Run500 in the script basically stops Run500 from outputting an annoying text message on the screen. @5 Yippee! that was easy wasn't it! Only one problem, we need to create an icon so you can easily run the game from Workbench. You can quite easily create an icon for Crazy Cars 3 using Iconian or IconEdit (IconEdit you will find in the Tools drawer of your Workbench). Or alternatively, you can nab an icon from some other source. The icon will need to be a project icon. So draw your icon in IconEdit or whatever, and save it as a project icon to the same directory that you copied the Crazy Cars 3 game files to, with the filename Crazy_Cars3. @5 Okay, almost there! Open up the drawer containing the Crazy Cars 3 files by double clicking on it with the mouse from Workbench. You should see the icon you just created for launching Crazy Cars 3. Click once on the icon and select 'Information' from the Workbench Icons menu. Click in the 'Default Tool' box and type IconX and click on save. Now to test it. Providing you have followed this tutorial word-for-word, Crazy Cars 3 should now load from your hard disk. Well done! @3Installing other old A500 games:@5 Simply use the same procedure as with Crazy Cars 3. You can normally get a 90/95 percent success rate using this method to install your old A500 games to your A1200 with hard hard disk and accelerator card, since Run500 tricks the game into thinking it's running on an old A500! @5Non-Dos games:@5 Obviously non-dos games are out of the question since they use there own trackdisk loading routines and cannot be read through Workbench. You could always experiment with disk2file and jst, but you need to be careful with these programs, since if you don't no what your doing you run the possibility of trashing your hard disk. You've been warned! End.