(A4000's and) Amiga Demo Compatability: --------------------------------------- Over time there's always been demos which wont work on YOUR system, and no matter what you do and how hard you try to get it to work, and no matter how desperately you wanted to see that demo, well you cant! There are those who can't run things simply because their machine is out of date (eg. A500 owners trying to run AGA demos), those who can't run things due to have some of the required setup but not all needed to run it (eg. A1200 owners who need 030's to run a demo when they only have 020s), and then there's the likes of A4000 owners, people who own machines above the specs required to run the demo and possibly running on a more advanced processor than what the demo was coded with. When I talk about A4000s, I should really include A1200's also with 040's or better. Anyway, imagine this, you've just downloaded the winning demo or the most popular demo from some huge party or the likes, its something everyones been talking about and your dying to see it run on your computer also so you can see what all the hype was about and if its worth everything which was said about it, or if its just complete crass :). Whatever the case may be you go to install it, it installs fine, and here where the fun part (sarcasm) happens. You go to run it. Part 1: You run it from WB via Icon and it crashes with a nice little requester, nothing to make a big deal of, it will most likely work from CLI. Hardly anything which one would loose sleep over. Part 2: You run it from CLI and it crashes or in a WCS(Worst Case Scenario) it does a hard crash and reboots Amiga or sets the Amiga into a nonstop reboot loop. Annoying if you had something in ram disk, or something not yet saved. It may work if you disable bootup and run it from there. Part 3: You disable startup sequence, you run setpatch and it doesn't work and does whatever it does to your system. Now you start to get some real concerns. But alas don't give up, if this doesn't work go to next part. Part 4: You do the same as part 3 but don't run setpatch. For most 'incompatible' demos, you can now run them. If you still can't run it, its on to something more serious stuff, more painful things ;). If this doesn't work cry, scream, run up and down your street shouting bloody murder (or something like that) :), and then proceed to the next part. Part 5: Okay this bit isn't really THAT bad! :). Here is where you bring out tiny little utilities of great use, the order varies, so you don't have to follow what I do! First off I use EmbedderII. If you don't have this I believe it is on Aminet or your 'good local bbs' =). This little utility while not as extensive as TUDE (The Ultimate Degrader Enhancer) and Degrader, its benefit is probably its simplicity. If run from WB which you most likely WON'T be doing (as this should be done from a boot-up where you have run nothing and disabled startup sequence) you can run the selected demo using this by first running EmbedderIi from WB, and now you can either click on the demo once and go the tools menu and choose 'Embedder', or drop the demo over the EmbedderII AppIcon. For the rest of us, use EmbedderII by typing 'EmbedderII ' and it'll do its magic. You can configure it what it does to the demo your running, to learn how to do that type 'embedder ?' and it'll present several options in regards to caches, and other things. This has solved most of my demos problems. If this DOESN'T work go to part 6. Part 6: If you still have hair left, which you should, as this really isn't THAT stressful a debacle ;). Bring up FixAGA. Run it without any arguements and without startup-sequence been run also and a requester will pop up. Choose the file and it may or may not work. This actually does more or less the same job as EmbedderII does in a WB environment but I've found less of a success rate with newer stuff, its better for older demos i've found. If this fails onto the complex bits =). Part 7: Now time to bring out the big guns =). Degrader first. Well I won't cover a 'How to use degrader' guide here. But i recommend you use that if all the above have turned out to be unsuccesful. RTFM first tho =) if u don't understand everything it does. This I find is a good alround fixer, but i put it in this position as its both overkill and overcomplex in comparison to the above in solving this problem. If this fails try part 8. Part 8: Well, you've tried it all now. Well anything one can be bothered doing to make ONE demo work, and when you may have alot of other demos still to watch if this fails give up, even if its the winning one and do what I did when i wanted to see Tint by TBL before the fix was out, venture over 2hrs or so in a train non-stop out to the middle of no-where to watch it ;-). Anyway to part 8 itself. Once again no how to use guide, but here I definately recommend using TUDE (The Ultimate Degrader Enhancer 1.1). It has alot of options and when used with its GUI is quite simple to figure out. If this doesn't fix it, either a: give up, or b: wait for an 040 fix to come out (eg. Tint/TBL). :). If this fails go to part 8. :-). Well now you've read my quick guide, hopefully it's of some help to someone out there or I wouldn'tve spent all this time writing all this =). This is not just for a4000/040 users people, it can affect people of all setups. Anyway have fun, sit back, dont relax :), and do what I said above, cross all your fingers, toes and miscellaneous body parts and good luck. Greets to all out there I know. And to the editors and contributors to non-defy mags make sure you get Defy mentioned in there (as a top mag =)). Copyright Guy Nathan 1996. All Rights Reserved.