Why though? Since it’s working in the standalone, is there a way to make it work in PUAE?
Your right. I used the software “total commander” to check the content of my games in HDF format. Actually, in everyone I have “readme”, “manual”, a file of “the name of the game” and a file “game.slave”.
I dont know why u dont have that @GemaH… Personally, I found my fullset of games on a torrent of an “archive” site.
Mini
I update the tuto all the time. but 'im relly bad in english… So if you see something wrong or somthing like that, telle me please 
Mini
To GemaH:
First, if “Use WHDLoad.hdf” is ON, the PUAE core mounts the WHDLoad.hdf file as DH0: (or HD0:, I’m not sure, but it doesn’t matter) and the game hdf as DH1:.
Then, it boots AmigaOS (contained in WHDLoad.hdf) from DH0: and runs WHDLoad (also contained in WHDLoad.hdf).
WHDLoad is configured to search the file “game.slave” in DH1: and, if found, finally runs the game.
This allows you to simply load the game hdf file and automatically run it, providing you have the correct hdf files - i.e. with “game.slave” in them.
FS-UAE does something similar, but somehow it builds the boot disk “on the fly” so it doesn’t need WHDLoad.hdf.
And, GemaH, I suspect that your game files are not hdf files but simply .zips with the game inside (and the related .slave). If that’s the case, they simply don’t work because of a bug in PUAE core that prevents mounting a PC folder (or a zip of it) as an Amiga drive. Standalone doesn’t have this bug.
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So it’s a known bug then?
That gives me hope it will be fixed someday. Till then i’ll use the standalone.
1st I wanna say 99% of my knowledge of retroarch is for android but I I beleive cores are more or less the same across the board…that being said puae does work on android…here are free circumstances though…u must have the correct bios retroarch seeks and a proper made whdload hdf as well…now another important thing is the type of hdf u have…the most common hdfs are the ones made by ransome…the 2nd kind is a repack of his original hdfs…both hdfs use different settings to load in puae core…the regular original hdfs work on android with whdload option turned off while the repack version works with whdload turned on…my suggestion is mess around with that option but most importantly make sure u have the correct bios the core wants
That’s exactly what I say, you need at first good bios, otherwise the core will not start properly. Then it is advisable to activate the option “whdload” in order to launch all types of HDF.
Puae works the same way in android as under windows for me.
Thank you for your comment.
mini
Hey I’m trying to do this on iOS as iUAE has stopped working on newer iOS versions and I need my SWOS fix. It is a HDF file which I know works in standalone fs-uae and as mentioned on the iUAE emulator on iOS a few weeks ago before upgrading to iOS 13.
I’ve followed all tutorials:
- checked the bios checksum which I’ve put in WHDLoad.hdf using Total Commander (I have cloanto kickstarter roms so also have rom.key)
- gotten the prefs file
- checked for game.slave in the hdf (actually renamed it using Total Commander)
- have both ‘use whdload’ and ‘use whdprefs’ turned on
- and even written a uae config…
but at worst I get a black screen and crash, and at best a flashing yellow screen and a crash. And I have similar with other HDFs so I’m hoping it’s more of a rogue setting or something I am missing.
The latest fight yesterday had me using the latest whdload file available on github (as of time of writing ~2 weeks old) but still, no avail.
The core version in my ipa is 2.6.1 0a85b4f with RA 1.8.1 - ANY help would be appreciated, thanks.
I’ve been fiddling with this core for quite a while. The devs @rsn88871 and @sonninnos have been updating the core a lot lately, and it’s much simpler than it was. I can load hdf games and AmigaCD32 games now.
Kickstarts needed are listed here. Those go in your Retroarch system directory.
With the latest core (as of Jan 12, 2020), you dont need to manually include WHDLoad.hdf or WHDSaves.hdf. They are generated automatically and Kickstarts will be copied automatically into the WHDLoad. If you have old WHDLoad.hdf files in the directory, delete them, because the old version is likely causing a conflict.
Then you can simply load an hdf file and the game should auto start. The core now looks for the first game.slave file it can find in the hdf:
To load an Amiga CD32 game, point to the cue file:
Works great!
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Yes they have been super responsive to GitHub issues and on mac I now concur that it is a great option and working fine and really brought Amiga experience back up.
As of 1.8.3 I still have issues on iOS with graphical corruption and crashes of an exact copy of settings and files working in Mac. I’m trying to collect more definitive info but I think the issue is that a non jail broken iOS devices there are strict permissions on what you can do with files and I think the core builds a temporary hdf from the WHDLoad and game one (and now save one).
Hello, i got everything working really great on my windows machine. Its amazing how well it all works. I just have a problem to get the same setup to work on my shield tv.adf files work without problems , even doesn’t matter of it is for AGA. But the same hdf files which work on windows, won’t work on my shield tv. When I try to load it, I only get the Amiga dos screen. When I type why “the last command Did not set A return code” is what I get.i read the forums here and saw some other people have the problem but no one answered it. Someone has a clue? Thanks in advance and happy Eastern
Can anyone please help me find the WHDload.hdf file? I am searching everywhere but with no luck.
guys i want to know how can i limit my fps in retroarch ?
I am really struggling with WHDLoad in PUAE - hope someone can help.
I have a number of zipped WHD files - I can launch (almost) all via LaunchBox using FS-UAE, but if I try open via RetroArch using PUAE. only ~1/4 work - so not all fail, but I can’t find a pattern to the issue???
The issue is, that when I try to load/boot the WHD files the process stops with a WorkBench window where I can browse the file system (see below) - but double clicking the .slave file says it’s an “unknown command”. Ideally I would like to be able just ‘boot into the game’…
N.B. I have the same kick-start files with the MD4 checksum matching what PUAE asks for.
Hope someone has some pointers…
Replace those ancient bad HDFs with modern LHAs.
Thanks @sonninnos for the fast reply. I gather from your response that while FS-UAE can open the all the zipped WHDs then this might be much more complex for the PUAE, but do you believe there any way of adding a load argument, config-file or similar that might help (and if so what should I search for?).
To your point of replacing the zipped HDFs files with LHA - can you elaborate on this? I am naively under the impression that LHA is ‘just’ a compression format like .zip .rar etc. but I take it that there is more to this and it is not just re-compressing the same content in a new package - or is it?
Thank you
The proper preinstalled WHDLoads are originally in LHA, and they have been converted to HDF back in the day because the core could not read LHAs directly then. So there is no need to use them anymore, and they most likely even have renamed files inside like game.slave, which will prevent any custom tooltype usage, because they are named after the slave to keep them separate.
Though there also shouldn’t be any reason why they wouldn’t work anymore. At least I haven’t found HDFs that wouldn’t boot normally, no matter if they are zipped or not.
But according to the image there is not much to launch, but just one ReadMe.info, which does not look normal at all. Only infos can be launched with that requester, and it has been working fine.
When was the last time you allowed to the core to update the WHDLoad helper image? It has been improved many times to work better with different kinds of image layouts. Simply delete the WHDLoad directory under saves and launch the core again.
Thanks again @sonninnos - I found a solution in the end and just but just wanted to share my learnings in case others stumble into this issue and thread at a later point. To some of you the below might be self evident - but as it wasn’t for me some might benefit 
A) Firstly, simply converting the zip-archives to lha-archive did not change anything at all. The same that worked before still worked - and the ones that didn’t before still didn’t.
B) Deleting the WHDLoad folder under saves did not have any effect for me either (but might be relevant for others to try…)
C) Looking into the content of the zip-files, i noticed that the .slave files was called the full name of the game (e.g. 1943.slave or 5thGear.slave and not simply “game.slave” - renaming the file within the zip to game.slave made it possible for PUAE to start the WHD from zip. 
D) But as I understood from the previous post, this naming might be sub-optimal, to I searched a bit more on the net, and found a collection of WHD files in LHA-format and compared them to the zipped WHD files I was trying with. The content was 100% the in my files and the newly downloaded (down to when they had been changed). The only exception was, that for all the zips PUAE could not run, an .info file was missing with the corresponding the game name (e.g. 1943.info) If I added this file to the zip from the lha the PUAE could also run the WHD from my zip file
(I have no idea about if/how you can generate such a info file if you just have the zip archive with slave file and data)
In conclusion FS-UAE run the WHD regardless of the naming/info file - but PUAE needs either a corresponding .info file to the .slave file OR the .slave file named precisely game.slave.
…at the end of the day I do not want to move info files for for all the archives manually, to I just used the newly downloaded archives instead - as they could be run by both FS-UAE and PUAE in Retro Arch (e.g. on my Steam Deck).
@sonninnos - feel free to add if you have any additional insights or perspectives on this.
Yes, it is by design that the info and slave must match in order to know which one to boot automatically. And if there are multiple infos, the same requester is shown that is shown when holding fire button.
There is no fail safe mechanism to pick slaves that are not paired with any info at all. I guess it could be done, but is it worth it… Perhaps those versions ought to get forgotten, since the read-only LHAs are much more fail proof and compact.