Amiga Emulation on Win XP?

[Galaxyguy]

I have just bought some old Amiga games from Ebay on the basis that I would get an Amiga sometime in the near future. However, I was wondering if there was anyway of running these disk on my PC? I am looking for something that is more or less easy to use and will run directly from the floppy drive, I don't need to go hunting for ROM's as I have the disks. I have downloaded UAE but it seems particually difficult to use, for example I already need (I think) to get something called kickstart to make it work. Is there not one that is 'plug and play'?

[Madbury]

You is in the doo doo,

The amiga is a tricky bit of kit to emulate, you need the kickstart rom, to make the emu work. You should be able to download it without too much bover.

Also you will not be able to whack your amiga disks into your pc and run them, you will need a specialist drive (I think). Or at least that was the situation a few years back when I dabbled.

You're better off buying an amiga tbh.

[Galaxyguy]

OK, thanks pal. Back to Plan 1.

[Madbury]

Sorry that was a bit negative wasn't it.

I'm not saying its impossible with modern emus, the last time I did any amiga emulation was about 4 years ago, things may have moved on since then and certainly the emus I've seen on the XBox have been very good.

If you own the originals then you are within your rights to download the ROM images and run an emu.

UAE isn't that tricky once you have it set up, give it a whirl with a disk image and see what you think.

[Vaipon]

Amiga emulation on the PC is crap. The hardware just hasn't been successfully emulated to the same extent as most of the other 16bit consoles have. This is probably down to the way the chipset timing in the Amiga was rigged up, but it *is* getting better slowly. At the moment, the only way to enjoy a really faithful Amiga gaming session is to use a real Amiga though. If you absolutely have to use emulation, UAE can be tweaked to get fairly good results on many titles, but setting up the various different memory and cpu/timing values individually for each game/app can be a right pain, and it still won't guarantee success.

[Galaxyguy]

I think Vaipon has hit the nail on the head here. It's what I expected, so I'm not too bummed. I have virtually no Amiga knowledge, I picked up these games as they were uber cheap and I used to play them all the time on an Acorn Archimedes, who remembers that? I figure I will get an Amiga from eBay before Christmas, along with a decent condition SNES.

[gunrock]

I figure I will get an Amiga from eBay before Christmas, along with a decent condition SNES.

Be careful what you pay. If you are in the UK you can probably get a bargain Amiga 1200 or Amiga 500 (if that's where it's at) from loot.com

People are giving 'em away at 20 or 30 quid. Of course there's always the joker who wants a fortune for a moderate set of kit, but shop around.

Gunrock

[andy572]

Whilst I understand preference to use hardware over emulation, some of the comments seem a bit high on the negativity, guys!

I've been playing with emulation since the early days and find that it just gets better. Though I don't mind putting my old hardware aside . After all, I've got enough cables and SCART switch boxes as it is!

Having said all of that, it is sometimes a little odd to be playing a Sega/Nintendo/Amiga/whatever title via a PC, on the TV... with a PlayStation joypad Not as odd as the first time I saw the Sega logo appear as Super Monkey Ball loaded, however! 8)

Anyway, I don't know where I'm going or have been ; but it seems that if you have the processor grunt available (I don't and emulation has become far more processor-intensive in recent years), the results can be rather worthwhile and with the filtering options frequently available (if that's your thing), even look better than on the original hardware.

Er, to cut short (at last!!!), if you'd like some help or guidance, Galaxyguy, I'll be happy to try to point you in the right direction should you wish to try the emulation thing again. Just PM me or ask and I can, for the good of all , try to post what I know on the forum.

In the meantime, you may like to try the alternative WinFellow. Should it be new to you, it's an emulator that hasn't been updated for a very long time; but one that I have always kept on my system for times when WinUAE hasn't proved successful in running a disk image (quite a rare thing these days). In many cases, it also showed itself to be the smoother-running option on my lowly P2-350 - something that probably holds more true these days with the complexity (read: completion) of the modern-day WinUAE emulation.

The hour is late... early... er... hope there's somethin' good there... and that you have luck in finding some nice Amiga hardware.

[Galaxyguy]

Thanks very much for your help mate This 'disk image', what exactly is it and where do I find them? Or is that a question that can't really be asked for legal reasons? And, once I find one, how do I use it?

[iamlost_]

can't you run SCUMM Amiga games using SCUMMVM i don't know myself because all my SCUMM games are PC versions

[Bassman]

A thought as far as an Amiga 1200 is concerned. If my memory serves me correctly, I think there may be compatibilty problems with some of the Amiga 500 games. I presume the Amiga 600 ought to be OK though as that was pretty much a 500 in a new case..

The 500 was first on the scene. The 600 superceded it and the 1200 was pretty much an enhanced 600 with a faster processor and sometimes (??) with a Hard Disk built in. My 1200 has an 85 Mb Hard Disk though I have seen ones on Ebay that have a much larger disk. I haven't tried any of my old Amiga 500 stuff on mine though to say conclusively about the compatibility though.

I found this link which has a list of games that are not compatible:

http://www.lysator.liu.se/(v1)/amiga/ar/guide/ar102.text

[Abhisara]

I presume the Amiga 600 ought to be OK though as that was pretty much a 500 in a new case..

The A600 was a smaller version of the A500+ which also had some compatibility problems with earlier A500 games. I used to have a bootdisk that fixed this problem for most of the games incompatible with the A500+ and A600, but never got the opportunity to try it on an A1200.

[mid]

Curiously enough I have several games that play on WinUAE under emulation, but my A1200 baulks at.

If you're getting a real box for the first time, however, you probably won't know that you can hold down both mouse buttons on bootup, and access a compatibility menu - its not perfect, but it fixes some problems.