Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
240 lines (231 loc) · 13.4 KB

amiga-emulation.md

File metadata and controls

240 lines (231 loc) · 13.4 KB

Amiga Emulation

Getting Amiga software to run on modern hardware

  • Log in to OAGD / Open Retro on FS-UAE Launcher to gain access to the many database entries for Amiga games with their associated downloads.

  • It does not appear to be possible to delete game entries in FS-UAE Launcher because changes made to the local .ini file and SQLite database will be updated on next login from the server. However, if you delete local floppy disk images containing a certain game and need to restore them, put them in the FS-UAE downloads directory and do Update File Database.

  • Install Kickstart ROMs for better compatibility. The replacement ROM can only go so far. In particular, for gaming, 1.3 and 3.1, I was once told, are especially important.

  • The Amiga 500 was the most popular of the series. It's a sensible default for settings and searches for documentation.

  • FS-UAE Launcher actually includes a save disk for each configuration so you don't have to set your own up, assuming everything can fit on it. To use it, hit F12 and use one of the empty slots under Removable Media. (N.b. there has to be an empty slot in the first place. If your game uses two floppies then you need to add at least one more floppy drive to use this feature.)

  • If the floppy sounds annoy you, you can turn those off in the full settings menu.

  • Clean Up and Snapshot are useful features of the Amiga Workbench for arranging icons. (Hint: right click with window in question focused and navigate to menu.) Clean Up will arrange the icons into a grid and Snapshot will "freeze" the current position of icons that have been selected.

  • Screenshot directory can be changed in Advanced Setting in FS-UAE Launcher with, say, screenshots_output_dir = ~/Pictures.

  • joystick_port_1 = nothing needs to be in settings for the cursor keys to function properly. This is recommended to be used on a per-config basis only, not globally. (This option seems to have moved out of custom settings in more recent versions.)

  • Use the PATH command with no armaments to show the current path.

  • Make sure to eject the disk after installing Workbench. I think not doing so broke my install once.

  • The default color palette in Workbench is ugly. On Workbench 2.x, at least, this can be changed by going into Colors under Tools and using the following palette: EEE, 898, 131, 282 for a nice green theme. Something similar, but even better, can be done in 3.x by going to Prefs and then Palette but here decimal RGB triplets are used: (237, 237, 237), (18, 50, 18), (136, 153, 136), (34, 136, 34). Then for enhanced legibility, assign the colors to the different roles as follows:

    • Important Text: #4
    • Bright Edges: #3
    • Dark Edges: #2
    • Active Window Title Bars: #4
    • Active Window Titles: #1
    • Menu Background: #2
    • Menu Text: #1

    Finally click Save.

    The Workbench 1.x can also be altered, but it has to be eyeballed because sliders with no annotation are used to set the RGB components. These will then be saved in an FS-UAE save state. (Presumably WinUAE does the same.)

  • Populous appears not to cooperate well with any version of Workbench and should just be run on its own; the same may be true of other games. (What if it's an issue of not enough memory? Perhaps this could be configured around. Would WHDLoad fix it maybe?)

  • Consider installing ClassicWB? (What are the real advantages?)

  • If a program bugs you about the lack of an FPU, then use custom configuration to set fpu to one of the options that you can find in src/fs-uae/config-hardware.c in the FS-UAE source. (Look for the variable uae_fpu_model to see your options. Alternatively, you can change the CPU in FS-UAE Launcher because CPU settings entail FPU settings.

  • WhichAmiga can be incredibly useful for diagnostic purposes; it gives all major data about your (emulated) hardware and software.

  • Use EndCLI to quit a running instance of AmigaDOS.

  • Installed libraries go in the top-level Libs folder.

  • If you installed a library already and a program is still bugging you about it not being there, try alternative versions of the same. Also use the Linux program strings to see what other libraries it might require.

  • Just because it's there in the file system doesn't mean Workbench sees it. Workbench needs an .info file to see things. The utility AddIcon can help with this. (Actually, no, that wasn't quite right: Workbench can see the entire contents of a directory if you go to Window → Show → All Files. I still need to figure out getting associations sorted out properly if it can be done, though.)

  • / means "parent directory", the same as .. does everywhere else in computing today.

  • PATH can be used to add to the search path in a single AmigaDOS instance; ASSIGN can be used to add to it globally. (For more information on that, see here. If spaces appear in the path, remember to use double quotes. Additionally, such statements need to be added to SYS:S/User-Startup to persist over multiple boots of the operating system.

  • MAKEDIR is the equivalent of mkdir.

  • RENAME does move operations. It can be even be used with the target filename omitted, like so: RENAME file directory.

  • If you enable emulation of the Toccata sound card and install toccata.library (see here, the CPU appears to be relieved of some of the burden of playing sound (presumably because of the DSP) for playing software that supports Toccata. What this means, for example, is that, for me, Eagleplayer will play .wav files normally under my install of Workbench 3.1 on Amiga 1200 if Toccata Amplifier is enabled but MP3 playback continues to stutter and lock up the system. :( I'm still looking into what can be done about this. (Issue apparently resolved; see below.)

  • The following very, very specific constellation of FS-UAE settings enables virtually perfect MP3 playback in Eagleplayer, for me at least:

    • JIT enabled
    • 68040-NOMMU CPU chosen (because JIT doesn't support MMU anyway)
    • Toccata emulation enabled
    • toccata.library installed in Libs
    • Toccata Amplifier enabled

  • If you see an install script written in what looks like some kind of Lisp, you need Installer or one of the other implementations of the same to run it.

  • Motherboard and Zorro III memory can apparently be used to go over and above what FS-UAE will support in fast RAM.

  • FS-UAE can work with .dms demo files directly, but they don't necessarily play along well with Workbench.

  • Ctrl-C can be used in the CLI to terminate an Amiga binary (though it may not have effect, at least immediately); the equivalent for an AmigaDOS script is Ctrl-D.

  • There are a number of other useful keyboard shortcuts in the CLI for some versions of Workbench:

    • Ctrl-W: deletes one word backwards
    • Ctrl-X: deletes entire current line
    • Ctrl-K: "kills" to end of line
    • Ctrl-Y: pastes kill buffer
    • Ctrl-U: deletes backwards to start of line
    • Ctrl-S: suspends output
    • Ctrl-Q: resumes output
    • Ctrl-: ends CLI instance (Ctrl-\ is also more generally the EOF character)

  • Universal wildcard on Amiga is #?, not *. (* stands for the keyboard and current screen; for example COPY filename to * will print contents of said file to console.)

  • "To instruct Amiga DOS to search through the directories from the root (top-level) directory of a volume (disk or partition), you type a colon (:) at the beginning of the file description."

  • "As you know, prefacing a file description with a colon serves to identify the root directory of the current drive. However, to give the root directory of a specific drive, you precede the colon with the drive name. Thus, you have yet another way of specifying the file 'data' in directory 'mary', that is 'DF1:mary/data'."

  • The volume name of a disk is an abstract one independent of its physical device name and can be used instead of the device name.

  • "In addition to the aforementioned physical devices, AmigaDOS supports a variety of useful logical devices. AmigaDOS uses these devices to find the files that your programs require from time to time. (So that your programs can refer to a standard device name regardless of where the file actually is.) All of these 'logical devices' may be reassigned by you to reference any directory.)"

  • RUN carries out a command in the background.

  • EXECUTE carries out an AmigaDOS script.

  • > and >> function as in Unix(-like) systems.

  • A few remarks on documentation for AmigaDOS commands:

    In a command format listing:

    • Angle brackets denote necessary arguments
    • Square brackets denote optional arguments
    • Curly bois denote arguments of which there can be one or several
    • The vertical bar denotes a set of mutually exclusive options

    In a command template listing:

    • /A: always required
    • /K: keyword required, if supplied
    • /S: switch, must be supplied to be turned on
    • /N: numerical argument
    • /M: multiple arguments accepted
    • /F: final argument
    • =: indicates different forms of the same argument

    More information on all that here: http://wiki.amigaos.net/wiki/AmigaOS_Manual:_AmigaDOS_Command_Reference#Command_Documentation

  • When the demo Hardwired asks for the second disk and you insert it, right-click to continue.

  • For some weird, utterly inexplicable reason, the Aminet package muiusr38 has two directories mui and MUI that the operating system of course can't fully tell apart. The Installer script will not run unless the two binaries from mui are moved or copied into MUI. mui should then be renamed or deleted so that you can enter the directory with all the other good stuff and run the Installer script. After this is done the installation will run without a hitch.

  • To install the improved Installer by Guido Mersmann, have the original Installer installed first, then install that MUI library I just talked about, then unpack the improved Installer and do NewInstaller Install. (Don't bother with installing languages other than English; it seems to lead to an aborted install. Also it seems Mersmann's installer hangs on some install scripts??)

  • The Installer script that comes with JPEG-DT illustrates how to install datatypes in general, manually or otherwise. Briefly:

    • Datatypes as such go in SYS:Classes/DataTypes
    • Descriptor files go in DEVS:DataTypes
    • Preferences go in SYS:Prefs/DataTypes

  • When you install Picasso96 and it asks for Work: that's apparently a default name for the hard drive. Typically ASSIGN Work: DH0: can solve this issue (barring possibilities with multiple hard drives). Additionally that command needs to go into SYS:S/User-Startup.

  • I have no idea why, but the Linux version of lha doesn't always extract all the files in an lha archive. I have had better luck with the lha extractor on Aminet in one instance at least.

  • Good commentary on setting image backgrounds here: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=48274

  • To read documentation in AmigaGuide format, install aguide34.

  • For just any old picture to work with WBPattern, the background-setting utility, the following steps must be taken, at least in FS-UAE:

    1. Emulate an Amiga 4000 with Workbench 3.1. (Other configurations may work, but this is what I used and it's top-of-the-line.)
    2. Graphics card UAEGFX must be enabled in the configuration.
    3. Increase fast RAM to 8 MB, which will allow larger images to be used.
    4. Install Picasso96.
    5. Install required datatypes. JPEG-DT and PNGdt44 should be adequate for most purposes.
    6. Go into Prefs and select a UAE screenmode. The default window size in FS-UAE is 960x540, so "960x540 32bit RBGA" is typically a sensible choice.

    Then you should be able to put nearly whatever you want in the background. WBPattern will tile images that are too small to fill the whole screen. One other very important thing to take into consideration is that it appears to be possible for some images to be too large for WBPattern. Step 3 in the process should ameliorate this to some degree. It has for me in at least one test instance. But I'd be surprised if it were a silver bullet.

  • DCTelnet will hang if screen mode is changed during a connection. To change the screen mode in fact, open DCTelnet, do not start a connection, change the screen mode, quit, and restart with the new screen mode. Then make a connection.

  • KingCON's documentation mentions how it is possible to replace the CON: device with the greatly improved KCON: device.

  • Installation of WHDLoad requires that the aforementioned Installer program be installed in the the top-level C: directory.