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»The Amiga in the Windoze-Pentium(tm)...
In the AmigaAktuell are quite often articles about emulators to run other systems on the Amiga. Now I'd like to tell you about my experiences with WinUAE, which makes it possible to run an Amiga in a MS-PeeCee.
Friend or traitor?
I'm an Amiga-fanatic since August'89. Over the time I had also an Atari-STFM and several PCs. My last purchase (for the time being) was an A1200 with a 030-turboboard (50MHz), which I always like to use. At first it was only meant as an interim solution until the new Super-NG-Amiga came out. So I saved money and waited and waited and waited. Loyal and "hard-baked", as a PC magazine called us Amiga freaks once (lets just take it as a compliment). But what happened? Only disappointments: Everytime, shortly before it was at the time when a star was to be born on the Amiga sky, something went wrong and the whole thing was forgotten.
Nothing new
Until new hopes were raised, ending in nothing again. Who of use doesn't know this frustration? Meanwhile my friends laid off their A500's, some joked about my persistence, some just laughed at me and showed me their PC programs. Who of us doesn't know this helpless rage?
A solution: WinUAE
Well, now there is the great Amiga emulator WinUAE. I first read about it in the AmigaOS/Plus (german Amiga magazine). So I went to the computer center at my university, downloaded it from the EmuCamp site, and, while I was at it, several good games, some of them I had already, some not. At home I booted the Pentium-II PC, and drank a big cup of coffee while I waited for it to start up. As finally the Windoze(tm) desktop came up, I started by unpacking the emulator. The installation was easy as pie. but then I noticed that something was missing: The original ROM. But this wasn't a problem, because I still got all my Amigas (A500, A600, A1200) at home. So I was able to read out the Kickstart versions 1.3, 2.05 and 3.0 from these computers and transfer them (using CrossDOS) on 720kB disks to get them on the PC.
The software
But what use is there for the best pseudo Amiga without Software? So I had to read out my numerous disks with Transdisk, pack them with Lha, and then move them to the vastness on my PC harddisk. This work took me (with several breaks) almost one week, and you can really get dizzy when you see how many disks are still to be transfered. If you are interested in the emulator, I strongly recommend to get the AmigaForever disk from Cloanto, as it will surely save you from spending an eternity or two in front of the monitor, waiting for CrossDOS to finish its work. But the reward for this work is now my Almost-Amiga(AA) called WinUAE. Here I can comfortably choose the processor clock, the chipset, the kickstart and operate the disk resp. PC directories as harddisks from a graphical preferences editor. Certainly easier than diconnecting the A600 and setting up the A1200 or vice versa.
The prize of the fear (and efforts) is my Almast-Amiga(AA) called WinUAE. I can set the clock of the processor, the chipset, the Kickstart and the disks resp. PC directories as hard disks comfortably. It is not that longwinded as installing resp. deinstalling the A600 or the A1200 and vice versa.
The speedt
The article in the AmigaOS/Plus 01/200 said that the speed isn't really great. I can't agree to this opinion. My PentiumII-MMX, running at 266 MHz, emulates a 68020 at 41.39 MHz, and this even though I adjusted the emulator to use half the Pentium power for the processor and the other half for the chipset emulation. All my programs work fluently with this setting. If you don't need the chipset that much, you can give more power to the processor, just experiment a little with the options. And the new PCs, equipped with PIIIs at 500 to 650 MHz, will surely make the emulation even faster. The productivity of WinUAE amazes me again and again, and I'm sure it will save some people from totally switching to the PeeCee. or at least delay it for quite a while.
Sense or nonsense?
Many will think now, what I thought some time ago: Bah, this isn't the real Amiga fever. Or others who say: The emulated Amiga is the beginning of the end. I can just refer to the internet sites where this "ethical" question is discussed. In any case, there was an airtight argument for WinUAE: The standstill in the area of Amiga hardware was what made it possible to emulate it on an ordinary PC. (Of course I'm not refering to those who equipped their Amiga with a PowerPC!)
And we shouldn't forget one thing: The NG-Amiga, if it will ever come, will probably only emluated the old operating system we know and love, too! So where's the difference? We can only hope that thing will finally get going again at Amiga Inc., and that there will be a renaissance to bring our computer system where it belongs.
So long,
Dirk Wachtel <wach1216@uni-landau.de>
On the Website there are more links, for example to the homepage of WinUAE):
http://www.emucamp.com/amiga/main-dir/index.shtml«
