{center}
{subhead} Amiga Forever{def}{p}
Review by Robert Karlsson.
{left}
{p} {p}

Greetings fellow Amiga users/lovers!
{p} {p}
First of all, allow me to introduce myself; my name is Robert
Karlsson, I live in the cold north of Sweden, and I have been more or
less addicted to the Amiga since as long as I can remember, (ah, the
good old days of 1987, the A500 days still gives me pleasant
memories...).
{p} {p}
However, things changed, like 6 months ago or something, and my dear
old companion, my A1200 030/50 had started to malfunction, nothing
severe, just some applications and stuff that according to some of my
more technically gifted friends claimed malfunctioned because of a
damaged chip, which I can't of course remember the name of, but
nevertheless, my dear old Amiga had to give way for... (brace
yourselves), a PC, a Compaq (although I call it a Co**paq, for
obvious reasons), and oh my, what a ride that has been, during the
time we've had it we've had to send it back for repairs more times
than I can count (well, about six times or something to be honest,
and going for a seventh time now soon too).
{p} {p}
I have to admit it, I did what so many other Amiga users have done
during these last few years, I put away the Amiga in the closet never
to really take a second glance at it (well, unless a friend stopped
by to "borrow" something from its remains that is). Now, don't get me
wrong people! There's still active Amigas in this house, namely my
father's, who despite all setbacks for the Amiga simply just won't
quit using this marvelous computer. I think we all could learn
something from that alone. The Amiga isn't just something you
abandon, it is a mutual giving/taking. Is it too much to ask to stand
by an old friend in harsh times? No, I wouldn't say so at least. My
own old buddy is unfortunately been in the grave for too long to be
ressurected, and I have lost all hope of digging him up, but, what I
on the other hand have done instead is to purchase myself a brand new
Amiga tower box with a lot of goodies in it, I am heading "back to
the future" so to speak, so, as you might have imagined the crappy
Windoze PC gets kicked out head first to give place for a new and
hopefully long, long, long lasting friendship with another Amiga. I
urge as many people as possible to do the same thing, and if not
else, look closely in your corners, because perhaps there is a shammy
PC gaining ground in the ever decreasing Amiga-sphere, even there in
your own your home? I especially urge a good friend of mine, no names
mentioned (hint: he is Utilities Editor at AIO :),to stop playing
Quake 3 for a minute and think about what evil creature by the name
of Windows that has more and more started to occupy his home.
{p} {p}
Enough about that; the real reason why I have written this little
letter or what else you might call it is to contribute somewhat AIO;
the last issue was, sadly enough, quite poor in content and offered
little reading, sorry for saying that, but that was at least how I
percieved it, I hope the next issue (hopefully the one where this
thing will be published) is a lot better, and yes, I am aware of the
difficulties of the different editors, that is not to be forgotten
(although, Mr. Johansson's current condition is somewhat dubious ;) ).
{p} {p}
I thought I'd give a little review of the latest Amiga product I
purchased, namely Amiga Forever 3.0 from Cloanto. It seemed like a
good thing to buy, since I wanted to see what they had to offer in
the Amiga emulation part of the current Windows enviroment.
Previously I had been experimenting a little with Amiga In A Box
(AIAB), which is something similar; perhaps a little more flashy than
the Amiga Forever, just to show PC users that tries Amiga emulation
what it might be like. The two are quite similar, since they are both
based on UAE. That fact was something I had missed when I bought
Amiga Forever, I had sort of got the idea that this was a whole new
form of Amiga Emulation, and not just something based on UAE, that
was the biggest disappointment for me. I were in other words still
using the slow 020 processor I wanted to avoid in the first place
(when you've driven a Rolls Royce you don't want to go back to Volvo,
as I use to say... Rolls Royce being the 060 I am normally used to :).
{p} {p}
So, what do you get when you purchase Amiga Forever 3.0?
{p} {p}
First of all, you get all kickstarts (roms) ever gone public, from
1.0 to 3.1, and also the accompanying Workbench diskettes to each and
every kickstart version. This is a good thing, perhaps not too usable
if you want to use the Amiga for more than playing old games.
{p} {p}
You also get a selected variety of Cloanto's Amiga software. Personal
Paint 7.1b, their newly developed Amiga Explorer. This is a program I
actually haven't tested yet, because of the difficulties it'd mean by
moving either the PC or the Amiga beside eachother to connect them.
Amiga Explorer is an utility to transfer files between the Amiga and
the PC.
{p} {p}
Another program that is bundled on the CD-rom is AmiToRTF, which is
an utility designed for extracting Amiga document contents and save
them as RTF (Rich Text Format) or plain ascii text. It supports a
wide variety of documents, such as powerpacked ones, or Prowrite,
Wordworth or Final Writer documents. I have found little use of this
program, but it seems as if it could be worth using if you've got
some old document somewhere that you'd like to check what the heck
actually is in it. Furthermore there's a program called DirDiff,
which you can use to backup your software and compare their versions
to older ones stored on the same mediums. As I have no means of using
this piece of software either there isn't too much else I can say
about it.
{p} {p}
You also get a bunch of archives, containing Fellow (another Amiga
emulator for Windows), Picasso96, which is used to emulate a graphics
card with UAE.
{p} {p}
However, the most interesting on the CD is the Wave files of our dear
departed father and creator of the Amiga, Jay Miner from an interview
made on February 8:th 1990; hearing this interview alone makes me
want stand up straight and salute and sing the national anthem
(preferably one dedicated to the Amiga though ;). Moreover, you get a
Macintosh version of UAE, which has the Amiga OS and other related
stuff preinstalled in the archive. There is also a AmigaPPC version
of UAE, which I can only dream of running yet. And then there's
WinUAE, which is the primary version and which is run either in
installed mode, or the pre-installed mode.
{p} {p}
The installation is smooth, and quite fast, the only thing that takes
a little time is writing the serial number ;) After that you can
choose which Amiga you want to emulate. The graphically integrated
choices you get at start-up are: Amiga OS 3.1+; this one runs UAE
with BSD-socket library emulation so that you can surf, or chat or
whatever on the Amiga side (although, UAE seems to be a little buggy
with AmIRC, YAM and other essential programs you can't live without
as an Amiga user - at least for us Swedish users, that use all these
strange letters when writing ;) - it might also be a good idea to
keep an extra eye on the stack when running AmIRC...) Then there's
Amiga OS 3.1; this one does not have the BSD socket option enabled,
so you can't use the internet with it. Then there's documentation, a
link to their homepage and a few other things. I think there should
be a screenshot at Cloanto's page too, might be a good idea in case
you're a little more curious.
{p} {p}
That's pretty much it. When you run the emulator you get to set some
graphic settings and then you're off, ready to configure your "new"
Amiga, and as you are probably aware of it doesn't look pretty at
first sight, so you better have the OS3.5 CD ready for install to
tidy things up a little, and of course, Dopus5.8 on top of that might
come in handy as well. The installation of OS 3.5 can be a little
tricky if you don't keep an eye on things. First of all, you need to
make sure that the sound is "Emulated 100% accurately" in the UAE
settings, and also make sure that you choose "Yes" on the question
whether you want to install a certain patch for a four-way IDE
adapter or something like that. After that it proceeds as expected.
{p} {p}
There has been a lot of discussion around the concept of Amiga
emulation, and quite a few Amiga users are against it, even to the
point where they write software to detect an UAE enviroment when run
and if detected crash the system. The foremost argument against Amiga
emulation seems to be the "It's not real!" expression. And, as I have
tried using an emulated Amiga to the best of my abilities it lies
something in that statement, it just doesn't "feel" right, whether
that is something I, and a lot of other people, are imagining, then
so be it. Amiga is best experienced through the real thing. However,
in case you are dependant of the use of Amiga, and you don't have an
extreme high-end PC that can really pick up the speed it needs, you
might settle for a little slower Amiga emulation enviroment to
fulfill your needs.
{p} {p}
To sum this up; by all means, buy Amiga Forever, but only if you're
having severe abstinence for an Amiga system and can't get a hold of
any roms. Otherwise it feels like a waste of money actually, well,
perhaps some people will get that "warm and fuzzy" feeling of doing
the right thing by legally buying the Amiga roms, call me a criminal,
but I don't feel that way at least =) I do however not regret buying
it, since it is always good to support the hard struggling Amiga
developers that are left, although, it is a definitive plus if you
actually feel like you've bought the software because you actually
need the product, and not just for support alone.
{p} {p}
It was tested on Windoze 98, with an Intel 3 @ 500 Mhz.
{p} {p}
That's it for me folks, I hope you liked my quick review of Amiga
Forever. Since the summer hollidays now have begun and I am soon yet
again going to dedicate my time more or less 100% to an Amiga I might
pop in in AIO with another review, a little article or a letter or
something the similar in the future as well. Be well, and keep your
faith in the Amiga.
{p} {p}
Yours sincerely,
{p} {p}
Robert Karlsson
{p} {p}
{bold}Available from{nobold}: It should be available for purchase at your nearest Amiga retailer.
 I paid 599 SEK for my copy, which should be around 40 U.K Sterling
pounds, or 130 Deutsche Mark (if my worthless math abilities aren't
all too wrong at least).{p}
Related link: {link
http://amigaforever.com}http://amigaforever.com{end}{p}
{p} {p}
{bold}Overall{nobold}: 65%