real amiga vs winuae

[hooligan]

Considering your kids, WinUAE isn't that much user-friendly. And you need to start Windows with it.

I simply cannot think of a more user-friendly way than doubleclicking Winuae-icon and pressing Start-button.

[persia]

I suggest you try it for yourself and not listen to all the clatter on this board.  Functionally there's very little if any difference between Amiga hardware and UAE.  Just try UAE and see if you like it.

[orange]

nothing beats the real thing.

[Jose]

It all depends on what you want. I'm setting up one of my real Amigas to record guitar riffs (so that I don't forget them if I wake up in the middle of the night with a riff in my head...) because booting is much faster than windows.
Maybe it could be done with minimal Linux install though, but that would probably be too complicated even for advanced users with the gazillion options and dependencies...

Even for AGA games it might be better to just use a real Amiga if you want to connect to a TV. That said I haven't followed up lastes developments on WinUAE, I remember there was some tweaks it made to the gfx (antialiasing etc.) that real Amigas didn't, that might make the output more acceptable on a high resolution screen.

[brianb]

Your probably better off with WinUAE unless you like hacking with old hardware.  I prefer the real hardware myself, but for the casual games UAE works pretty well.

[Damion]

Agreed with brianb. I enjoy tinkering more than actually using them.... but for actual use, WinUAE is much easier/more convenient, and unbelievably fast.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

I simply cannot think of a more user-friendly way than doubleclicking Winuae-icon and pressing Start-button.

Now take a good look at this screenshot, and tell me what the difference is between this screenshot and that what you just described.

Now don't take me wrong, I do like WinUAE, I like the options given there. But a 'noob' doesn't know what these options mean, so it's extremely confusing and 'hostile' in the eyes of a 'noob'. Moreso because these options need to be set, kickstarts need to be located (even at the time a 'noob' even knows what a kickstart is, he has a hell of a job knowing how to get one).

Now if you were talking about Amigakit or AmigaForever, then it'd be another story.

[DiskDoctor]

Nope, it's a lot cheaper, a lot faster and a lot more convenient most of the time

It is cheaper though it does not prove anything

It might be faster but what for?

Convenient it is... I 've been reporting sound lags on A500 games, on E-UAE, WinUAE or even AmigaForever Player.

I mean c'mon! Emulation is always an emulation, pretending to be the real thing.  So if you want the real thing, get yourself one.  And if you need emulation "not real", just use it cheaply, in terms of effects also.  If I was faced with the choice of such, I wouldn't be considering options at all.

[Karlos]

It is cheaper though it does not prove anything

Have you tried upgrading a real amiga recently? It's hugely expensive.

It might be faster but what for?

Anything you want it to be faster for. Or not, if you prefer. Certainly you feel the difference if, like me, you've used an RTG amiga for many years and are used to high resolutions and colour depths. Simple things like loading images in multiview, playing media etc. On UAE on a fast system, you can almost forget it's an emulation.

Convenient it is... I 've been reporting sound lags on A500 games, on E-UAE, WinUAE or even AmigaForever Player.

I can't say I have any such issues either in WInUAE or EUAE. Or even in WinUAE running under Wine

I mean c'mon! Emulation is always an emulation, pretending to be the real thing.  So if you want the real thing, get yourself one.  And if you need emulation "not real", just use it cheaply, in terms of effects also.  If I was faced with the choice of such, I wouldn't be considering options at all.

Yes, the experience is different. Using my real A1200, though a lot of fun, tends to be grindingly slow after using UAE's JIT. And this is a PPC A1200 complete with all the datatypes and everything else you could offload onto the PPC for speed (Heck, there's even an OS4 beta install on one of the partitions if I feel like going the whole hog).

I'd definitely say emulation is certainly a valid option to consider. Perhaps you have more money than sense and what's more you are already a die hard fanatic. Somebody new to the platform might want to try it, before they buy it.

[gaula92]

People reporting sound lag in WinUAE: you have NOT followed latest progress. Toni has implemented Portaudio with ASIO support for NO DELAY AT ALL, even for professional musicians (look at EAB threads about betas and portaudio).

Chipset audio/video can be PERFECT is you DO configure WinUAE right: you can set 50HZ modes with perfect audio/video sync, smoth scroll in games WITHOUT ANY OCASSIONAL SYNC LOSS. I have tested that with Toni, you can read more in EAB.
Of course, you need a clean system (no lame A/V software or memory/CPU stealing processes in the background) and custom-defined video modes beyond the scope of this post.

So, YES, if correctly configured, WinUAE is just perfect and impossible to tell from a real Amiga. Those not knowing that fact just haven't configured it well.
The only bad part of WinUAE is being Windows based and no ports to Linux/MAC OSX for custom kernels on the host system that would allow almost instant boot-up.
Oh, and remember that you CAN load savestates on lauch, so you can totally skip loading times for ADF of WHDLoad games

[JC]

nothing beats the real thing.

Absolutely, I couldn't agree more.

Inflateomates are fun but nothing like the real thing. Just 'cause one is cheaper it doesn't mean it's better.

[Karlos]

Absolutely, I couldn't agree more.

Inflateomates are fun but nothing like the real thing. Just 'cause one is cheaper it doesn't mean it's better.

When talking about an amiga and not your inflatable, "better" may well be subjective. However, on a decent PC, UAE is verifiably

1) Cheaper

This is a given, nobody is arguing the cost of PC ownership.

2) Faster

This is also a given. JIT performance in UAE is a significant percentage of host speed. AHI drivers give you fast, low latency audio, P96 drivers give you 2D RTG acceleration that makes any real amiga graphics card look like a toy. You also get bsdsocket.library emulation which gives you networking support. Again, much faster than any card you are likely to stick in a zorro machine or PCMCIA slot.

3) More convenient

Make as many hardfiles as you want, you even can take your emulated amiga somewhere on a pen drive. Suspend your emulation and restart it where you left off later. Have your amiga on your laptop, your netbook.

4) More compatible

Arguably yes. You can have as many configurations set up as you want, and run just about every classic amigaos / hardware combination you want, including some that never really existed. 8MiB Chip RAM in your emulated amiga versus a destroyed A4000 after somebody tried it for real. Hmm. No one real amiga is anything like as compatible as UAE is these days.

I'm not going to knock the fun of sitting infront of a real amiga and using it, that's a given. I wouldn't get rid of my actual machines. However, as far as I'm concerned UAE is not just "some emulator". It is the definitive classic amiga emulator.

[Trev]

"Nothing beats the real thing" must be qualified. If you have a stock Amiga 500 and a Commodore 1084, and you're playing old games, then yes, it's great. If you have a stock Amiga 500 and a VGA monitor, you're screwed. If you have a stock Amiga 500 and a TV with composite inputs, you're only screwed if you dislike playing games in black and white. Getting the real thing to function in today's world is often a challenge--unless you're willing to pour money into your setup.

WinUAE has a lot going for it, not the least of which is Toni Wilen, who despite the ups and downs of the community, still loves classic Amigas and still appears to love what he's doing. WinUAE does things that even a heavily expanded classic system would have problems doing. And if it doesn't, the source code is available, and you can add the functionality yourself.

Buy Amiga Forever. It's legal, it's easy to use, and you'd be providing direct support to the companies and individuals working diligently to keep classic Amiga computing alive. And if you like WinUAE, drop Toni a thank you note. He's human and appreciates kind remarks just as much as the next guy, yeah?

EDIT: An example of Toni's awesomeness. ;-) I was playing with uIP a couple years ago (still am, but it's not as fun as it was then), and out of nowhere and partly based on what I was doing, Toni added an emulated SANA-II device to WinUAE. It has its quirks, but regardless, I can test uIP (and other SANA-II-based software) under WinUAE rather than wasting development cycles waiting on my real Amigas to boot my various test environments from floppy. It's very keen having 1.2/1.3, 2.05, and 3.1 test environments ready at the click of a button.

[hooligan]

Now take a good look at this screenshot, and tell me what the difference is between this screenshot and that what you just described.

Now don't take me wrong, I do like WinUAE, I like the options given there. But a 'noob' doesn't know what these options mean, so it's extremely confusing and 'hostile' in the eyes of a 'noob'. Moreso because these options need to be set, kickstarts need to be located (even at the time a 'noob' even knows what a kickstart is, he has a hell of a job knowing how to get one).

Now if you were talking about Amigakit or AmigaForever, then it'd be another story.

Obviously I was talking about a ready configured system, one that the dad fixed for the kids. Then if the dad can't configure Winuae, I suggest to keep feeding bootable gamedisks on a real Amiga.

[orb85750]

The A3000 contains a SCSI port, not IDE and will take 50 pin SCSI Hard discs.
It can only use IDE discs with the addition of a IDE controller such as the Budda.

Gaz

I thought the A3000 came with an internal HDD by default -- not a large one, but a hard drive nonetheless.

[Tension]

How many real amigas can you put to sleep and resume later?

Are you having a tin bath??  How many PeeCees can boot in 7 seconds??

My laptop takes twice that time just to wake up from its microsoft-induced slumber, and only if it can be arsed!!