Amiga Emulation

[melott]

I know this will sound dumb to many
of you but....

I really don't know much of anything
about Amiga emulation.

What are the different Emulators and
what are the advantages and disavantages
to each. What kind of HorsePower do they
need to run well.

I have a 500mhz PC setting here doing
nothing and am wondering if its strong
enough to run an emulator with reasonable
speed. I don't care to run Windows, I would
prefer not emulating Amiga in "Win 98".
Are any of these operating systems a "DOS"
that runs on the 'Intel' chip?

Mel Ott

 

[Kronos]

Not sure what you mean by "DOS", but in Amiga-emulation you
got basiclly two possible routes:

A) UAE, runs on MS-DOS,Windows and Linux, but the Win-version
is the most advanced.
The emu itself is free, but you will need an ROM-image which you
can either extract from a real Amiga or buy with the Amiga-Forever
package. UAE is a full emulator, including the chipset. making it
possible to run anything from old games to brand new apps.

B) Amithlon runs on it's own (on top of a specially modded
Linux-kernel), costs ~150 $/Euro, includes everthing you will
need, doesn't emulate the chipset (so no old games), but is twice
(sometimes even more) as fast as UAE. But beware and check if your HW
is compatible with it.

There is also some legal fighting over Amithlon going on, but since
none of the parties seems to have the guts (or whatever) to take it
into court, I wouldn't see a prob in buying it.

[Lo]

Click  for a test floppy to try Amithlon on your PC.


HERE

[Paul_Gadd]

Good advantages that emulating an Amiga is a lot more compatable for software than a real Amiga ever could do without having to pay silly amounts of money on old very expensive hardware.  you can pay for a XP 1800 and motherboard, graphics card etc together  cheaper than what a 060 board would cost alone.

Disavantages are it wont run PPC software (YET) but someone will do it, just a matter of time.

[melott]

Hmmm..

Doesn't sound like anyone has re-writen
Amiga Dos to run on a INTEL chip.

Windows is slow enough on a 500mhz machine
without emulating Amiga. I can imagine what
it would be like when emulating Amiga.
My A3000-25 would probably look like a 'Rocket
Sled' in comparison.

I'll have to think about it.....

Mel Ott

[Kronos]

A 500mhz Celeron or P2/3 running WinUAE, crushes even an 68060,
running Amithlon it would make the 060 look like a joke.

Rule of the thump:
Host-clock/4 (WinUAE) or Host-clock/2 (Amithlon) = clock of
emulated 68040.

[Dan]

Doesn't sound like anyone has re-writen Amiga Dos to run on a INTEL chip.

There is AROS www.aros.org, but it´s far from finished and isn´t binarycompatible with 68k programs.

[Lo]

My A3000-25 would probably look like a 'Rocket Sled' by comparison

 :lol:

My A4000-060/50 makes Amithlon look like a rocket sled.   :-o

[melott]

Amithon ......hmmm

Tell me more... I tried the earlier post
marked "HERE". I got Yahoo, but didn't see
where I could get a demo disk.

Is Amithon an operating system or is it
an emulation in a window?

Does it use the sound and video cards or does
it require special cards?

Interested..
Mel Ott

[bhoggett]

@melott

re: Amithlon

There is no demo disc. The link you saw in this thread is just a hardware compatibility test for your motherboard and gfx card. It doesn't check your sound and network card compatibility. It's also quite old.

Amithlon is a program that runs on a bare-bones custom Linux kernel, so strictly speaking Linux is the OS. However, this is transparent in operation so the effect is that you'd be running AmigaOS on an x86 system. (You can't run Linux applications on it)

It uses off the shelf graphics and sounds cards, but the supported range is limited (much more so for sound cards than gfx cards). You really need to check hardware compatibility first.

To add to what Kronos has said regarding the legal status, while it is true that nothing is ultimately proven one way or another, the dispute has affected support and upgrades. At this time, the product appears to be at a dead-end (an upgrade has been promised for many months, but so far it is still MIA), while some of the unofficial upgrades that were released have been retracted and are no longer legally available for download.

It's something worth considering when deciding whether to shell out what is a considerable amount of money.

What applies to both Amithlon and UAE is that you need to check your CPU. 500MHz doesn't mean much by itself. Is it a Celeron, a P2 etc, or is it a K6-2 or a VIA chip of some denomination. If the former, you're fine. If the latter, I wouldn't hold much hope.

[melott]

Well ..
 
That doesn't sound so good, the legal
problems, I mean.

My PC is an P2 500, sound & video blaster.
I have a CD burner in it and thats about all
I use it for, and thats not very often.
After I upgraded IBrowse I don't even use it for
the internet anymore. Too much garbage on
MS Explorer.

My son sais he has a P3 1gig for me if I want
it but I haven't bothered because I don't use
it enough to be worth while.

I think I should wait and watch for now.
See how things shake out with Amithon.

Mel Ott

[Ilwrath]

@mel ott-
You'd be surprised how well UAE will run on a lower-powered PC.  I have a 366mhz laptop that I run WinUAE on, and it does fairly well for workbench-type applications.  Things requiring chipset emulation don't do as well... But even at that, with reasonable settings, you can get a machine of that level performance to emulate something that feels about as crisp as an Amiga 1200 with FastRAM and a graphics card quite easily.  To be honest, it's about the same speed you get out of Windows on that level of box.

As for the P3 1ghz...  it'll scream.  'nuff said.

@melott

You should really try it and then decide what is good for you.

I think that WinUAE is great for starters, and maybe AmigaForever is even a little more friendly. Both are good enough for wb/games/small applications (but both are running on top of Windoze). When you are finished with that you should really try Amithlon (it's a great pice of work), and as others say it's fast as ...

Good luck.

[ninja62]

I have WinUAE on a 1.6GHz PentiumIV Notebook with AmigaOS 3.9 and it really flyes!!!  It's a lot lot lot lot lot faster then my real 060 Amiga... :-o

[sarkis]

Getting a Zaurus 200 or 400 Mhz ..Is it possible to
run Bernies Amithlon on on this PDA?

  Also have any ported Amiga SDK to the Zaurus?
and what type of apps are you running..

 Using the Zaurus as a local HTML viewer...

tia..
Sarkis  :-D