Its easy to bypass windows and just use it as a host for winuae... If setup right you'll never even know windows is under the hood.
This idea came to me from x86amiga.pdf which should be on aminet?
I am running a dedicated amiga emulation pc strictly for my amiga pursuits. Its not a "real amiga" but the benefits are its cheap, its faster than any amiga and its relatively easy to do. Since its running winuae, almost ever piece of amiga software, including games and stuff that bangs hardware... can be run. Using this setup, you can also boot straight into amikit, though I chose to boot straight to a more vanilla os3.9 setup.
I chose a white older compaq I had found, and also used a very clicky older style at keyboard, I even customized the case with boing balls... using this with a 20 inch white crt monitor. I really forget its a pc most of the time, and I also have a usb amiga style joystick.
Setup a bare minimum xp install first, then config winuae so it works nicely... save your config files... Now we need to get rid of a few windows annoyances, like windows shell...If setup right, you should never even know windows is the host. I know you said without windows, but in my experience this is the best way to set up a dedicated amiga without a real amiga. I've been using it for months and its alot of fun. Boots in about 45 seconds I'd say, straight to amiga os3.x desktop.
Here is the notes from the x86 install guide, which allow you to setup windows right and bypass windows alltogether...
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First of all install your “XP bare minimum” CD installation to your computer and install ALL THE DRIVERS you need including printers, networking, USB peripherals et all. Take care to configure your system as a REAL Windows system including network because once everything is finished
you’ll be able to change that stuff only by Windows safe mode. So be very careful and proceed to next step only when you’re sure that everything is completed. Remember that is NECESSARY to setup windows to auto login with an account, administrator for example, surely you’ll be able to
find on the web how to do it. Of course you have to install WinUAE too and after that don’t reset your machine while working on the next steps.
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Now let’s get serious.
Step 1 – Getting the rid of Windows XP bootscreen
- Place the HDF files in your D:\ hard drive
- Type in Run MSConfig and open the TAB “BOOT.INI”
- Flag the /NOGUIBOOT
- Close the software.
Do not reboot now, but with that operation you’ll not see the “Windows logon screen"
Now to replace the windows shell with WINUAE
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Type in RUN regedit
- Open “[/FONT]HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon”
- Find shell and modify it like this:
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c:\winuae\winuae.exe -f "C:\winuae\Configurations\amiga.uae"
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Of course you have to put your curren WinUAE installation path.
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You can also install amigaforever and use the kxlight install, but in my experience this makes loading adf files and other stuff tough, unless I'm just retarded... Does anyone know if the kxlight install works at all with catweasel, or if you are actually able to load adf files easily to the virtual floppies?
Wish there was a way to dump all my adf files easily to hard drive kind of install or folders uncompressed. Kxlight install seems to be slightly faster and more transparent, but I never was able to fix the 800x600 barrier...
Apparently, you have to edit the xorg.conf file but you'll need a linux boot disk after install to do that, just never got around to fiddling more with it.
A side note, I actually can boot to amikit OR my vanilla os3.9 setup, I just have to edit which hard drive folder winuae uses at boot.
Computer used is a 1.5ghz tower pc with 512megs ram 128meg video ram card with gpu, 80 gig hard drive. For most things, the system flies.
All games I tried worked great, and like I said I pretty much forget its
a pc or windows is there at all.
I'd still like a real amiga again someday, but I'm not in a position to pay 500-1000$ for a maxed out system with accellerator, real time graphics card, hard drive controller, 16 bit sound card and so on. The emulation
route gives me that speed/performance and features, and all for just the cost of amiga forever, and a pc I found in the trash.
I really wish os3.x would just get open sourced, porting it to x86 directly would be awesome, but this is the closest I've seen so far.
Never understood why you'd want to run amithlon and lose the ability to run 1/2 the software for amiga, but thats a personal choice I suppose.
If you want games, do this, if you want amiga desktop apps, go amithlon.
Steven
