Cloanto

[amigakidd]

I think they're the best.

Amiga Forever.

[amigakidd]

I think I'm having doubts about Cloanto now,
My Amiga Forever CDs hasn't arrived yet.

See my other thread: Bad Experiences Delivery - Cloanto.

[amigakidd]

@ Fraccy

Thanks for the feedback. I was upset at them this morning when I found out that they didn't deliver the Amiga Forever 2006 Physical CDs since Michael Battilana told me that they were currently out of stock. He will speak to his production team and see if there is any available. Michael is really a nice guy and he actually took the time to send me the email and let me know whats going on. Their share-it customer service in my opinion sucks because they point you back to Cloanto.

Since I have the download, I plan not to run Amiga Forever menu since I don't like it. I bought it for the the official ROMS of course (to be legit), KX Light CD, and the Amiga Deathbed Virgil Videos to accompany On the Edge: Rise and Fall of Commodore Book. Plus Amiga Forever CDs look great in my collection next to Mindcandy: Amiga Demos vol.2 and ON the Edge. I'm a Amiga Collector (Newbie)

Since we will never see a Real Amiga Computer come out in the market anytime soon, I'm creating my own personal distro (WinXP lite install with WINUAE) that uses Cloanto licensed ROMS. This will run on my Asus eee PC.
See my architecture below. You can do the same if you don't want to run Amiga Forever as the actual emulator frontend. I'm saying you don't have to be tied to them, but you must use their ROMS to be legit.


My Distro - Open Architecture
Project Codename: Jay Miner
---------------------

Amiga Games (ADFs loaded on SDHC SD Cards)
and/or Preserved Games/Apps/Demos on CD.
----------------------
INPUT Layer: (X-Arcade, KEYBOARD, JOYSTICK)
----------------------
Virtual Machine Layer:
WINUAE 1.4.6 (Can be upgradable as time goes on)
----------------------
Amiga OS Kernel Layer:
KICKSTART ROMS & WORKBENCH ADFS (CLOANTO Licensed)
Permanent ROMS and ADFs
----------------------
Host OS Layer:
WIN XP or Mac OS X
----------------------
Hardware Layer:
Asus EEE PC or Hardware of Choice

[amigakidd]

In our situation in the Amiga Community is that Old Hardware is either dying or non-functioning. Emulation is really the way to preserve this, until A-Inc up in Washington comes up with new Amiga hardware, unlikely.
Morph OS? Will never be mass produced to the masses.
Only Hope now to relive Amiga: PC or a Mac with emulation software with your purchased ROMs.

You can emulate legally the Amiga without actually using Cloanto's Amiga Forever Frontend (Which I think is bloated), using just WINUAE, Fellow, E-UAE, UAE, but they are the only provider of legit ROMS or you can transrom it yourself to a PC/MAC.

Let's say in 5 years, when my PC dies, I still have access to the legit ROMs I bought from Cloanto as long as the license keys exist as proof. Or If I move from a PC to Mac, I think Macs use MacUAE, so it would still be possible to emulate the past without losing anything.

Emulation is true preservation of media, all you have to do is jump to computer to computer as time goes on as long as you have your legit ROMs and access to a UAE emulator.


Does this make any sense?
 

[amigakidd]

@ Minuous

I agree with your point that the masses, at least the majority of the Amiga Community thinks that Cloanto's licensing of ROM is the only way. It is true to a marketing standpoint of licensing, but I agree with you on Cloanto's domination of the Kickstart ROM images on the Emulation Market. They do have a monopoly on licensing Amiga ROMs and the Workbench Disks. They get all the press coverages on the web, classic gaming expo, and such.

To me, that's evil, but for now its the only way. Now, I don't have an actual Amiga 500 or any Amiga machine at my disposal, but I don't want to hack out the ROM and transfer it to my PC. That takes a long time and I'm not a hardware guru.

I think what you want is another alternative besides Cloanto and transrom. I wish there is a competitor, not to my knowledge. I have learned to like Cloanto, but I don't like their bloated menu frontend to Winuae or their customer service. I like them because they're part of the Amiga Community, they're part of the original boat of developers from wayback. The ROMS breathe life to UAE in general. Without it, WINUAE or UAE is just a stupid application file.

Sure I can download them from a torrent site if I want to, but as an Amiga Fan, I shelled out money to pay for Amiga ROMS, equivalent to buying a real machine, but way cheaper.
I cared about the early developers and those at Commodore who devoted their lives to Amiga. I bought my ROMs not just to have a clear conscience, but to honor the past.
I bought ROMs too to become part of the community, even though I use a PC to run my Amiga games and Software - Accessibility.

I just wish as an alternative, there would be an open source kickstart from GPL. I guess that would make some happy. Hey anything can be open-sourced right? Why not.

As Amiga citizens, What we should be fighting is Apple and Microsoft, not Cloanto.  
:-D