real amiga vs winuae

[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.

[Trev]

What's with all the c**k swinging lately? What happened to, "You like Amigas? Sweet. Me, too."

[Trev]

Did you like forget to mention what the hardware requirements are?  Or that doesn't matter-- just keep configuring until you get it right?

No, you just select "A500" from the drop-down list, and you get Kickstart 1.3 (you need a ROM image, of course), 512KB chip, 512KB slow, a PAL chipset, and a single low-density floppy drive. The display is set to 720x568 and output is interpolated based on rendering settings. I think the default is nearest neighbor or something similar.

So if I start writing to audio registers in the copper list, it will show up in real-time to through the PC's audio card?

Sort of, but you can't throw around the word "real-time" like that. It's an emulator, not a real-time simulator, so at best, you'll get an approximation. The emulation itself is cycle-exact, but there are no deadline guarantees. Depending on the host system, the emulation may lag. On most modern systems, though, that's not a problem.

First of all, unless you completely take over the VGA card, Timer hardware, Audio card, and other things and have specific minimum requirements for these, it's impossible to claim what you say.

Nothing's impossible. You can access hardware directly from kernel code in Windows, and in some cases, this is what WinUAE does; however, video and audio devices are accessed using standard APIs and driver-supported low-latency access methods.

[Trev]

One that works exactly like the real thing from all perspectives.

Bloated capacitors, leaky batteries, dirty drive heads, misbehaving CIAs, regional display formats, broken joystick switches, serial transfers.... *sigh* The joys of real Amigas.

EDIT: Ooh! I forgot rotten floppy disks. Those were the days.

[Trev]

My son is now 18 and loves my retro collections and on occasion I let him play:)

On occasion? I grew up without a father, but I do have one memory of my grandfather on my father's side: He had a very cool N-scale railroad that he wouldn't let me play with--the bastard. If and when you have grandchildren, don't make the same mistake he did. ;-)

[Trev]

I use floppy simulation so no rotten floppy disks.

What!?

[Trev]

You're dead wrong that software doesn't care how fast a cycle happens.  You are generalizing too much.

No, he's not. Time isn't an absolute, and your software's concept of time is relative to its frame of reference.

[Trev]

True. Generally speaking, only hardware cares how long cycles take. If you don't refresh your DRAM at the right speed it can corrupt it's contents, for example. However, software isn't going to care if it takes 10ns to access memory or 100ns.

Exactly, as long as some artribitrary unit, e.g. a cycle, is consistently applied, the actual value of a cycle isn't relevant. Then we get into the real world, of course, where systems are expected to interact with each other. ;-) We can rest assured, however, that an Amiga with zero 0 acceleration and an Amiga with an acceleration approaching the speed light are both Amigas, even though one appears to be running at a different speed from the perspective of the other.

EDIT: That, and any Turing-complete system can emulate an Amiga (or any other system).

[Trev]

It would be unfair and biased to claim 6502 is NOT compatible with 65816.

Dude, you really are using the word "biased" incorrectly. In what way is he biased? Is his sister married to a 68020? Is his brother a 68020 running for public office? Is he selling 68020 accelerators?

You could say that your experiences are biased as you've never encountered an incompatible instruction. That sort of bias isn't intentional, though.

The 68000 was incomplete in some areas, particularly with regard to virtualization and the separation of privileged and unprivileged instructions, so Motorola made changes to the design. If anyone is biased or perhaps following a biased agenda, it's you, as your experience with the 68000 family appears to be limited to the Amiga and perhaps the Atari ST.

[Trev]

That's your speculation.  You are dealing with the real world as well since audio goes out to the real world, imagery goes out to the real world, joystick/mouse gets inputted from real-world, etc.  Although processor speeds vary amongst amigas, there are also many elements that don't change.  You can't call it an amiga if everything is different from another amiga-- there has to be some substance.  Nor are you correct regarding "cycle is consistently applied."  A cycle unless timed to the cycle may vary the next time the same cycle occurs given processor inconsistencies.  Nor is the cycle taking the same time from cycle to cycle.  Nor can you say for sure you have exact VBI timing given NTSC/PAL rates are usually different from VGA frame rates.

That's why a made an exception. From the point of view of the emulation, sound is reaching the real world just as it should. Whether or not it actually does is a problem, but only a problem for the user, not the emulation itself.

You entirely missed my point about cycles. The actual value of a cycle isn't relevant. If everything is synchronized to a cycle, then everything will run as expected.

You're making an argument for a system composed of both the computer and the user, in which case, which user? As an example, I have a bit of hearing loss in the 16 kHz range, so sounds encompassing that range will probably sound different to me than they do to you. Assuming you can hear in and around 16 kHz without problems, your Amiga experience is more complete than mine, mine being a poor emulation of yours.

[Trev]

The 68010 is really what the 68000 should have been.

Yes! And Motorola knew they effed up. The 68000 was still hugely popular and hugely successful, of course. Isn't there some documentation somewhere on why a 68010 can't be used as a reliable drop-in replacement for a 68000 in any Amiga, despite the processors being pin-compatible?