Amiga.org
The "Not Quite Amiga but still computer related category" => Amiga Emulation => Topic started by: AmigaEd on February 19, 2005, 08:50:50 PM
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Howdy,
I'm thinking of buying a new PC to use with WinUAE. I have to do things on the cheap and can get a fair deal from a local guy on a system with the following...
Mother board: Soyo K7VM333
Processor: Sempron 2500+ 1.75 Ghz
Memory: 512MB DDR 333mhz
Has UniChrome GDX onboard video with 32 MB shared ram.
(board also has 4x agp slot - but can't afford a card right now... perhaps in the future - any recomendations welcome)
Have the option of several different size hard drives depending on how much I wish to spend.
So, my question is would this work well with WinUAE? Would it be worth spending the money?
I'm actually trying winUAE on my old AMD k6-2/380 with 512mb and xp pro. it works fairly well although I beleive that it's really sluggish with the games.
Just looking for thoughts here, not trying to open the can of worms :-o
Thanks,
AmigaEd
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That would be a killer setup for WinUAE. Plenty fast.
One thing I would consider however (if your friend hasn't already bought the processor) would be to go for this (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-506&depa=0) instead of the Sempron (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-104-211&depa=0), it will be faster becasue of the larger cache and clockspeed (and as you can see there's no price difference!).
If you want to play with overclocking a little, I would suggest an Athlon Mobile (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-400&depa=0). This one is likely your best bet, once again similar clockspeed at the same price, and very easy to overclock due to the unlocked multipliers. The default FSB speed is slower, but (with adequate cooling) they will overclock easily to 400 MHz (DDR). If you don't want to bother with all that, I'd stick with the Athlon XP 2500+, which is a great choice IMHO.
-edit- Another thing to consider...for just a bit more cash, you can get an n-force2 motherboard with nicer specs (ability to run 400 MHz DDR, better onboard video/etc..). If this is an option for you, let us know and we'd be more than happy to steer ya in the right direction.
Cheers
:pint:
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An AMD K6-2/380 will come short in some instances BUT you don't need a hole lot more to be happy... My P3 450 did a good jobb for just about everything concerning WinUAE. Much speed can be gained from propper settings in the emulator.
For WinUAE I'd recomend a 800Mhz or faster CPU, any GFXcard with 32mb or more will do but preferably not built in (a Radeon92x0 will be easy on the wallet), 256Mb PC133 mem is plenty and fast enough, and a simple 40GB or more HD will do for loads of fun storage. What you save on this you can spend on a CatweaselMK3/4, Amiga keyboard and mods for the machine to make it feel more like the real thing. :)
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Hum,
well i used to run winUae on a P2 400 with a geforce mx440 and it was usable.
So anything above that would be even better...
My suggestion is to opt for a chipset that will support a 400 FSB, just for the improved read speeds (if you upgrade the mem later on)...an old type ASROCK sx8 mobo will be less than 30 uk pounds.
A second hand geforce fx5200 graphics card will cost you £20 (i paid a £100 about a year ago...), a geforce mx440 will be about a tenner....
Save yourself some money and get the cheapest memory (256mb) and upgrade/trade-in to the faster stuff later on...
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I'm actually trying winUAE on my old AMD k6-2/380 with 512mb and xp pro. it works fairly well although I beleive that it's really sluggish with the games.
By the way, I've used the K6-2/380MHz for years... It overclocks nicely to 400MHz without any heat issues. Win2k and XP bog that system down too much however, and I'd recommend using Win98 SE instead. Even replacing explorer with WinUAE as your shell.
I agree the upgrade is necessary for any serious UAE enthusiast, as even with everything running in its favor you'll still have some speed trouble.
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Do you mean replace the actual explorer.exe and run winuae.exe in its place, Just like win98lite, win2klite and winxplite does ?. Or do you mean run it the standard way, With explorer.exe still there running in the background sucking up resources.
Trooper
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Even replacing explorer with WinUAE as your shell.
Where can I find information about how to do this?
-AmigaEd
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I`m going to try it myself and see how it goes. Windows 98/98SE is probably the best to test it on.
Trooper
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I tried it once with Windows ME, but personally didn't see much benefit (on a P3/600 with 128MB RAM). YMMV?
But it's a pain in the arse if you hope to do anything besides run WinUAE... Like back it up, for instance.
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AmigaEd wrote:
Even replacing explorer with WinUAE as your shell.
Where can I find information about how to do this?
-AmigaEd
You can do this manually by changing the "shell" line in your system.ini file (shell=winuae.exe instead of shell=explorer.exe) under win9x and altering the "shell" register key @ HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon under winNT4+. The disadvantage is that you have to edit the system.ini eveytime you want to switch shells. Which maybe less of a hassle if you intend to use WinUAE exclusively.
But if you see yourself needing to run Windows apps on a regular basis, you may want to look into something like ShellOn (http://www.dx13.co.uk/programs/index.html). This program basically allows you to select which shell you want to 'boot'/log into.
There are other alternatives that do pretty much the same thing, but I just haven't been able to find them (yet). I'll keep looking and add links as I find them.
[Edit]
If you're going to be using win2k/XP this guide (http://docs.geoshell.com:8080/confluence/display/R4/Multiple+Users%2C+Multiple+Shells) explains how to set a seperate shell for each user. You can also find links to two other shell managers (Carapace & Snafkin) in the opening paragraph.
Another alternative is Shell Enabler (http://somedec.com/downloads/shellenabler/).
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@ShadesOfGrey
hum,
>>You can do this manually...
yeah, good suggestion, though i would personally have a duel booting machine - a tweaked win98SE and a winUAE OS...
(just, shove in the Windows cdrom and instead of overwriting the current os create a new `Windows2` folder to install the alternative boot onto...)
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blobrana wrote:
@ShadesOfGrey
hum,
>>You can do this manually...
yeah, good suggestion, though i would personally have a duel booting machine - a tweaked win98SE and a winUAE OS...
(just, shove in the Windows cdrom and instead of overwriting the current os create a new `Windows2` folder to install the alternative boot onto...)
Uhh, correct me if I'm wrong, but is your impression that you would need two seperate installs of Windows in order to have one with Explorer and another for WinUAE as the shell? Because that's not what I'm suggesting at all. You can use just one install of your "tweaked win98SE" and 'switch' between using Explorer and WinUAE. It's very much like the idea of multiple windows managers on the *nix platforms. One install of the X Window System, but you have a choice between Motif, FVWM, Window Maker, Black Box, AmiWM, etc, etc. as your window manager.
If you use a shell manager like ShellOn, you can choose between Explorer and WinUAE as your shell from one win98 install. In essence, ShellOn inserts itself as the default shell and then launches whatever other shell you want to use (i.e. BB4W, GeoShell, LiteStep or even WinUAE). To use (something of) an Amiga analogy, ShellOn would be sort of like having a program that replaces "starwb" in your startup-sequnce. When run it would prompt you to choose between Workbench, Directory Opus or Scalos as your GUI for a single AmigaOS install.
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@ShadesOfGrey
>>is your impression that you would need two separate installs of Windows..
Hum,
No.
Your pickable shell idea sounds, er, sound...
[color=ff00ff]< off topic >[/color]
But, on a slightly different note, given that HD space is fairly cheep, there is no reason not to have a fallback OS installed...infact, on my classic Amiga i have a 10mb partition set aside for a unmodified workbench, when i do something stupid with the main DHO:
I’m running xp pro (sp2), and even with it’s restore recovery features i still have a second OS to fall back on...i have learned, after losing too much data and time in the past, to take precautions... :-)
[color=ff00ff]< /off topic >[/color]
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No no no... Ugh... Why would anyone use software to do what you can do with a simple text editor (ie: EDIT.COM) on the fly? Just create two shell= lines in win.ini and comment one of them out.
shell=x:\path\winuae\winuae.exe
;shell=c:\windows\explorer.exe
easy money.
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Trooper wrote:
Ok!, I`m being really picky i know, But it was "LoadWB" that "loaded Workbench", Not "starwb". :-D
Trooper
Oops! :-o My bad. I was sure it was "startwb", but not having WinUAE installed ATM, I couldn't double check.
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blobrana wrote:
Hum,
No.
Your pickable shell idea sounds, er, sound...
Oh, OK. I misunderstood then.
[color=ff00ff]< off topic >[/color]
But, on a slightly different note, given that HD space is fairly cheep, there is no reason not to have a fallback OS installed...infact, on my classic Amiga i have a 10mb partition set aside for a unmodified workbench, when i do something stupid with the main DHO:
I’m running xp pro (sp2), and even with it’s restore recovery features i still have a second OS to fall back on...i have learned, after losing too much data and time in the past, to take precautions... :-)
[color=ff00ff]< /off topic >[/color]
I thought it a bit strange to have multiple 'production' installs of Windows just so you could have more than one shell is all... Which is what I originally thought you were suggesting until you corrected me.
Personally, I have very much the same setup on almost all my computers. Even my retired Apple IIgs has a "fallback" OS parition... I just wish I could use my A4000D again, but until I get a replacement motherboard (cheap mind you!), the fallback partition is moot.
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Dr_Righteous wrote:
No no no... Ugh... Why would anyone use software to do what you can do with a simple text editor (ie: EDIT.COM) on the fly? Just create two shell= lines in win.ini and comment one of them out.
shell=x:\path\winuae\winuae.exe
;shell=c:\windows\explorer.exe
easy money.
Uhhhmmm, convenience perhaps? I know that when I was playing around with alternative shells I really hated having to modify either my system.ini (in the case of 98SE) or registry (when I switched to NT4 and then 2k) eveytime I wanted to make a switch. Once I settled on LiteStep after a solid two months of continous use, I made the changes to my registry 'permanent' and got rid of the shell manager.
I don't want to turn this into a flame war, but I really don't appreciate being criticized for being helpful. Besides, I did mention modifying the "shell" line in the system.ini for Win9x user in my original post. I also edited my original message to reference an online guide that takes advantage of the true multi-user environemnt of winNT4+.
In fact you might want to re-read the last sentence in the first paragraph and the second paragraph of my original post. I imply that if someone plans on using an alternative shell, on an almost exclusive basis, that making the changes to the system.ini (or the registry, which I probably should have explicitly mentioned) 'permanent' may be more convenient.
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@ShadesOfGrey
Thanks for all of the great info and links. As soon as I started reading your post, how to shell out to WinUAE made sense to me. I'll have to play around with this some and see if shelling out to WinUAE will work for me. I can see a few drawbacks to doing this, but I can also see some advantages, not the least of which is that it may make the whole setup seem more like a real Amiga.
AmigaEd
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AmigaEd wrote:
@ShadesOfGrey
Thanks for all of the great info and links. As soon as I started reading your post, how to shell out to WinUAE made sense to me. I'll have to play around with this some and see if shelling out to WinUAE will work for me. I can see a few drawbacks to doing this, but I can also see some advantages, not the least of which is that it may make the whole setup seem more like a real Amiga.
AmigaEd
Your most certainly welcome. If you should need assistance, you can PM me and I'll do what I can to help. In fact, this thread has inspired me to revisit alternative Windows shells. First up, WinUAE ala AmigaForever.
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ShadesOfGrey wrote:
I don't want to turn this into a flame war, but I really don't appreciate being criticized for being helpful.
It wasn't my intent to criticize your suggestion per se... More like the writing of said software in the first place.
It just annoys me when people write programs that do little but suck up memory / resources to accomplish a simple task. Especially true when the "goal" here is a clean environment for running WinUAE. Even a custom boot menu in the autoexec.bat would work better.
That said, I had not taken into account using NT4/5. I can understand the use of a shell switcher in that case.
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Just wanted to follow up on this thread...
I did get the system as described at the start of this thread. So far it seems to work quite well running WinUAE with AmigaSYS 1.7, AF6 and soon I'll try AIAB.
Still get an occasional glitch in the sound but not too often. Mostly seems to occur only when running some complicated graphics at the same time as complex audio.
I'm much happier now!
Later,
AmigaEd
:lol:
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ShadesOfGrey wrote:
If you're going to be using win2k/XP this guide (http://docs.geoshell.com:8080/confluence/display/R4/Multiple+Users%2C+Multiple+Shells) explains how to set a seperate shell for each user. You can also find links to two other shell managers (Carapace & Snafkin) in the opening paragraph.
The link is dead, does anyone know what it said or where it is? Would be really good for me as I can have one "user" with XP and another with WinUAE :-)
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This page has a guide:
LINK (http://shell-shocked.org/article.php?id=43)
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smartrod wrote:
ShadesOfGrey wrote:
If you're going to be using win2k/XP this guide (http://docs.geoshell.com:8080/confluence/display/R4/Multiple+Users%2C+Multiple+Shells) explains how to set a seperate shell for each user. You can also find links to two other shell managers (Carapace & Snafkin) in the opening paragraph.
The link is dead, does anyone know what it said or where it is? Would be really good for me as I can have one "user" with XP and another with WinUAE :-)
The link (http://docs.geoshell.com:8080/confluence/display/R4/Multiple+Users%2C+Multiple+Shells) in question was moved here (http://docs.geoshell.org/display/R4/Setting+Different+Shells+for+Different+Users).
I suppose it's a better bet to just go to GeoShell's Home (http://www.geoshell.com/) and poke around the Documents (http://docs.geoshell.org/) page. You might find other useful info in the process.
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whabang wrote:
This page has a guide:
LINK (http://shell-shocked.org/article.php?id=43)
I'll have to add that link to my bookmarks... I stopped visiting shell-shocked when issue #10 never materialized and hence forgot about their tutorial section.
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Thanks all! :-)
Did have a look around, but wasn't sure exactly what I was looking for ;-)