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Author Topic: Icaros Desktop 1.3  (Read 10180 times)

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Offline Cammy

Re: Icaros Desktop 1.3
« on: June 10, 2011, 10:19:39 PM »
If Aros is missing anything it's just because none of us have added it yet, there's no one really to blame or ask to fix it. I'm not sure how to program drivers myself, and haven't used any virtual PC emulators yet so I can't help with your audio problem, sorry.

But I have had pretty good success with running Aros natively on my various PCs. You are better off if you build a PC out of supported components to begin with rather than hoping it will work on an existing PC because it usually ends in disappointment. There are just too many different chipsets for the two or three occasional/casual Aros developers to handle. It doesn't help that the three major distributions are handled nearly entirely by a single person each, usually only with their own PC and a virtual PC setup to test it on.

When you finally get a fully supported system set up though, it's a really fun experience. I'm fortunate to have found several broken PCs in junk piles on the side of the road recently, so I've finally built myself an almost fully supported Aros box from the parts. I only lack a compatible network card since it seems none of the on-board ethernet chipsets are supported in the ten working PCs I built from the parts. But an ethernet card costs about $4-5 from China or Hong Kong so I can afford to buy one of those myself.

I have used Aros with Vesa, Intel GMA, nVidia and Radeon drivers on my various PCs here, and by far the best one to use is nVidia. It's still the only one with 3D support, so you can play games like SuperTuxKart and Assault Cube with 3D acceleration. Intel GMA is second best, then Vesa, then Radeon. Radeon drivers don't even support screen dragging yet, but the rest do.

I was lucky that amongst all the junked PCs there was a single working SoundBlaster Live card, which I use with Aros in my PC, but also the built-in audio in my Acer Aspire 3610 works with the AC97 driver in AHI. A few of the various motherboards I found had supported on-board audio chips too, so if you were to build a PC there are some motherboards with supported audio.

I tried out Janus-UAE integration with coherency enabled in Icaros 1.3, after clicking on the Start Amibridge wizard and it promptly copied all the required files from my Amiga Forever CD. Then I loaded the Janus UAE prefs, enabled Integration and Coherency, saved the settings and quit. Then I launched the "Add Program" wizard (I first had to copy the "Add ADF Game" icon over the top of the "Add Program" icon because it wasn't executing itself), and selected a 68k OS3 program. In this case, I chose AmigaAmp. After a few seconds loading up the emulation, AmigaAmp popped up on my Aros desktop. I was able to drag it around the screen and its equalizer and playlist windows snapped to it when I let go, just as they do in OS3. This should be very handy, since there are no native MP3 players for Aros yet, unless you want to play them through the CLI or one at a time in MPlayer. I tried several other programs and they worked well too. I was even able to resize OS3 windows with the Aros frames that are used around them, and of course it uses the Aros menus too! While it's not up to the same level of transparent emulation and integration that MorphOS has, it's getting there and it's much better than it ever has been before.

I think a better way of using Aros without having to install it on your hard drive is to install it to a USB stick and boot from that rather than use virtualisation.
A1200 030@28Mhz/2MB+32MB/RTC/KS3.1/IDE-CF+4GB/4-Way Clockport Expander/IndivisionAGA/PCMCIA NIC
A1200 020@14Mhz/2MB+8MB/FPU/RTC/KS3.0/IDE-CF+2GB/S-Video
CD32 020@14Mhz/2MB+8MB/RTC/KS3.1/IDE-CF+4GB
A600 030@30Mhz/2MB+64MB/RTC/IDE-CF+4GB/Subway USB/S-Video/PCMCIA NIC/USB Numeric Keypad+Hub+Mouse+Control Pad
A500 000@7Mhz/512kB+512kB/ROM Switcher/KS3.1+1.3/S-Video

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Offline Cammy

Re: Icaros Desktop 1.3
« Reply #1 on: June 10, 2011, 11:16:44 PM »
3D acceleration only works with selected nVidia chipsets, and games that require it won't work properly at all with other drivers and chipsets.

When I opened the Janus-UAE prefs I went to Work:Extras/AmiBridge/emulator/ and double-clicked on the Janus-uae icon. Then all I needed to do was change and save the prefs and all worked fine.
A1200 030@28Mhz/2MB+32MB/RTC/KS3.1/IDE-CF+4GB/4-Way Clockport Expander/IndivisionAGA/PCMCIA NIC
A1200 020@14Mhz/2MB+8MB/FPU/RTC/KS3.0/IDE-CF+2GB/S-Video
CD32 020@14Mhz/2MB+8MB/RTC/KS3.1/IDE-CF+4GB
A600 030@30Mhz/2MB+64MB/RTC/IDE-CF+4GB/Subway USB/S-Video/PCMCIA NIC/USB Numeric Keypad+Hub+Mouse+Control Pad
A500 000@7Mhz/512kB+512kB/ROM Switcher/KS3.1+1.3/S-Video

Get AmigaOS