Want the ultimate Amiga game machine?

[CatHerder]

Get an XBox.

I'm not kidding - networked to a real computer (yes a PC) you can have video streaming, video on demand, etc., along with MAME and it's 7500 (only counting the good ones) games, and then the XBox Amiga emulator simply rocks (it's very stable).

Even the CD32 titles not only work, they load off original CD32 CDs.

The graphics are astounding on the XBox actually - and the reason is simple. Amiga games were designed to be played on "fuzzy" screens. 1084 monitors were basically little TV screens, and not the tiny dotpitch found on current monitors. It's incredible how much better all Amiga games in UAE look on a TV compared to on a 19" monitor.

If you are planning on building the "ultimate gaming machine" just go drop $190 on an XBox, grab MAME and it's ROMS, grab the XBox Amiga emulator and a pile of ADFs, plug it in to your TV and you have around 65,000 games at your fingertips and it didn't cost you anything more than the original XBox purchase. (You can't build a PC that's as fast as the XBox for the price either.)

A very enjoyable discovery in my neck of the woods.

[CatHerder]

Say whatever you want about Microsoft...

I'm telling you the XBox rocks for emulating just about anything. The key is to install the alternate Dashboard (once you do you can't connect to the XBox Live network or your machine gets banned for life), BUT... once you do the software "patch" and have your new dashboard you all of a sudden have a game machine that does everything -- especially when you replace the hard drive with a larger Maxtor 120 or 160. MAME, Amiga, ATARI, NES, SNES, Intellivion, NeoGeo, Jaguar, etc etc all on one little box.

I will put together a couple comrehensive FAQ's for Amiga emulation gamers to edcate them about the beauty of the XBox sometime in the future (our months of trial and error and experimentation results in a 2 hour setup time for everyone else). I'm sure some people will really appreciate it  -- and the XBox controllers almost seem like they were MADE to play Amiga games!

[CatHerder]

adolescent wrote:
The legality of such an "ultimate" Amiga is questionable,

Yeah right... how it it illegal to run PD software on any compuer, including an XBox? It's 100% legal.

not to mention the 7500 MAME roms.  I'd suggest people still buy an Amiga rather than pirating what's left.  (Legaly released stuff aside). :ranting:

Where did you see any reference to pirating Amiga stuff? There's over 2500 commercial software titles freely available out there (legally). As for the MAME stuff, about 35% of it is also legally released (so that is about 7500 ROMS out of 25,000+).

I really dont know where you've pulled your numbers out of, but they certainly smell stinky to me. I recommend some research!

There are over 40,000 legally available game titles out there in the emulation scene. I am not going to spend $400 putting together a "good" Amiga to play a few games on another computer when I can spend $190 on a GREAT game unit and shove it uner my TV where it belongs. So will millions of other people.

Just because a cheap game console is 20x as powerful as an A4000 is no reason to knock it.

[CatHerder]

adolescent wrote:
@Catherder

I was responding to your numbers (so if they smell fishy, it's quoted from you).  MAME doesn't emulate 7500 games, nor are there 7500 legally released romsets for it.

Keep telling yourself that...

[CatHerder]

TheMagicM wrote:
thats a pretty good idea (XBox thing).  As for using a emulator on a Xbox.. if you really (and i mean really) cared about being legal..you dont have to own a Amiga to emulate it.. just spend $5-$10 on a 1.3 ROM that way you can officially own a 1.3 rom image.  I played around with the Dreamcast version of UAE..pretty cool stuff.  When it comes to old software, I'm probably almost non-caring about piracy.  (just dont post a link here! LOL)  I downloaded I think almost every game from back2roots.. yep.  @ work, btw. LOL.  Then after buying a few used Amiga's they come with non-original software on top of that.  oh well.

Yeah I sure thought so too. I will still put together my comprehensive emulating an Amiga (and CD32) on the XBox faq because I'm sure there are plenty of people here and in the Amiga community who would be happy to have it.

And if you want legal, I mean "Amiga legal", check out this amiga swag. Now I ask ya, can I emulate an Amiga now, or do I need to buy some more ROMS? (This doesn't include the 14 sets of 3.0, eleven 2.04, four 2.05, twenty 1.3, six 1.2 ROMS in my workbench drawer either) and it doesn't show the A1000 or the 9 A4000's clearly in the background. (note: the 4000's are all gone, except for 4 that are green screen and have yet to be shipped off to get repaired either by Amiga.fr or somebody in North America if anyone knows of anyone that still does this). I also have 7 Amiga 1200 motherboards that I have to get around to testing, and I have 5 Amiga 1200's with various issues that I need to one day fix or sell as-is...  




I think there's 14 Amigas in these photos, and there's another 20+ in the boxes. I wont even attempt to list the 2,000+ boxed/unopened Amiga retail game packages I have. Hell, when I owned Amigas as my main computers (yes, I owned 11 different Amigas between 85 and 94, I've personally owned every single Amiga model except for the A1500 and A4000T -- and I currently own the only A2200 in existence) I also purchased over 4,000 peices of software -- I guarantee NOBODY in this forum can say the same.

Can I emulate the Amiga now sir? Can I? Pretty please?


I'm not even going to get into discussing the MAME sets that are available (8 full DVD-R zips currently). I'm more than happy to say "yes, it's under 5000 roms - I don't know what I'm talking about" and be done with it. I also won't worry about the 37,000+ Amiga files out there (because yes, some of them are not freely available - but piles and piles certainly are).

In anycase, back to my original post... (sorry for going off on a rant tangent there)

The XBox rocks for emulating game machines and Amigas (and CD32s too!), and if anyone thinks they're hurting Microsoft in any way shape or form by not owning one and using it to emulate 10 different game machines (plus play XBox games) they're delusional. MS sells them for under $200 and has a COST OF PRODUCTION of over $400 per unit. It's a lost litre - they are taking market share from Sony. Look how poorly they did against Netscape using the same strategy.

[CatHerder]

TjLaZer wrote:
@CatHerder

Damn I must say you have me beat!  I own all Amiga models except for CDTV, and the A4000T.  I have four A4000 also and sent one off the amiga.fr for repairs.  But it seems their site is down?

Anyway do you have a A3000T manual for sale?  I am after one.

Hey I might be able to fix your CDTV issue. Let me check...

And yes, I do have an A3000T manual - they're in pretty good shape.

I was going to list it on eBay tomorrow, but what you think it's worth? I have no clue. If you give me your state and zip I can tell you what it would cost to ship the above (or just the first 2 manuals if you prefer) to you.

I also have a working A3000T-040 here, but it has no powersupply - I tested it with the other 3000T-040 I sold on eBay, then bought a 3000T power supply from Centsible which arrived dead - returned it and they never would answer my emails, send me a new PS, give me a store credit, tell me to bugger off, or anything... I ended up being out $80 for the PS, and $25 * 2 for the shipping both ways.

To add insult to injury, 2 months later they listed another 3000T PS on their site and sold it! Grr...

Centsible has lost out on about $2000 worth of purchases from me in the past year and a half because of that - and I tell everyone who asks me that they should buy from anywhere besides them.

Whoops there I go off on a rant again.

Lemme know if the above manuals are of interest to you. I also have the WB2.1 manuals that come with it, but I think it would just be a waste of money to ship them as well.

[CatHerder]

Yeah, an XBox is just a pc with a custom video chipset inside a nifty case. There's everything you can imagine for it. :-)

And I don't collect Amigas - I just happened to clean out the back stock room from a former retailer in Canada. When I actually owned and used Amigas, I used to have 2 or 3 and always got the newest models soon as they came out (had the 3rd A3000 in Canada according to Duncan Fraiser, VP of Commodore Canada at that time. My buddy had the very first 4000/040 that {bleep}... :-D

Of course, that meant I had a flakey 3000 that got replaced two times... but it was nifty at the time! lol

I can't use Amigas now because they just don't do what I need them to do (Photoshop, Flash, mySQL, etc). But my heart is still in it.    

[CatHerder]

Just thought I'd post an update.

Work is progressing on the emulating the Amiga and AmigaCD32 on your XBox FAQ. It should be available sometime soon(ish). (Perfect solution for rev 1.1 to rev 1.5 XBox owners)

We don't know enough about the rev 1.6 XBox units to safely state if this works 100% with them as well or not -- but we'll know in a week as we're in the middle of working with one right now.