I'm impressed by AmiKit

[amiga_3k]

I sit here corrected. I've to crawl the dust. I have to admit that I was wrong.

On what accounts, you might wonder. Well on only one, being my believe that it's impossible to emulate an Amiga on any non-Amiga hardware in a useable manner. Because today I discovered that it can be done, even on rather modest hardware.

Right now I'm typing this post using IBrowse from the basic AmiKit installation on my new 'old' Dell Optiplex GX260 (base config with onboard sound/video, 256 MB RAM, WinXP-Pro, 20GB Mem). With all the bells and whistles of AmiKit up and running it feels even more responsive than the Amiga 40000T with PicassoIV.

While typing this, AmigaAMP plays a MP3 in the background, smoothly! This is amazing.

So, keen to get the system down and have good arguments that 'it still doesn't work' I dove into the cupboard with CD-s and pulled-out Pinball Illusions. And it worked! As well as on the CD32, back in 1996ish.

Now all I need to do is two things:
1) Find my registration key for Dopus5 (was it printed on the disk or the manual?).
2) Make a donation to the autohor of AmiKit.

[amiga_3k]

Pinball Illusions I tested was the CD32 version, thus AGA. Both audio and graphics seemed in-sync!

The previous times I tested WinUAE (on Duron 750 / Duron 1400 both with 512+ MB RAM and 32+ MB GeForce 2 / ATI equivalent both with Soundblaster Live!) I couldn't get a single game to work properly; either grafics problems or sound being out of sync, there always was something wrong.

Now, I do know that Pinball Illusions is not the most demanding game ever. So I've to digg into my pile of CDs and have to find three games that should push the limits a bit further:
1) Oldtimer AGA (with the Testdrive option)
2) Virtual Karting
3) That ACP/TCP racing game... I forgot the name of.

But so far I've not find an argument against Amikit on this Dell.

Oh, I forgot to mention, the GX260 has a 2 GHz Pentium IV.

[amiga_3k]

@Flashlab:

There you've got a good point. Now I'm can be rather lazy when it comes to 'configuring' a computer. Most of the times I'm more than happy to use the base installation, not going much further than changing the background. So for lazy asses like me Amikit is welcome as it gives a nice looking desktop without the hassle of tweaking all things.

The downside of this I do know. At the moment I've no real clue on HOW it is done. I guess a lot of the speed is down to AHI and Picasso96. If I'm nosy enough, I will dive into it later. For now I just enjoy!

[amiga_3k]

@AMIGAZ:

Bummer... Disks meant browsing through the cupboard, manual means exploring the attic :-(

[amiga_3k]

AMIGAZ wrote:

amiga_3k wrote:
@AMIGAZ:

Bummer... Disks meant browsing through the cupboard, manual means exploring the attic :-(

Ahh...so you mean old Dopus 5.5 on floppy's?

I was refering to the Dopus Magellan II cd which I have here

The serial might be somewhere else on if you have an older Dopus version

This might be a golden oportunity to do some cleaning up among your tucked away Amiga stuff  :-D

Hehehe... My wife is laughing at me as I'm really dis-organized. That is, I keep my stuff at several places but never sorted. That means a big search.

As to Dopus... I've got floppies and a CD. The CD is for Magelan I believe, the floppies are indeed 5.5, iirc.

Well, I guess I will be ending up browsing through the pile of stuff, maybe I'd better start sorting as well.

[amiga_3k]

@Rednova:

Just for fun: Run Sysinfo :-) My setup reports to be just under 40 times faster than a A4000 with 25 MHz 68040. Compared to the A600: 362 times faster.  

[amiga_3k]

Sorry to piss on your cornflakes...

Cheers,
James
x

I never was a fan of cornflakes... now chances are I will never ever want to eat it in the future ;-)

But seriously... I know it doesn't mean a lot. It never meant a lot to me on the real Amigas I own(ed).

[amiga_3k]

Brian wrote:
You're amazed that a computer that's produced 13years later can emulate an Amiga. :roll:

Well, I saw it in action (Amiga emulation) a few times before and it was way off, letting me believe it would never ever be possible. It still is kind of weird that one needs 2GHz of x86 'power' to come close to a useable 68040ish Amiga.

[amiga_3k]

@opus:

I've got an A4kT and an A2k. Also a CD32, which is still resting in pieces waiting for me to feel like repairing it and putting it back together.

What Amikit allows me at the moment is having a bit of Amiga experience without the need of an extra monitor, extra keyboard, extra mouse etc... on my desk in the living. It enables me to surf the net at decent speed.

Amikit won't stop me buying any future new Amiga hardware (minimig, OS4-box) when (if) it comes available, right now it is a perfect way to do brief Amiga work when I feel like it.

[amiga_3k]

@Brian:

JIT is enabled and actually, it runs a tad faster than the 68040 (can't remember I've ever managed to play MP3s using a GUI Mp3 player and still be capable of doing other, usefull stuff, on a side note, I managed good MP3 playback but only with some tricks like first loading the MP3 to memory and use shell-commands to play it). It's quite useable, a real shame there's no up-to-date browser for the internet.

[amiga_3k]

LaserBack wrote:
I forget to add that amikit package is also for stupid girls or for old aged womans

Or for those who are just too lazy to put weeks and weeks into a setup that looks just that different from OS3.1.

Look... Out of the 'box' Amikit worked instantly without the need of tweaking this, tweaking that, replace patch A with patch B which is only neccessary when you use product Q with patch A version 3 installed in combination with version 1.3 of 680x0.library which should be installed on floppy not in LIBS:, or crap like that.

I'm not a newby, have been using Amiga's full time from 1987 up until 2001. Never cared too much about tweaking the interface, never thought it was usefull and no matter what tweaks you tried, most of the times it slowed down the machine, so you left it well alone.

In 2001 my first PC entered the house, mainly because I needed it for internet banking and running 3D-CAD application not available on the Amiga. It was in fact the 512MB+ Duron 750 with 32 MB Geforce. I once bought one of the first editions of Amiga Forever just to try. And it just didn't do the trick! Games were too slow, sound always off. I just couldn't get it right. Sure, some might have mastered all the tweaks and settings and got it working, I really couldn't be bothered. Afterall, I still had (have) the A4000 for the occasional game and site testing.

I gave it another try on a 1400 Duron, again I didn't manage to get it up to speed.

Now, on this old Dell Amikit installed quick and worked well straight away. No special tweaking needed. Just out of the box and play.

The users of UAE out there who managed lightning fast speeds on their 33 MHz Pentium 1s with 32 MB system memory running Vista, congratulations! You really are brilliant, I am not. I am lazy. I am a user, not a tweaker. Never been, never will be.

So, maybe I should rephrase my orignal title into:

I'm impressed how easy AmiKit installs, delivers a working Amiga emulation and doesn't make me go through millions and millions of different do-s and dont's just to get a reasonable emulation.

And yes... I still find it strange that you need a 1 GHz+ PC to emulate a 7 MHz Amiga! That's more a sign of how well the Amiga has been designed. Now imagine if those same people who designed the Amiga got another go with todays hardware....