real amiga vs winuae

[amigaksi]

Hi all.

I want to assemble a working amiga that is actually usable, and is not too
difficult to use (I want my kids to be able to load games too), but  I've
never actually owned or used an amiga in the past until now (but ZX Spectrum, c64s and 128), so I'll have to learn how to use it well (I don't think is too difficult).

- I own an Amiga 1000 and an Amiga 3000, they both work fine (I
personally tested them, I can boot workbench and some games), have a 1084 monitor, joysticks and mouse, these are complete computer (with a couple of external floppy drives), and I have tons of floppies and many brand new blank floppies.

The problem is that they don't have a hard drive, and I have no idea
of how much memory they have installed (I can check) and  I noticed
how long do programs and games take to load.. How do I install a hard
drive o sd memory or cd reader in these things?

My other option is to just use an old PC computer (an amd atlhon 2200)
runing Winuae, and live with it (without having to actually put the
real Amigas to work) and a couple of joysticks. And why not, it can
run MAME too.

I'd like to listen about what do you think I should do, use the 1000,
3000 or the pc with winuae.

Thanks in advance.


Daniel
Drumheller, ab, Canada

Emulation is not the same as using real amiga.  I'll leave it at that for now...

[amigaksi]

Nope, it's a lot cheaper, a lot faster and a lot more convenient most of the time

Until you can refute the points in the other thread (PC has yet to catch up on certain things), you should stop offering advice here as to not mislead people.

[amigaksi]

Unless you can demonstrate why using an emulator is less convenient for the average user, you should shut yer cakehole.

How much would a real system with the fastest 060 available, HD, high end RTG, network and 128 MB ram cost you to set up? And it would still be massively slower than UAE on a reasonable PC for everything, with the sole exception, perhaps, of polling the joyport every 500ns, which I'm quite sure most users couldn't give a toss about.

The experience of using a real amiga is, I agree, an entirely unique one. However, it has no bearing whatsoever on the claim that UAE is far more convenient.

How many real amigas can you put to sleep and resume later? How many real amigas are capable of executing 68K code at the sort of speed UAE's JIT achieves on a 2GHz x86? How many real amigas can be pimped to the extent that AmiKit allows and still run like greased lightning?

Not many, that's for sure.

Your logic is faulty.  If it's not a real amiga, you can't discuss which is more convenient and cheaper amiga.  It's like I state fake diamond is not the same as real diamond and you stating "this diamond is a lot cheaper and convenient" already presuming it's the same.  And your 500ns polling of joystick is a straw-man argument.  And by the way "convenient" is a subjective term.

[amigaksi]

Your diamond argument is totally worthless since the context is utterly different. Unless your computer is a fashion accessory (hmm, mac lol), what matters is that you can use it. In use as a computer platform* UAE has all of the advantages I cited. If you already own a PC, the cost of setting up your emulated amiga is, well potentially nothing. Yet it will do pretty much everything you could ever want a genuine hardware amiga to do. 500ns joystick polling aside, maybe.
...

No diamond analogy is relevant.  Even the surface of the fake diamond is different when looked upon closely similarly even the display is fake compared to an overscanned TV monitor or Amiga monitor.  And you know very well the internals are NOT there-- the timing (558ns and better for software specific to 7.16Mhz PCs or like Bars and Pipes using 3.57Mhz based audio timer), the same frequency refresh rate, etc.)  I can say more but I'm logging in from someone else's machine...  Post #23 in this thread is complete bullcrap; there's no way to eliminate the latency completely.  

>PS, I'm glad you realised your 500ns joyport polling argument (as an example of ways in which the amiga was way ahead of the PC) was, well, a poor one. A more domain specific example you'd be hard pressed to find. Especially given that the old soundcard "joyport" traditionally isn't a standard bit of PC hardware anyway.

I already did but you misunderstood it; that's why I called it "straw-man argument".  You thought I was talking about 500ns sampling of joystick, but no.  I was stating 1Khz sampling of joystick and 558ns accuracy without latency as another argument.  There are more argument but some biased people can't even accept the joystick argument.

I'm not talking about the looks.  Understand the analogy for what it is.

[amigaksi]

Fake diamonds throw off more colors than real ones. Kind of how I can play Faery Tale Adventure on UAE with the floppy drive sped up instead of waiting 3 seconds every time bad guys pop up in the field while I'm hoofing it through the map. The game accesses disk every time it decides to throw baddies, maybe to load sprites? It's imperceptable on UAE. Emulation in this case is better than the real hardware.

So you are admitting they are fake diamonds or just claiming it's better to have a faster disk drive rather than a disk drive that works at exact timinig as original?  How does a faster disk drive make the emulation of the Amiga machine better?  How does playing some game allow you to draw the conclusion in general about emulation?  How do you know even that very game has glitches that you did not observe?  

Does one observation of a person having blue eyes allow me to conclude that everyone has blue eyes?

I think it takes more than that to make such a general conclusion.

[amigaksi]

People reporting sound lag in WinUAE: you have NOT followed latest progress. Toni has implemented Portaudio with ASIO support for NO DELAY AT ALL, even for professional musicians (look at EAB threads about betas and portaudio).

Chipset audio/video can be PERFECT is you DO configure WinUAE right: you can set 50HZ modes with perfect audio/video sync, smoth scroll in games WITHOUT ANY OCASSIONAL SYNC LOSS. I have tested that with Toni, you can read more in EAB.
Of course, you need a clean system (no lame A/V software or memory/CPU stealing processes in the background) and custom-defined video modes beyond the scope of this post.

So, YES, if correctly configured, WinUAE is just perfect and impossible to tell from a real Amiga. Those not knowing that fact just haven't configured it well.
The only bad part of WinUAE is being Windows based and no ports to Linux/MAC OSX for custom kernels on the host system that would allow almost instant boot-up.
Oh, and remember that you CAN load savestates on lauch, so you can totally skip loading times for ADF of WHDLoad games

Did you like forget to mention what the hardware requirements are?  Or that doesn't matter-- just keep configuring until you get it right?  Sounds like some lame excuse or sales pitch.  It's complete rubbish that it's impossible to tell from a real amiga.  Perhaps from looking at screen shots, but not from functionality.  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?

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.

[amigaksi]

...
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.
...

Thanks for summing it up.  It's cycle-exact, but no deadline guarantees.  It's an approximation, but real Amiga is real-time.  However, the word "may" in "may lag" seems incorrect.  It has to lag if it's building up a frame ahead of time while user input happens in real-time.

>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.

So it accesses hardware directly except for video/audio which is significant for Amiga.
There are some things that are impossible-- for example: if you try to time things more accurate than 840ns on PC using 1.19318Mhz timer, it's impossible.

[amigaksi]

I'm glad you admit it.
...

I said, perhaps I need a comma there, "No, diamond analogy is relevant"

>Absolutely. The emulator gives you a nice stable display with your own choice of how to scale it, with or without scanline effects and so on. If you are using an overscanned TV with interlace, have fun. I did that for a time and I absolutely do not miss it.

Unless you are recording the output to the video tape or DVD recorder.

>Not bothered in the slightest. The presence of absence of real hardware internals makes utterly no difference to 99% of my classic software collection.

According to your limited observation of course.  But I don't go by that.  

>You can never eliminate latency completely from any timed system built using logic gates. If your latency is at least constant, then that's good enough for most purposes.

If you get constant latency every time, that's just as good as no latency since you already know there's that offset time involved.  But you won't find that in any PC timer.

>If you'd have bothered to make a more relevant argument in the first place I might not have confused them.

You failed to understand the argument and you're blaming me.  It's relevant if you are into Amiga gaming.  Although you could read the joystick with 558ns accuracy, that wasn't the argument.  You can deal with any of the custom chip registers with 558ns accuracy and trigger off IRQs from Copper with that accuracy.

>I do. It's grasping at straws. UAE is a perfectly good system for running the majority of 68K based amiga software, you have yet to present one pertinent argument as to why it is not. Im my experience, and the experience of many others, it will run more amiga software than my actual real amiga does, since in my case, my A1200 won't run all pre AGA titles. If it weren't for WHDload installers I'd need a second, older hardware amiga just to run some of the old classics.

It's not grasping at straws.  The argument is whether it's a real amiga.  You keep claiming it's better.  If it's a real amiga, it should be able to do EXACTLY what a real amiga does.  It doesn't do that regardless if you think it's good enough in someone's limited experience.

[amigaksi]

Video tape? Hells teeth man, what century is this? DVD, fine but why would I "record" the output on a dedicated recorder when I can simply dump the entire video stream to disk directly from the emulation and then master it any way I see fit?

...

I prefer videos-- they don't scratch easily and ruin the entire video.  

>Completely strawman. You have absolutely no notion whatsoever of how well software runs on my system, so you are utterly unable to refute me. You don't have to agree, of course, but you have no basis at all.  

It's not strawman-- it's your limited subjective experience.  I can PROVE it's not doing the real amiga does and it MAKES a difference for my applications.

>No, we've clarified that now. You are talking about polling the joyport at kHz rates and the fact that you can peek/poke the custom hardware space from the copper at 558ns. That I'm happy enough with. However it's of no relevance whatsoever in the argument as to which system is playing "catch up", unfortunately for you.

It's playing catch-up since it requires precise timing which is NONEXISTENT in your PC what to speak of an emulation running on top of a PC.

>The requirement for cycle exact hardware bashing does not exist on modern machines because people have moved away from metal banging.

That's too bad.  

>Nowadays, I write code for GPUs, except it's in a C-based language. It's a perfectly logical evolution. I could write in PTX assembler directly but since the underlying hardware is now so much more complicated it would be self defeating to attempt it.

You didn't explain how that outdoes the Copper.

>It most assuredly is not the argument and never was. The argument is it a viable alternative to a real amiga...

Okay, great.  Some others are claiming it's good as amiga or better.

>I never said "better", since "better" is subjective.

Better is not subjective.  It's better to have 7.16Mhz vs. 3.57Mhz timing.

>The above are not subjective, they are entirely valid points that can be demonstrated readily.

Okay, as long as they are not the real amiga.

>No wonder you are so helplessly confused about this. I never claimed it was a real Amiga, not once in this thread or any other. I claimed it is a viable alternative (esp for a someone that already has a machine which can run it) with the advantages outlined above.

Not confused; but you implied a better amiga they way you posted your replies.

>It is an emulation. It doesn't need to be able to do "exactly" what a real amiga does, it just needs to provide the same end functionality for the user. If you can't understand this basic point and conflate it with issue of what is a 'real' amiga, then that's your own problem.

No, it does NOT provide the same end functionality since that's part of being a real amiga.

[amigaksi]

As I have said umpteen times, this is a subjective debate. You didn't explain how the Copper outdoes a box of cornflakes. The copper is very poor in comparison to a box of cornflakes at 6am in the morning when I'm hungry and disoriented.
...

Sorry, I'm speaking in context to emulation on PC.

>"Better" is most assuredly subjective. What constitutes "better" is context dependent. A kettle is far better than 7.16MHz timing can ever be, when you want to make a cup of tea.

If it's context dependent, then it can be objective as well if context is clear.  If context is timing, then 7.16Mhz based timing is better (superior) to 3.57Mhz timing.

>In your opinion. As far as the software running on the emulation is concerned, it is a real Amiga.

Based on deductive logic.  If PC can't handle the timing task, emulation on PC can't handle it.  QED.

[amigaksi]

I'm not sure amigaski does know anything about actual hardware... he might have read something in a book, but he has demonstrated a total lack of ever having every actually had to program any...

That's what your problem is.  You go around randomly searching the web and quoting things without actually having tried things out.  Just speaking from my experience with you in the past.  I am speaking on the basis of actual tests.  Go try answering the question rather than playing "call the dog a bad name and hang him."

[amigaksi]

We've been over this before, Amigaski. It can. Again, if you actually took the time and studied emulator fundamentals you would finally realize that. But then again you still stick to the wrong definition of the term emulator, so it's fairly pointless to discuss these things with you. It's getting silly.

I can skip over emulator fundamentals if I know PC can't handle it.  I grasped your definition of emulator, but it's different from what people are actually understanding it to be.  Just look at post #23-- claiming it's as good as real amiga.  Should I take it as a sales pitch?

I also grasped your definition of "cycle exact" meaning unrelated to time of cycle, but many people still think it involves exact timing.

[amigaksi]

Given that different models of the same model of the amiga could also introduce timing differences, (for instance 2B revision A1200 motherboards were known to be somewhat less stable then the 1D4 versions, not to mention having some interesting issues with regard some accelerator cards), decrying UAEs cycle exact (whilst not "exact") system is somewhat laughable.

Also, #23 isn't saying it's as good as, only that it is more convenient (it is), faster (it is) and cheaper (it is).

I sense the comming need to download some ED stock images in the near future.

If you go by specs, OCS hardware registers are bit by bit compatible with ECS/AGA.  Incompatibilities are due to other issues, but the Copper timing, CIA interrupts, Audio interrupts, etc. still have the same EXACT timing.

[amigaksi]

nuff said.

Blind leading the blind.  Or blind following the blind.  You can easily prove what I wrote-- just time things on CIA interrupts, Audio Interrupts, Copper lists, etc. on OCS/ECS/AGA and you will see that they are using same timing.

[amigaksi]

No, you were using the term "emulate" as used in the context of psychology:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emulation_(observational_learning)

In the context of computer emulation, the following definition is used:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emulator

Another confirmation of this can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emulation_(disambiguation)

Also check this link:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/emulate

You are using the wrong definition, and use that to support some of your claims. And even when people point this out to you, you stick to it. That's just amazing.
...

I know what people mean from the context.  You want to PURPOSELY MISLEAD people knowing well the correct definition.  You are such a shameless person.  You should read what people think about emulation being a better amiga.

>It's not my definition. Cycle exact means the system is emulated at the cycle level. It does not dictate how long a cycle is - in such case it would be refered to as "timing". You cling to your own definition, since that would support your claims. Again that's just amazing.

There's something called definition by context which is more significant than randomly quoting things from websites.  I understand your definition but that's not what people are implying when I reply to them.