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Offline Plus4Topic starter

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Unsure about Amiga in a box...
« on: July 27, 2004, 05:56:16 PM »
I've been a member for some months now but not left many posts.  Reading some of the other posts I gather there is some dislike of WinUAE - However, that's all I have now since I sold my amiga 10 years ago (I know, I know)...

Anyhoo,  Games are great but I tempted to download AIAB - Now guys, keep if Jack and Jane for me: What does it DO?

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Offline Ilwrath

Re: Unsure about Amiga in a box...
« Reply #1 on: July 27, 2004, 06:41:41 PM »
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Reading some of the other posts I gather there is some dislike of WinUAE


Outside of a few elitists, there isn't much dislike for WinUAE.  The Amiga Forever package is a great way to get back into Amiga, especially if you don't have any old equipment.  :-)

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Anyhoo, Games are great but I tempted to download AIAB - Now guys, keep if Jack and Jane for me: What does it DO?


Well, it's essentially a bunch of patches for Workbench.  (It does NOT include a workbench install, you have to already have a functioning workbench 3.1+!)  Anyhow, AIAB makes your workbench use Picasso96, adds a bunch of hacks and visual updates -- stuff like that.  Most people like it quite a bit.  

Personally, I don't care much for it, because I've always run my real Amigas as lean as possible.  AIAB looked nice, but it added a maze of updates, most of which were pretty unnecessary.  Also, I already had Picasso96 running on my UAE, so the biggest benefit of AIAB was something I had already setup by myself.  ;-)
 

Offline Holley

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Re: Unsure about Amiga in a box...
« Reply #2 on: July 27, 2004, 08:57:56 PM »
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I've always run my real Amigas as lean as possible.
Ditto here, though it was tough setting it up it was worth it!
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Offline Plus4Topic starter

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Re: Unsure about Amiga in a box...
« Reply #3 on: July 30, 2004, 04:07:58 PM »
Cheers Guys...


But Picasso96?  What that ?  a GUI?
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Offline cgutjahr

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Re: Unsure about Amiga in a box...
« Reply #4 on: July 30, 2004, 04:18:10 PM »
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Plus4 wrote:

But Picasso96?  What that ?  a GUI?

AmigaOS 3 is more than ten years old - that's why a lot of features you really need these days are missing. One of these features is support for graphics cards - OS3 doesn't support them.

When using a GFX card (WinUAE emulates one), you'll have to get a third party add-on that enables support for GFX cards. There are two options available, one of them is called 'Picasso96'.

That's a very good example of what AIAB actually does: It comes with a lot of upgrades already installed and configured - install AIAB and you're sitting in front of a pretty usable and somewhat beautiful system. Disadvantages:

1. Some of the preconfigured stuff might not be set up the way you prefer it

2. You don't learn anything about AmigaOS this way

The other option is to setup everything yourself (GFX card software, CD-ROM driver, some patches to improve the visual appearance, PopUp menus, a new and better icon system etc.)

This is quite some task, but you learn a lot about AmigaOS this way and your setup is *really* yours - if it doesn't fit your needs there's only one person to blame: you ;-)
 

Offline dambala

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Re: Unsure about Amiga in a box...
« Reply #5 on: July 30, 2004, 04:29:33 PM »
Picasso as cgutjahr said is a graphic driver for the Amiga. Because it enables many graphics resolutions is a great help for UAE (and WinUAE).
Using it, the emulator can set resolutions and pixel packing more similar to PC ones than original Amiga.
In this way it can bypass all emulated graphics functions and access directly to the PC hardware.