Clean booting UAE x86 Amiga

[arnljot]

I have been back on the Amiga for about two monts now after an almost 10 year break. And to the amigas credit, it's like riding a bike... Everything is as it should be.

For one exception. Hardware.

I've realised that it'll take months, if not years before a dream amiga pops up on e-bay or the marketplaces.

So UAE to the rescue!

So I'm currently pondering the following alternatives:

(A) Minimal XP by BartPE with WinUAE (PEBuilder Home)
(B) Minimal XP by nLite with WinUAE (nLite Home)
(C) Minimal XP by RyanVM with WinUAE (RyanVM Home)
(D) Minimal XP, *custom* (tips...)
(E) Linux with E-UAE
(F) Amithlon (amiga on a small linux)
(G) AmigaXL (amiga on QNX)

To my knowledge there are no examples of options A to D.
Linux Amiga:
Fraccy aka Amir Ansari: X-Amiga 'How-To'
It uses a minimal Gentoo with DirectFB

KXLite: Product page(on installing... )
It's based on knoppix.

Amithlon:
Lots of guides on the net.
One new and updated on EAB, it includes a link to the old (big) PDF

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Requirements:
* (SUP1) It has to run on my hardware. Geforce, Pentium4
* (USE1) Easy to configure and swap setups
* (USE2) Fast boot, I loved my amiga which booted in less than 30s
* (SUP2) USB (drives) and joystick support (Logitech and Saitek)
* (SUP3) Support for Catwasel mk-iv (I plan on buying)

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The Contenders:

Where they shine:
A to D: Top score on all support issues and USE1
E: Top score on USE2, probably good score on SUP1 and SUP2
F: Top score on USE2

Where they suck:
A to D: Weak on USE2 (assumption comparable to linux alternatives)
E: USE1, E-UAE is still compareably new.
F: SUP1&2, probably USE1 too.

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Now, what do you think folks?

Since I've boutght AmigaForever2006 with KXLite (waiting for media to arrive in the post), and more proficient in XP I think I'll go the minXP way. Also, I don't think I can live without F12 in WinUAE....

What are your experiences?

[Tripitaka]

UAE on a miniXP setup is still an XP setup, therefore it requires XP and that's a commercial product.Why use something you have to pay for? With Linux this is not an issue.
That alone would decide it for me.

[Matt_H]

But, WinUAE is the most advanced of the Amiga emulations. If you've got XP, using WinUAE is probably the best.

[Gulliver]

In my case, i have used a modded Win server 2003 install, it worked like a charm!
I used server 2003, because it reported the fastest booting time on my PC compared to win2k and winxp.
I used nLite to remove almost all components, to keep my 2003 server os as light as possible.
I even hacked the windows bootup progressbar screen, i used my own 16 colors AMIGA screen.  This hack was accomplished with a windows tool called resource hacker.
So i got a fast booting WinUAE enviroment where i removed all possible signs of Windows propaganda!
My setup was no great deal, in fact, it was a very old scrap PC i had (Pent 3 600, 128mb, 2mb gfx card).

[coldfish]

Ive had WinUAE and UAE running on a dual boot Win2K/Kubuntu system and IMO, WinUAE is by far the more complete package.  UAE feels more like a proof-of-concept than a fully functional package.

I'd go for a minimal XP system myself.

[arnljot]

Gulliver wrote:
I used server 2003, because it reported the fastest booting time on my PC compared to win2k and winxp.

I've got licenced access to the MSDN developer package, so 2003 is an alternative for me too.

What kind of boot times did you achieve?

@all
Like it's been pointed out. I have paid for the MS stack of OS's so I can consider it.

Also WinUAE is a superrior product. But if I wanted a static install, ie just emulating one amiga and make a setup that was aimed at redistribution I'd consider more carefully.

But my UAE needs are of the nostalig variety. I want to play Pinball Dreams, Megalomaniac, Populous, Putty, Pusover, SuperFrog, Operation Stealth, Cruise For a Corpse.... etc etc...

I have a lot of gear at home, a few laptops, three desktops, a mini and a ps3.

The only times that I really enjoy myself and have a genuine good time is when I play Detroit AGA or Syndicate on my A500 which recently fell into my hands, or old classic titles downloaded from the PS3 store or UAE on my PSP...

Just today I was at two major game outlets to see if I could trick myself into "spur of the moment" purchases for my PS3, but I could not...

So I have found that I need more than just one Amiga.

Of course I could edit the UAE settings file on WinUAE and use them on E-UAE, but that doesn't seem optimal to me.

Or I could install X11 on the box, and use a 3rd party tool. But I find X11 to bloat and add unwanted clutter to a linux install.

Thats what piqued me with the X Amiga based setup on gentoo and directfb. It seemed like no X, which is music to my ears...

[Gulliver]

@arnljot

Remember i mentioned my setup was not really good:
Pentium 3 600mhz
128mb ram
2mb gfx card (intel based)
the pc is a compaq deskpro sff 600 or something like that
it came with an old 7GB harddisk and a 2.5 inches 20x cdrom.

I remember uptimes were less than a minute. Like 40 seconds since i pushed the power button. Take into account that almost 15 seconds are lost in the bootup phases due to the nature of this hardware and the disgusting bootlogo that Compaq wanted you to see.

Win server 2003 was the better choice back then. You could try your setup without doing a "real" installation by using MS VirtualPC. I tested several nLite modded builds that way and when things got to the way i wanted i did the real install!
WinUAE is the easiest solution!
Amithlon is difficult and sometimes incompatible at best!
Linux UAE is like Linux has always been; an OS that requires to much knowledge  and too much effort to get you going. Not for casual users and does not suport all hardware!

[madcrow]

I get decent results on my Win2K box. (P3/866 256MB RAM). I can have bittorrent running in the BG and STILL get the equivalent of a 100 MHz (according the Sysinfo) 68040...

[arnljot]

Gulliver wrote:
@arnljot
I remember uptimes were less than a minute. Like 40 seconds since i pushed the power button. Take into account that almost 15 seconds are lost in the bootup phases due to the nature of this hardware and the disgusting bootlogo that Compaq wanted you to see.

I suppose you mean a boot time of 40 secs. Now thats nice

I'm not planning on using Virtual PC like you suggested, but rather VMWare, but that shouldn't make any difference, should it?

[Gulliver]

No it shouldnt make any difference to VMWare. But remember the hardware it will emulate will not be exactly the same as the one you will afterwards install for real!
On a sidenote i remember when using nLite i removed all drivers, because they come in packs(so they occuppy more space and resources), and slipstreamed only the specific drivers that my pc required.
How?
Simple, i first did a real server 2003 full install on my pc. Used a tool called doubledrivers, that backs up your currently used hardware drivers that i included in my modded server 2003 WinUAe setup.

[arnljot]

Gulliver wrote:
Simple, i first did a real server 2003 full install on my pc. Used a tool called doubledrivers, that backs up your currently used hardware drivers that i included in my modded server 2003 WinUAe setup.

Ah, Smart!

Gulliver wrote:
No it shouldnt make any difference to VMWare. But remember the hardware it will emulate will not be exactly the same as the one you will afterwards install for real!

**EDIT**
BTW, I cannot find the tool using google. Is it retired or something?

Oh, so VPC em ulates what you got. And VMWare emulates something else?

[Fraccy]

The X-Amiga installer CD is nearly finished, if you can wait a bit longer. (There's a website too...)

The installer only asks for simple things: CPU, graphics card, etc. The Linux installation is taken care of automatically. It now uses tiny X (much smaller than xorg-x11) rather than DirectFB.

I've found booting is incredibly fast - half the time is taken up with the BIOS hardware check.

If you prefer the Windows route, you could try http://www.litepc.com/98lite.html

I've got it, it works well - but I no longer have any Windows boxes ;-)

I'll announce X-Amiga properly as soon as it's finished. Don't want to be accused of anything 'vapour'-related!

Amir

[Tripitaka]

Thanx Amir, I have a AMD 1600 doing very little at present and I refuse to pay Microsoft for the sake of booting to Amiga OS. I look forward to X-Amiga, good luck with the project.  :pint:

[vic20owner]

How about AROS? I've been wanting to dedicate a machine to it... I believe WinUAE has been ported to it.

I haven't tried it yet though (WinUAE on Aros)

But think you'd have a modern Amiga, emulating an old amiga.

Sort of fun.

[Gulliver]

You missunderstood me arnljot!
What i was trying to say is that emulated windows enviroment, no matter which one you use, will be good for testing the nLited windows, but that you should bare in mind that the hardware in any emulator will be most likely different from your real pc (eg.: Nvidia chipset is not emulated!). I hope you understand it.
On the other hand there are other alternatives to VMWare and MS Virtual PC, have you heard of Virtual Box?
Surf to www.virtualbox.org its quite a nice emulator!
Anyway have fun!