Old dog, new tech - possible?

[liamwhyoung]

Hi all,

I am new to the forums, so please excuse me if this question has been answered to death already.

Much of my childhood was spent in front of my Amiga 500 and later the 1200 playing Superstardust, Alien Breed 3D, Cannon Fodder, Chaos Engine, Monkey Island and all the other classics. I would like to relive some of these memories, but don't fancy emulation as I find WinUAE a bit clunky at times. Is there a way I can do this without buying original kit i.e. can the new AmigaOne boards, X5000 etc..., be stuck in a regular ATX tower and be loaded with Amiga OS 4 or something to play games natively? Also can this theoretical setup use TCP/IP and access modern Internet routers via wi-fi etc...?  And do basic USB peripherals work like a wired mouse etc...?  I'm after that native experience but using modern kit for a modern Amiga flavour. Can this be done?

Thanks,

Liam

[klx300r]

@ liamwhyoung

Welcome back to Amiga Land:)

you can run most if not all the 68k stuff you mentioned under AmigaOS4.1 running RunInUAE http://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=emulation/utility/runinuae.lha
or glUAE http://www.retream.com/glUAE/
Yes USB, net stuff, wireless mouse/ joystick etc all work fine and with a Catweasel you can read/write/ load up your old 68k floppies !

Some Amiga like/inspired OS's which also can run 68k programs are:

You can also check out AROS that runs on most PC's but best to check out the proper specs for drivers etc. http://aros.sourceforge.net/

If you have old Apple hardware lying around you can check out MorphOS
http://www.morphos-team.net/

have fun exploring !

[IanP]

If you want a "modern Amiga" for mainly retro use then it you should be aware that the guys behind the Apollo Core/Vampire accelerators plan to have a stand alone board next year. Individual Computers also plan to release an A1200 Reloaded board but that may be further off as apparently work on it isn't starting until the new year (1 year behind the original schedule).

I don't know much about "classic" integration on new OS4 machines but it does involve emulation as they lack the 680x0 processor and chipset of "classic" Amigas.

[Iggy]

Well Ian, initially you could just buy a copy of AmigaForever.

And, if you are in the United States, AmigaOnTheLake has a good deal on an AmigaOS4.1 + AmigaForever bundle for $67.95 (or you can add Krzysztof "Radzik" Radzikowski's 'AmigaOS4.1 Emulation' book for an additional $17.00).

http://amigaonthelake.com/new-to-amiga-beginner-bundle/

[IanP]

Isn't that exactly what he doesn't want, Amiga Forever (WinUAE+ROMs/Software) emulation and with the added complication of PPC emulation for OS4.

[IanP]

TCP/IP, WiFi and USB mouse support is pretty universal no matter what platform you choose. Although WiFi and USB mouse may be a little less plug n play on some, needing more manual configuration.or add-ons for WiFi/USB.

[Iggy]

Isn't that exactly what he doesn't want, Amiga Forever (WinUAE+ROMs/Software) emulation and with the added complication of PPC emulation for OS4.

As far as I can tell, he only mentioned WinUAE.
AmigaForver does a fairly good job of automating many of the setup functions that are painful with just WinUAE.

And legacy hardware would offer much of the same difficulties.

And of course, you could always leave out the OS4 emulation.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Any of these modern solutions is going to require emulation on some level, simply because they don't have the same custom chips and hardware of machines made in the 1980's-1990's.

That being said, some do it better than others.

[Iggy]

Isn't that exactly what he doesn't want, Amiga Forever (WinUAE+ROMs/Software) emulation and with the added complication of PPC emulation for OS4.

As far as I can tell, he only mentioned WinUAE.
AmigaForever does a fairly good job of automating many of the setup functions that are painful with just WinUAE.

Of course, you could always leave out the OS4 emulation.

And legacy hardware would offer much of the same difficulties.

[liamwhyoung]

Cheers for all the pointers guys. It sounds as though there are a couple of hardware options on the table with possibly AOS4.1 being the way to go for my desires.  I will go check out AOS4.1 in the first instance along with this catweasel contraption and see where that takes me. Thanks for the info all.

[EugeneNine]

There are options like the minimig or a dedicated emulation platform like Ambian on the Rpi

[Iggy]

There are options like the minimig or a dedicated emulation platform like Ambian on the Rpi

And multiple FPGA options that will run the minimig core including Altera's DE-1 board, the Replay board, MIST...

[spudje]

If you really just want to relive old classics, you'd still better buy a second hand A600/A1200, get a budget accelerator and CF card as Harddrive. These machines can be hooked up to the net if you want via a PCMCIA card and USB is possible via a clockport device.

Or, get a vampire accelerator (available for A600, expected for A1200). The A1200 vampire is expected to have USB/Network capabilities as addon hardware.

[Iggy]

If you really just want to relive old classics, you'd still better buy a second hand A600/A1200, get a budget accelerator and CF card as Harddrive. These machines can be hooked up to the net if you want via a PCMCIA card and USB is possible via a clockport device.

Or, get a vampire accelerator (available for A600, expected for A1200). The A1200 vampire is expected to have USB/Network capabilities as addon hardware.

ALTHOUGH, this IS one of the more costly options (outside PPC OS4.1 hardware).

[Rob]

Hi all,

I am new to the forums, so please excuse me if this question has been answered to death already.

Much of my childhood was spent in front of my Amiga 500 and later the 1200 playing Superstardust, Alien Breed 3D, Cannon Fodder, Chaos Engine, Monkey Island and all the other classics. I would like to relive some of these memories, but don't fancy emulation as I find WinUAE a bit clunky at times. Is there a way I can do this without buying original kit i.e. can the new AmigaOne boards, X5000 etc..., be stuck in a regular ATX tower and be loaded with Amiga OS 4 or something to play games natively? Also can this theoretical setup use TCP/IP and access modern Internet routers via wi-fi etc...?  And do basic USB peripherals work like a wired mouse etc...?  I'm after that native experience but using modern kit for a modern Amiga flavour. Can this be done?

Thanks,

Liam

If it's just the old games then the best option is to get an A1200 and a trapdoor memory/accelerator card.  The cheapest option is the the ACA1221ec.

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=18&products_id=1296

The reason for adding one of these cards is that you can run the old games direct from hard drive using a tool called WHDload which works best if you have some more RAM of the A1200's standard 2MB.

http://whdload.de/

An cheaper alternative would be to use a Gotex USB floppy emulator which won't require extra RAM to make use of but I presume it will only load games at the same speed as floppies while WHDload installed games load really fast.

Many people use a compact flash card as a hard drive using readily available adapters.  Amigakit can supply the cable, adapters and a CF card pre-loaded with workbench 3.1 although it also needs a kickstart 3.1 roms installed in the machine.  Many A1200s still have 3.0 so you may prefer to install Workbench 3.0 on a blank CF yourself if you get an Amiga with that version ROM although 3.1 are available from most dealers.

There's a number of options for transferring files to the Amiga including the PCMCIA network card, CD-ROM drives (these require an IDE 4way splitter), an additional CF adapter (I think it requires a splitter too) or a USB cards such as the Rapid Road.  The ACA1221ec has a dedicated port for the Rapid Road USB which is faster than the standard A1200 clock port.

Regarding OS4.x.

All OS4.x hardware will fit in standard cases and the motherboards from Acube and A-EON have plenty of USB ports and ethernet built in.  You can run the old games but it requires emulation although RunInUAE comes with the OS and allow you to run games simply but double clicking on an ADF file so it is a little more integrated compared to emulation on other platforms.

I recommend that you have a good read Espsilon's X1000 blogs.  Over the last few years he's covered a lot of the features of OS4.x and the software available to run on it.  I should help you determine if it is something you'll enjoy using or if you're better off with an A1200 based system which will be much less expensive to build than something like an X5000.

http://amigax1000.blogspot.co.uk/search?updated-min=2012-01-01T00:00:00%2B10:30&updated-max=2013-01-01T00:00:00%2B10:30&max-results=41