Amiga Emulator: WinUAE 5.2.0

https://www.winuae.net/2024/02/19/winuae-5-2-0/

by doener • 2 years ago

73 37 2 years ago

winuae.net

flurdy• 2 years ago

The front page does not do a good job of explaining what WinUAE is, or rather does not say at all what it is

p_l• 2 years ago

How is "WinUAE Amiga Emulator" not a succinct explanation of what WinUAE is?

Mind you, this is something targeting rather specific group (i.e. people who want to emulate Amiga and related machines)

EspadaV9• 2 years ago

At the very top of the page, in the header, it tells you what it is, an Amiga emulator.

WinUAE Amiga emulator

wigster• 2 years ago

perhaps with the passing of time and the state of AI, people might mistake it for an actual girl friend emulator! ;-)

gorfot• 2 years ago

For what it's worth I agree with flurdy. It's obvious that it targets Amiga emulation on windows, but what can I expect, whats the user experience?

For a project like this you expect: 1 or 2 sentences explaining the project. A screenshot of the GUI. Mention if OS / software is not included. Link to an installation guide. perhaps who is behind the project, or if its open source. etc. A timeline blabla.

I'm still going to give it a shot though!

prmoustache• 2 years ago

For a project like this you expect: 1 or 2 sentences explaining the project. A screenshot of the GUI. Mention if OS / software is not included. Link to an installation guide. perhaps who is behind the project, or if its open source. etc. A timeline blabla.

Except WinUAE has been there for so long it is already part of the Amiga scene folklore.

It is a windows msi installer, there is not guide needed appart from the usual next --> next --> install and I have personally never seen a screenshot of the gui as a useful resource. So many projects show really nice looking screenshots and then your try the software itself and you find out it is buggy/crashy/misssing features.

amiga3862• 2 years ago

FWIW, the WinUAE page has always been that minimalist.

UAE was the Unix Amiga Emulator and the original source is now dead, but was forked years ago and the two main versions are WinUAE (for Windows) and FS-UAE (for Linux, Windows and macOS).

FS-UAE has a website more like the one you're expecting: https://fs-uae.net/

...but the link here is to announce that WinUAE just got a new release, not to debate the relative merits of two competing forks of a project and their websites!

If it helps anyone, here's a simple how-to for setting up WinUAE: https://www.howtoretro.com/emulation/winuae-setup-amiga-emul...

nobleach• 2 years ago

I'm ecstatic to see this project is still alive. As a user of the Video Toaster 4000, I barely had a real understanding of the Amiga platform. (Every once in awhile we'd go back to the Workbench to launch Deluxe Paint, AmiPro, etc) After leaving the job where I used it, I started to get into the emulation scene. That was where I learned SO MUCH about the Workbench, AmigaDOS, Demos, Kickstart ROMs. I went back to my old job to visit, and was delighted to share so much knowledge with my old boss.

My biggest accomplishment (of that era) was running SheepShaver (macOS 7.5 emulation) on top of WinUAE, on top of Windows98.

Biggest frustration (of that era): Searching for UAE on Dogpile/Altavista/Yahoo... So many references to the United Arab Emirates!! (rightfully so, but young me had no idea what that even meant)

livrem• 2 years ago

WinUAE is the emulator used inside of Amiga Forever. I bought that, thinking I would do that instead of buying a A500 Mini. But then the A500 mini was on sale, so I bought one of those as well.

I hope the makers of Amiga Forever support WinUAE and also that they will bundle new versions like this in future Amiga Forever upgrades. I know there has been some controversy around the company behind Amiga Forever in the past. I never owned a real Amiga and I am not very familiar with what goes on in that community, so do not know any details. Any way as a frontend for (Win)UAE Amiga Forever is very nice. It comes bundled not only with some demos and games, but also a bunch of different pre-configured hard disk images to boot up virtual Amigas of different types with lots of pre-installed applications.

Unfortunately I do not know enough about how to use an Amiga to get any use out of those applications, and even less about how I would install other applications if I wanted to run other old software in those virtual machines.

https://www.amigaforever.com/

https://retrogames.biz/products/thea500-mini/

amiga3862• 2 years ago

Commodore owned the rights to the Amiga's OS, which had a ROM-resident part named "Kickstart", the rest came on software disks and was called "Workbench" (also the name of the graphical "shell" the Amiga used). You generally should have both, but at minimum you need Kickstart ROMs to do anything [0]

When Commodore died, it sold rights to Amiga Inc, who then made these licensing deals:

* Cloanto got the right to sell Commodore's existing Kickstart ROM and Workbench (AmigaOS 3.1)

* Haage and Partner got the right to make a modern software-only version of Workbench that still ran on Kickstart 3.1 ROMs (AmigaOS 3.5, 3.9)

* Hyperion Entertainment got the right to make the future version of AmigaOS that also works on PPC processors (AmigaOS 4)... but they also released AmigaOS 3.1.4 and AmigaOS 3.2, which are incremental improvements over AmigaOS 3.1

At that point, Cloanto started worrying that people would buy Hyperion's AmigaOS 3.2 to boot emulators and they'd lose their market for selling legal 3.1 ROMs wrapped in Amiga Forever. There was a dispute between them and Hyperion... but there was also a dispute between Hyperion and Amiga Inc over AmigaOS 4, it's a complicated story.

How does this affect you? Well, you can use _any_ means you like to run an Amiga emulator.

* If you want to mainly play games, you can look for a variety of pre-built bundles of WHDLoad-installed games, or TOSEC disk images, and you can find frontends (like LaunchBox, Retropie) already set up to launch your choice of emulator (WinUAE, FS-UAE, Winfellow, UAE4ARM, Amiberry, etc.) and boot straight into those games. If you want to purchase a legal set of Kickstart ROMs, rather than just Google "amiga roms download", Cloanto will sell you Amiga Forever. You don't have to use their frontend if you don't like them, the ROM images you're buying (including the 1.3 ROMs for even older games) are lightly obfuscated but emulators can still use them independently of Amiga Forever.

* If you want to mainly run an Amiga desktop, you should consider getting any of the ROMs (3.1 or 3.2), and install the corresponding Workbench on a virtual hard disk... maybe even upgrade that to AmigaOS 3.9? It's very comfortable. You'll also want to ensure you install the Picasso96 graphics system, so that the Amiga can see your real machine's native screen resolutions. If you still like games, install WHDLoad and you can either use individual WHDLoad game installers to read disk images of games and put them on your HD, or you can find packs where people have already done that for you. You can then launch games from Workbench and drop back into Workbench when you press WHDLoad's quit key.

* As a further extension... if you want to see a totally tricked out Amiga that's full of alternative/replacement software, the sort of environment you'd have if you were a software junkie back in the 1990s and installed everything that looked cool on Aminet... then get AmiKit. Someone did that for you already. It's full of goodies but it's not "traditional", and personally I hate its alternative Workbench (ScalOS) with a passion, give me Workbench 3.9 any day...

Finally, if you do buy the A500 mini, it's ready for you to put more games on it via an SD card... it expects WHDLoad-installed games: https://amiga500mini.com/GetMoreGames

[0] WinUAE also bundles an AROS ROM; AROS is the Amiga Research OS, it's a portable implementation of the Amiga 3.1 APIs so should be able to run existing Amiga software... but games are tricksy and depend on various OS internals that AROS doesn't promise to repeat, so whether you can play games using AROS as the ROM depends on the game

Gorilla1000kg5• 2 years ago

The situation surrounding Amiga's legacy and its preservation is significantly more complex than it appears at first glance. Cloanto, holding a sincere desire for the Amiga's continuity, possesses the rights for the emulation of version 3.1. On the other hand, Hyperion Entertainment, which holds the rights to AmigaOS 4, opted for the PowerPC architecture over x86 to protect its niche in game porting, fearing that a transition to x86 would jeopardise this sector. Importantly, Hyperion does not hold rights to any version prior to OS 4. Indeed, Hyperion had a hand the death of AmigaOSXL / Amithlon.

A year or so ago, Mike Battilana of Cloanto, along with associates, has acquired the remnants of Amiga, establishing a new entity distinct from Cloanto itself.

Despite financial challenges, Hyperion is being financially supported by an undisclosed backer, aiming to initiate spurious legal action against Cloanto.

It's important to clarify that neither AmigaOS 4 nor AROS was ever at risk amidst these disputes. Mike Battilana has expressed a strong desire to see an end to these conflicts. He is firmly against the idea of undermining any Amiga-related initiatives. He said to me in passing that he would love to provide enhanced support for projects like AROS, so AROS can, if it wishes, call itself Amiga Research Operating System again.

Mike's actions and intentions throughout this ordeal have demonstrated a level of integrity and commitment to the Amiga community that stands out, marking him as a notably principled figure in the ongoing saga of Amiga.

He's a good guy.

dansalvato3• 2 years ago

At that point, Cloanto started worrying that people would buy Hyperion's AmigaOS 3.2 to boot emulators and they'd lose their market for selling legal 3.1 ROMs wrapped in Amiga Forever

This sort of glosses over the main point, which is that Amiga Inc., later Cloanto, repeatedly took Hyperion to court in an attempt to stop them from developing and selling updated Amiga software (and I believe hardware too, in some cases). I think this has been happening in some form or another for 20 years.

We live in a world where Apple—Apple!—released the source code for Apple Lisa OS, yet Amiga Kickstart ROMs are closed-source and cost money to download.

I'm sure Cloanto has done good work, but in any other retro community, this stuff would be open-source community projects.

Likewise, Hyperion could probably open-source AmigaOS 3.2, etc. without putting a dent in their revenue if they chose the correct open-source license. I don't know if they would, but the fact is that they can't even try, because they only have the right to release AmigaOS updates (which they also had to fight in court for years), and not to distribute source code.

I haven't been around for as long as many Amiga enthusiasts, so let me know if I got any details wrong here.

edit: See Gorilla1000kg's replies for some good information as well. I've met Mike, and he seems like a good guy and truly cares about Amiga. I don't know much about Hyperion, but they clearly do amazing work on AmigaOS. It just sucks that these beloved classic platforms are so intertwined with business interests.

For what it's worth, I haven't really seen any infighting about this in the Amiga community. We get excited when we hear about new releases. When there is news about some lawsuit over Amiga assets, the sentiment is just "We're tired of this bullshit".

snvzz6• 2 years ago

How does this affect you? Well, you can use _any_ means you like to run an Amiga emulator.

But whatever you do, please do not feed the crows.

Piracy is a suitable alternative to supporting the mafia[0].

0. https://sites.google.com/site/amigadocuments/

dansalvato3• 2 years ago

WinUAE is an outstanding emulator. Amiga is already such a complicated machine before you even consider that there are ~10 official models, hundreds of peripherals, and thousands of different configurations.

Toni Wilen has been involved with WinUAE since the late 90s and has been the lead developer for ~20 years [1]. It's one thing that he's still at it now, but it's crazy to think that he first got involved at a time when Amiga was still a fairly widely-used and supported platform (by third-parties; Commodore kicked the bucket in 1994).

It's unfortunate that WinUAE is Windows-only (hence the name). There are cross-platform ports (the leading one is FS-UAE), but maybe this fragmented development is a symptom of the project being almost 30 years old at this point.

As a somewhat hardcore enthusiast, I'm thrilled by HN's continued interest in Amiga hardware and software.

[1] http://obligement.free.fr/articles_traduction/itwwillen_en.p...

metroholografix• 2 years ago

WinUAE being Windows-only (strictly speaking that's not true, there's Wine which is actually better than running the native "ports") is also one of its greatest strengths. It has allowed Toni to maintain his razor-sharp focus on fidelity and led to an end-product that oozes quality.

To understand how bad things could have been, look at the Linux "ports" (e.g. UAE, FS-UAE and amiberry) which are plagued with audiovisual glitches, are nowhere near as compatible as WinUAE and have essentially thrown fidelity out the window. Part of the reason is the stability of the Windows graphics/sound APIs and the disastrous / ever-changing state of such APIs and implementations/drivers on Linux.

snvzz6• 2 years ago

To understand how bad things could have been, look at the Linux "ports" (e.g. UAE, FS-UAE and amiberry) which are plagued with audiovisual glitches, are nowhere near as compatible as WinUAE and have essentially thrown fidelity out the window.

UAE is the original, back then it was the UNIX Amiga Emulator (got renamed to ubiquitous). WinUAE was a port of that to Windows to begin with.

The problem is, winuae completely abandoned UNIX support, and had more development than the original.

Part of the reason is the stability of the Windows graphics/sound APIs and the disastrous / ever-changing state of such APIs and implementations/drivers on Linux.

The rest of the comment is just Linux FUD, easily disproved by Steam Deck.

These emulation accuracy issues have nothing to do with Linux graphic APIs unless proven otherwise. My guess (as Amiberry comes up) is that you've been trying to run these emulators on ARM, and these are ARM porting issues.

E.g. higan is a 100% accurate snes emulator, and runs well on Linux.

Amiga Emulator: WinUAE 5.2.0

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