Sad day

[Mequa]

OK guys, tomorrow I'm moving. Unfortunately, desperate times call for desperate measures, and as I'm having to severely cut down on computing space, my Amiga hardware will not be coming with me. At least in physical form.

Luckily, I was able to back up my entire 300MB Amiga hard drive to my PC, as well as all my rare Amiga floppies to ADF. I'm also ditching a lot of old PC hardware and an old CRT TV.

I know this is a touchy subject for many. But in terms of hardware, I prefer portability and performance, and personally do not have the space for retro bulk. I have a 10" netbook and a 17" laptop, and will be getting an i7 workstation soon for high-performance computing. This provides 3 great platforms for WinUAE which, in all honesty, kicks the s**t out of my old Amiga 1200 for almost all Amiga software I want to run.

Of course, it's great to be able to enjoy the original hardware if you have the space. But my requirements are that I travel light, and personally I prefer to take the spirit of the Amiga with me - as well as my original Amiga hard drive archive which I started when I was 12. Hats off to Toni Wilen for making WinUAE into such a powerful emulator.


I do have a small bone to pick with Toni, however. I have successfully resolved the performance issue when emulating Kid Chaos on Intel Atom under Windows XP/Vista/7. The solution is to use the older version 1.4.6 of WinUAE (and perhaps earlier builds). Try it on a netbook, especially with Kid Chaos. It is much faster than newer builds. 1.5 and above suffer from considerable slowdown. In terms of performance on this platform, latest WinUAE < 1.5 < 1.4.6.

So either newer versions don't play so well with this hardware (with latest drivers and DirectX), or since 2008, Toni has introduced bloat, making newer WinUAEs choke on a humble Atom. Fortunately, version 1.4.6 is more than adequate for my Amiga needs on a netbook (supplemented with a newer version for extra compatibility when needed).

I'd still place WinUAE in the top 10 emulators ever made. I can forget my vanilla A1200, now I can take an Amiga 4000 anywhere.


Mequa

[Zetr0]

@mequa

While I personally spend more time in WinUAE than I do on my actual Amiga's I would miss the buzz of actually getting it all up and running and then gaming or developing something on them.

WinUAE is truly amazing, but for me at least it could never be a direct replacement for original hardware. Most people whom I have read that move-toward emulation as a primary platform eventually get another Amiga again within 18 months.

I wish you safe journeys in your moving and I hope you find a good home for your Amiga Kit.

[Fingerlickin_B]

Hey Mequa, same boat here too!

Sucks, but I'm keeping all my Amiga files...maybe for real use later, maybe for emulation.

Anyway, I've got accumulated close to 40-80gb of Amiganess (an almost full drive, just can't recall size, 40 or 80) during my last 5-6-ish years in this scene. So, if you need anything for emu, maybe I can help...it's mostly thanks to those like the gent who posted aboveZ

PZ.

[NovaCoder]

you do what you have to do, personally I get more 'fun' improving the hw than i do actually using them and i get a real buzz out of showing people what a 20 year old computer can do

luckily i have room for 1 hobby machine next to my day-to-day pc