Benefit's of a Real Amiga vs Emulation

[Ian]

Right, serious topic here, I've been considering buying a real Amiga for a few month's now, but the only stumbling block has been, 'What's the point?'

Are there any real benefits to having a real Amiga?

It's been a while since I had a real Amiga, about 8 years, so my only memories are either vague or what I have experienced through WinUAE/WinFellow so I would appreciate your honest answer's.

Saying 'Buy a real Amiga 'cause it's better!' just doesn't cut it I'm afraid, I want hard evidence of the facts

[jmmijo]

Obviously the emu's can only do so much, it's nice to have a real one just in case you can't get the emu to work. The other advantage is if you have any size Amiga software lib. You can then connect the Amiga and a PC/MAC together and archive the disk images to say a CD-R or CD-RW or for those few lucky ones, a DVD+RW

This is the project I'm on right now, I'm waiting for the Catweasal board so I can archive both my Amiga and C64/128 software lib. I'm still finding un-opened boxes in my basement, it's like a freakin' treasure hunt

A while back we bought an A2000 with a Toaster in it for the TV station. I thought "Wow, here's my chance to re-live my old Amiga days!" It was a novelty at first. I pulled out all my old software thinking it would be a blast. Wrong. Some of disks worked, but then the reality of operating system requirements came back to haunt me. Early versions of games and disks that I had compiled wouldn't even load. I needed an A500 for this, an A2000 for that...

My point is that with an emulator you can have any system you want with the push of a button. Your software is on the hard disk in nice, neat folders. You don't need another corner of the room taken up for hardware and software, cables and electrical domination, not to mention the cost of all this.

I'm sure you have interests in other systems, too. We all do. But it would be hard to have a sega, super nintendo, intellivision, Coco computer, TI-99 or even a coin-op machine (MAME solves this) sitting in your computer space.

Emulation is the future. Old systems are just that. Old. They wear out. So does the original software. Emulators are already faster, easier to use and less expensive than the real thing. They will just get better...

Don't get me wrong. I miss the feel of my old system and the wonderful memories that went with it. It's just not practical, though, to try and set up so much archaic hardware when we're this close to true emulation. A year ago I wouldn't have said this and just think of what the near future will bring.

It's nice to get all your old software converted over to adf files, but once you do your "real Amiga" would probably collect dust. Better to find someone who will do it for you in trade or something. I'd like to see a commercial service that converts all software and carts to emulator compatible files. I'd pay to get mine done.

That old A2000 sits at the station and makes a commercial once in a while. I'll take my emulator...

[Codetapper]

Depending on what you want to do with it, a real Amiga is a good idea... For example, if you can get a nice A1200 with say a 68030 and at least 8Mb of fast memory, you can play all the HD games at full speed with proper joystick support etc.

For my PC, the emulator just doesn't cut it - games run anything from 20-50% of the original speed (some demos which really use the Amiga hardware crawl at maybe 5% of Amiga speed!) and I would never do any of my WHDLoad stuff on purely an emulator unless there was no other Amiga 1200's for sale in the country!

So depending what you want to do, the real thing is still a good purchase...

[jmmijo]

So Ian, it's probably going to come down to what you actually want to do with the real thing vs. what you're currently doing with an emu

[Drake1009]

I still like my real amigas. Though they're not upgraded it's a lot about nostalgia too. Even though I never had an Amiga before after I started emulation, friends of mine had Amigas which I remembered using.

I'd like to say the Amigas are more compatible than the emulators, but actually in some cases I've found the emulator being able to run stuff which the real amiga wasn't even if the emulated specs the setup was made from my real one.

[Ian]

@jmmjo

I don't really want to do anything different from what I do with emulation, the only reason's I'm concidering buying a real Amiga are:-

a) Some eliteist's on the board (Amigaboy & Akira) refuse to use emulators and only use the real thing, which suggest's (to me anyway) that there are benefit's to using the real thing.

b) I have been given a 28 inch 4:3 TV that currently is just sitting on my floor doing nothing. We have a few TV's, all fully booked up, but this one just sit's there

I thought an Amiga (If it was a worth will purchase) would be the perfect thing to hook up to the TV

[Paul]

Since I started using the real thing again, I've noticed a remarkable difference in quality and a lot less bugs. I haven't used an emulator since!

[CodyJarrett]

I use Amiga emulators on my PC in Paris, as there isn't enough room to have other stuff here.

But, when I visit my parents' roomy home, I use my A1200 with hard disk, monitor, accelerator and other nice things. Even then I would rarely use floppies to play games with. If it won't run off the hard disk, then it's not worth bothering about.

[RetroMan]

Originally posted by RocketMack
I needed an A500 for this, an A2000 for that...

That´s not completely true I have an A2000 here with Kick1.3, an autoboot HD Controller and two floppys with 1 Meg Chip and 2 Meg Fast ! This Baby is more compatible for old games then any A500 out there And if I want to have it fast, I´ll just turn a switch and at the next boot I got a 040/40Mhz. with SCSI-II Burner and a 4 Gig HD with OS 3.9 and an gfx-card

I only need these two configs (choosable with ONE switch) to get 99.9% off ALL software (old and new) to run on the real thing ! Just imagine how many hours of configuring and testing will be needed to get this amount of software to run on any Emu out there .....

@Ian : go and buy the real thing ! You won´t regret it !

[Galahad/FLT]

There is a market for both, and it all depends on what you want to do.

Me personally, I don't use Amiga emulators, its nothing personal, but I like to know what the cause of a bug in a game is, I can narrow it down on a real Amiga, on an emulator, it might be nothing to do with the software.

I also seem to like just about every game/demo that the emulators suck at. Again, its nothing against the emulator writers, but the Amiga, is still a powerful machine with its multi-processor environment, people are still producing games and demos on a system that is allegedly way underpowered in comparison to todays PC standards, but that doesn't stop people coding marvels.

Age of the machine is irrelevant, the PC is knocking on for 30 years old, and no-one is pensioning that off yet!

I picked up a Amiga A12oo Tower system with a 68o6o, 64 Meg of ram, 2x 4 Gig hard drives, 48Speed CD drive, pc keyboard, Packard Bell Monitor, with speakers, Loads of originals, loads of coverdisks, Catweasel PC HD drive, and a spare A12oo to go with it...... that little lot cost me £180.... I still have the receipt for the o6o card which cost three times that amount......

...if some idiot is stupid enough to sell a system like that, chances are there is some other stupid idiot that will as well...... Have the best of both worlds, an Emulator is ok, a system like the one above needs to be owned.

[jmmijo]

Originally posted by Galahad/FLT
...if some idiot is stupid enough to sell a system like that, chances are there is some other stupid idiot that will as well...... Have the best of both worlds, an Emulator is ok, a system like the one above needs to be owned.

There you go Ian, less then £200 for a really nice A1200

I am, once again, speaking from an economical point of view when I condone an emulator over the real thing.

If you have the money, the space and the time to build such a system then I might also consider it. I have many other types of game machines with their original software still packed away, but to activate them together at my computer station would be a monstrous fire trap.

It all breaks down to what's important to you, like everyone here has said. I must admit that I've looked real hard at Amiga systems for sale on Ebay lately...

[Amiga1992]

Well, so much for PCs, I hust wrote an excellent reply and the fuckwit locked up, taking it down with it. Can't wait to configure my 1200 for net access...

Anyway, what has been said is fine. Galahad's advice is great (that 1200 was a nice catch, Galahad!).I nabbed my 1200 this friday for 150 dollars, and it came with an 030@50, 32MB of Fast RAM, 1GB HD, couple dozen disks, a Roclite external diskdrive, and lots of other things.

There are advantages, like everyone said here. It just doesn't feel right to emulate (to me). And hey, nothing betas having the actual thing running there. Some people dont understand this, that's why they always keep asking me why I buy original games (amiga or others), when I can download them off the net. It's just not the same

If you can find a bargain, nab it. It will be terrific on your TV

BTW space is no concern, an A1200 takes much less space than a PC does

"Nothing beats the Real Thing!"©

[jmmijo]

The A1200 doesn't really take up that much space, I think even the tower configs could be sat on the floor if need be. This is sort of like a kit car vs. the real thing. I'd love to have a Dusenberg J sitting in my driveway, in fact having Clark Gables original would be a dream come true but hey, I've not won a lottery or had some other windfall so the next best thing would be a kit care replica. The recplica is akin to running an emu, just not quite like the real thing, close but no cigar as the say

[Ian]

I have decided ...... I'm getting one

Space isn't a concern anyway for me, nor cash, the only thing stopping me buying one now is the fact all the one's on ebay (uk) are standard ones

I want a beast Nothing else will do

[jmmijo]

Maybe Galahad can help you find one, he seems adept at finding the steals

[Chaeo]

Well, I've just built this AthlonXP 2ghz and a few days ago I realised I finally had the power to play around with emulators - I ended up trying WinUAE and WinFellow, the latter of which worked faster, but WinUAE had more options. Ultimately it became clear to me that my real Amiga in the loft needed digging out and cleaning etc, which I'm currently working on. Yeah, the real thing is worth it, if you can get hold of one.

[Tolismlf]

Originally Posted by Chaeo

Ultimately it became clear to me that my real Amiga in the loft needed digging out and cleaning etc, which I'm currently working on. Yeah, the real thing is worth it, if you can get hold of one.

My A500 has so many problems.. Some Keyboard keys won't respond, Floppy seems to struggle.. No Joystick... Mouse is crappy... Not enough CPU power (68000)... No Hard disk... Kickstart 1.3... Not much RAM (1 MB)... 1084S gave up it's spirit... So after all i prefer the emulation!

[Unknown_K]

I prefer original equipment to emulators. If I have 30 minutes that I want to spend on an Amiga game I want to spend the whole 30 minutes on the game, not 25 minutes configuring the emulator and 5 minutes on the game itself.

Emulaters are great on simple slow systems without custom chips (Like an atari 2600 for example), I have every Atari 2600 game on a CD that gets used on my Dreamcast and they all run fine. The problem is the controller is different and since I used a real 2600 in the 70-80's I don't get the exact experience.

If you took a tour of my basement you would see the following setup and ready to run:
C128, Atari 1040ST, Tandy 1000HX, Apple IIgs, Amiga 1200, Amiga 2000HD, Mac IIfx, Mac 840AV, Mac 7500, Mac 8500, Mac 950. That takes up a bit of space. Under this desk are my 4 PC game machines (386/40, P200MMX, P2-400, XP1500+). And even on my PC's I still have removable HD trays so I can swap out my DOS game drive with my vintage OS/2 drive (or Windows 3.1, Desqview/X, etc) for some specific task.