Is my laptop too old and crap for WinUAE.

21 October 2005, 23:38

I've downloaded WinUAE and played a few games on my desktop and I'm wondering if my laptop would be good enough to play.
It's only a PentiumII 333MHz, 128Mb and S3VirgeMX grahpics.
I tried to play a game and the display was a few stripey grey squares in the corners.
I'm sure i read somewhere that the minimum specs for WinUAE are a PentiumII 300.
Are there any settings I can change to make it run faster or better?

Oh by the way I'm new to all this, Not Amiga's though I've got one in a cupboard at my parent's house, just fancied playing some old games on my laptop.

Thanks to anyone that can help me.

Brad.

mr_a500 · 21 October 2005, 23:52

Your craptop will probably be a bit too slow. When I tried playing games on a 300 Mhz computer, I noticed that it was (strangely) the sound emulation that really slowed it down. The games might play better without sound emulation, but how fun would that be?

But I could be wrong, so just try it out and see.

22 October 2005, 00:19

I tried it with sound disabled and still the display was just stiped grey rectangles.
So I think you're right the craptop is too crap.

Thanks for the quick response though.

Brad.

mr_a500 · 22 October 2005, 00:27

You shouldn't be seeing graphics distortion just because of slow processor speed. Your "grey rectangle" problem is probably either corrupt files or configuration problem. Try some other games/programs with your current config and see what happens.

Chuckles · 22 October 2005, 04:34

If you manage to get games working on the laptop reasonably well without sound and you want to try adding sound back, I'd suggest that you pick a low frequency setting, as that may lighten the load a bit on WinUAE, and I would suggest using the smallest screen resolution possible for the same reason. You might also have to change the refresh setting on the display panel to every second or third frame while you're just trying to get it to work. I've never actually tried WinUAE on a PII/333, but was able to run most games on a PIII/500 several versions back without changing the refresh rate and they worked well. The differences in the architecture of the PII and PIII though make the difference between 333 and 500 greater than it sounds, so it might not be possible to get it to run with acceptable performance, if it will run at all. Good luck with it though.

OddbOd · 22 October 2005, 06:00

It would be worth your time trying WinFellow as well, it usually runs faster than WinUAE at the expense of emulation accuracy.

22 October 2005, 17:46

I've got it working, I changed to running in full-screen mode and it worked.
I started with low res and no sound, and I've just played a game at 640x480 -8bit with low frequency emulated sound. It seemed to run fine.
I've only tried two games so far (Nitro and Speedball2) both worked fine.
Now i just need to figure out which keyboard input map i need to choose to use the cursor keys.

I think I'll have a look at WinFellow some time.

Thanks for all your suggestions guys.

Brad.

_ThEcRoW · 22 October 2005, 17:55

I think that with proper configuration should work well. I had winuae on a p2 266 and allow me to run all the games i put into it with full sound, so i guess with a bit of patience and tweaking, you can made it.

Phiber · 26 October 2005, 15:56

Shouldn't MiniUAE (A500-emulation only) be a little lighter to run than the full blown version of WinUAE?

Mnemesi · 10 November 2005, 22:29

I'll throw in my two-bits worth since I have a similar situation.

I'm running a Thinkpad 390X P2-400 and I used both WinUAE-Mini (the stripped down 'speed' version) and WinFellow. WinUAE-Mini's sound usually breaks up fairly regularly on it, though actual speed of the games is pretty much unaffected. I have the best luck with WinFellow, which has good sound and speed, though unfortunately it doesn't emulate as many things as WinUAE does. Use it WinFellow first, and then fall back to WinUAE.

spiff · 10 November 2005, 23:21

I'd say, use JIT. It's not great for games, but when it works it's damn fast.

alexh · 11 November 2005, 10:24

Go back about 10 versions of WinUAE and see if that helps.

Compatibility has improved but emulation requires more horsepower.

andyr · 15 November 2005, 00:30

I was just going to suggest that!

The old P2 333 (slot 1 chip!) I have here runs WinUAE 0.8.22r4 with most A500 based titles running at full speed. A1200 stuff stutters a bit though!

Version 1.1.1 just stutters with everything on the same system.

Mnemesi · 15 November 2005, 01:45

I'm curious how high you can take the versions before you notice a drop in speed/sound quality.

Chuckles · 15 November 2005, 05:50

That would be hard to say. If you went back as far as the WinUAE versions before Toni took over the project, I think you'd see that performance actually improved quite a bit as he made some of his earlier fixes. At least, that's the way it seemed to me. Later on, as the emulation gained in both features and compatibility, that started to use up some of the CPU cycles that had been reclaimed, and eventually used up all of them and a few more. So depending on how far back you go, you might find that you can still move forward from there and actually get some performance back.

Mnemesi · 15 November 2005, 14:07

As it stands with v822r4, I'm getting splendid performance with a P2-400. I'm not highly motivated to use any other version since it plays Extase and can read IPFs. I am curious, specifically noted in the earlier post, why v822r4 was chosen as the optimal version for 300-400 mhz, versus any of the other revisions around it...

My favorite game to test is Agony, which is exceptionally intensive for a non-AGA game. The music tends to break up fairly easily -- under WinUAE 1.11, it's excruiciating to listen to on a slow processor.

The thing that seems to help the most with sound break-ups as well as increasing playability is to set it to drop every second frame out of the display settings. The music immediately stops stuttering, and the smoothness of the animation actually increases (though you can clearly see the owl's shots only appear at every other space in the firing line - doesn't affect gameplay really).

What's really fun is tinkering with the CPU/Chipset slider. Set it to CPU, and I've watched games that were nearly unplayably slow on the Amiga suddenly become fluid and dreamy experiences (like most of the 3d vector games).

I'd have to say after experimenting with v822r4, I've lost some of my motivation for using WinFellow - I suspect most of the reason why WinFellow is getting popular is there's a lot of newer people out there who don't know where to look for the faster versions of the highly compatable WinUAE, and just go with the more obvious champion of the slow processor, WinFellow.

21 October 2005, 23:38	#1
Brad77 Posts: n/a	Is my laptop too old and crap for WinUAE. I've downloaded WinUAE and played a few games on my desktop and I'm wondering if my laptop would be good enough to play. It's only a PentiumII 333MHz, 128Mb and S3VirgeMX grahpics. I tried to play a game and the display was a few stripey grey squares in the corners. I'm sure i read somewhere that the minimum specs for WinUAE are a PentiumII 300. Are there any settings I can change to make it run faster or better? Oh by the way I'm new to all this, Not Amiga's though I've got one in a cupboard at my parent's house, just fancied playing some old games on my laptop. Thanks to anyone that can help me. Brad.

21 October 2005, 23:52	#2
mr_a500 Amiga-based Cyborg Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Canada Posts: 808	Your craptop will probably be a bit too slow. When I tried playing games on a 300 Mhz computer, I noticed that it was (strangely) the sound emulation that really slowed it down. The games might play better without sound emulation, but how fun would that be? But I could be wrong, so just try it out and see. Last edited by mr_a500; 21 October 2005 at 23:59.

22 October 2005, 00:19	#3
Brad77 Posts: n/a	I tried it with sound disabled and still the display was just stiped grey rectangles. So I think you're right the craptop is too crap. Thanks for the quick response though. Brad.

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22 October 2005, 00:27	#4
mr_a500 Amiga-based Cyborg Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Canada Posts: 808	You shouldn't be seeing graphics distortion just because of slow processor speed. Your "grey rectangle" problem is probably either corrupt files or configuration problem. Try some other games/programs with your current config and see what happens.

22 October 2005, 04:34	#5
Chuckles The Ancient One Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Kansas City/USA Age: 68 Posts: 685	If you manage to get games working on the laptop reasonably well without sound and you want to try adding sound back, I'd suggest that you pick a low frequency setting, as that may lighten the load a bit on WinUAE, and I would suggest using the smallest screen resolution possible for the same reason. You might also have to change the refresh setting on the display panel to every second or third frame while you're just trying to get it to work. I've never actually tried WinUAE on a PII/333, but was able to run most games on a PIII/500 several versions back without changing the refresh rate and they worked well. The differences in the architecture of the PII and PIII though make the difference between 333 and 500 greater than it sounds, so it might not be possible to get it to run with acceptable performance, if it will run at all. Good luck with it though.

22 October 2005, 06:00	#6
OddbOd Registered User Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: Australia Age: 46 Posts: 666	It would be worth your time trying WinFellow as well, it usually runs faster than WinUAE at the expense of emulation accuracy.

22 October 2005, 17:46	#7
Brad77 Posts: n/a	I've got it working, I changed to running in full-screen mode and it worked. I started with low res and no sound, and I've just played a game at 640x480 -8bit with low frequency emulated sound. It seemed to run fine. I've only tried two games so far (Nitro and Speedball2) both worked fine. Now i just need to figure out which keyboard input map i need to choose to use the cursor keys. I think I'll have a look at WinFellow some time. Thanks for all your suggestions guys. Brad.

22 October 2005, 17:55	#8
_ThEcRoW Amiga NetRunner Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Spain Age: 45 Posts: 941	I think that with proper configuration should work well. I had winuae on a p2 266 and allow me to run all the games i put into it with full sound, so i guess with a bit of patience and tweaking, you can made it.

26 October 2005, 15:56	#9
Phiber Hardware Freak Join Date: May 2002 Location: Helsinki / Finland Age: 50 Posts: 222	Shouldn't MiniUAE (A500-emulation only) be a little lighter to run than the full blown version of WinUAE?

10 November 2005, 22:29	#10
Mnemesi Registered User Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: North America Age: 55 Posts: 58	I'll throw in my two-bits worth since I have a similar situation. I'm running a Thinkpad 390X P2-400 and I used both WinUAE-Mini (the stripped down 'speed' version) and WinFellow. WinUAE-Mini's sound usually breaks up fairly regularly on it, though actual speed of the games is pretty much unaffected. I have the best luck with WinFellow, which has good sound and speed, though unfortunately it doesn't emulate as many things as WinUAE does. Use it WinFellow first, and then fall back to WinUAE.

10 November 2005, 23:21	#11
spiff Oh noes! Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Neverland Posts: 766	I'd say, use JIT. It's not great for games, but when it works it's damn fast.

11 November 2005, 10:24	#12
alexh Thalion Webshrine Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Oxford Posts: 14,337	Go back about 10 versions of WinUAE and see if that helps. Compatibility has improved but emulation requires more horsepower.

15 November 2005, 00:30	#13
andyr Registered User Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Manchester, UK Posts: 97	I was just going to suggest that! The old P2 333 (slot 1 chip!) I have here runs WinUAE 0.8.22r4 with most A500 based titles running at full speed. A1200 stuff stutters a bit though! Version 1.1.1 just stutters with everything on the same system.

Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)

15 November 2005, 01:45	#14
Mnemesi Registered User Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: North America Age: 55 Posts: 58	I'm curious how high you can take the versions before you notice a drop in speed/sound quality.

15 November 2005, 05:50	#15
Chuckles The Ancient One Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Kansas City/USA Age: 68 Posts: 685	That would be hard to say. If you went back as far as the WinUAE versions before Toni took over the project, I think you'd see that performance actually improved quite a bit as he made some of his earlier fixes. At least, that's the way it seemed to me. Later on, as the emulation gained in both features and compatibility, that started to use up some of the CPU cycles that had been reclaimed, and eventually used up all of them and a few more. So depending on how far back you go, you might find that you can still move forward from there and actually get some performance back.

15 November 2005, 14:07	#16
Mnemesi Registered User Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: North America Age: 55 Posts: 58	As it stands with v822r4, I'm getting splendid performance with a P2-400. I'm not highly motivated to use any other version since it plays Extase and can read IPFs. I am curious, specifically noted in the earlier post, why v822r4 was chosen as the optimal version for 300-400 mhz, versus any of the other revisions around it... My favorite game to test is Agony, which is exceptionally intensive for a non-AGA game. The music tends to break up fairly easily -- under WinUAE 1.11, it's excruiciating to listen to on a slow processor. The thing that seems to help the most with sound break-ups as well as increasing playability is to set it to drop every second frame out of the display settings. The music immediately stops stuttering, and the smoothness of the animation actually increases (though you can clearly see the owl's shots only appear at every other space in the firing line - doesn't affect gameplay really). What's really fun is tinkering with the CPU/Chipset slider. Set it to CPU, and I've watched games that were nearly unplayably slow on the Amiga suddenly become fluid and dreamy experiences (like most of the 3d vector games). I'd have to say after experimenting with v822r4, I've lost some of my motivation for using WinFellow - I suspect most of the reason why WinFellow is getting popular is there's a lot of newer people out there who don't know where to look for the faster versions of the highly compatable WinUAE, and just go with the more obvious champion of the slow processor, WinFellow.