Amiga Forever Value Edition free with TrialPay

[Mequa]

I already own the Premium edition of Amiga Forever 2012, but I noticed on the Amiga Forever site that the Value edition (which includes a licensed Kickstart 1.3 ROM) is free with TrialPay.

Furthermore, you don't even need to buy anything to get it, you can sign up for a free trial (e.g. with NetFlix) and get Amiga Forever Value Edition free. Although you will need to provide credit card details, you can cancel the various trials before a certain period without charge.

I was curious to see if this is legit, so I decided to order the Value Edition and signed up with NetFlix using TrialPay. It didn't authenticate the order at first, so I didn't think I would get it. However, after a day or two I got an email with download link and activation key for Amiga Forever Value Edition.

This edition's download is a Windows installer (.msi), however it should also be easy to extract this on Linux to obtain a licensed Kickstart 1.3 and rom.key, and Workbench 1.3. I'm thinking of platforms such as Raspberry Pi which already has e.g. E-UAE available (but AROS ROM is too slow), for those without a Windows PC. So technically, it should be possible to obtain a free and legal Kickstart 1.3 ROM this way on almost any platform.

This is good news for those hoping to legally run e.g. AMOS on Raspberry Pi (for which 1.3 will suffice), who do not have a Kickstart ROM image.

[lesta_smsc]

Great find! I've got the Premium version - rather just pay the guys!

[Mequa]

Correction - I contacted Cloanto and the Value Edition is not extractable on non-Windows systems (other than Wine on x86 perhaps). It also does not contain a rom.key file, but has encryption by other means.

For non-Windows use, it is technically possible to install Amiga Forever Value Edition on a Windows PC, use the Transrom utility (available in any WinUAE zip archive) to create an unencrypted Kickstart 1.3 image (it includes 1.2 as well), and transfer this to another device. I tried just that with my Amiga Forever VE in a VM. I'm not sure about the legality of it though.

[Mequa]

I recently got this message from Cloanto:

"We too are lined up for a Raspberry Pi, so I am confident that something will be found. Also we are planning other cross-platform releases for this year."

Good news for those looking at Amiga emulation on dirt-cheap hardware.

[spannernick]

Amiga Forever works with wine BTW in Linux..

[Mequa]

Originally Posted by spannernick

Amiga Forever works with wine BTW in Linux..

That's only on x86 and x86-64 platforms. I can't imagine how painfully slow it would be to use it with e.g. QEMU on a Windows XP host on PPC or (particularly) ARM platforms.
WinUAE also has some known issues with Wine.

[spannernick]

Well it would be slow cos its a emulator in a emulator..
Oh and C64 Forever works too...

[Mequa]

Originally Posted by spannernick

Well it would be slow cos its a emulator in a emulator..
Oh and C64 Forever works too...

The Amiga port of E-UAE runs pretty nippy in x86 E-UAE (or WinUAE) with JIT on a fast enough PC.

The real issue is having to emulate XP (or x86 Linux with Wine) on a non-x86 computer. For those who tried it on e.g. a PS3, it is pretty unusable even before you try Amiga Forever on that. (On ARM, emulating XP would be horrendous!)