Emulation vs Actual Hardware - is there a difference?

[IceAlchemist]

Thank you for the welcome Yeah at the moment due to financial contraints I cannot justify getting one yet.

Btw a quick question, since CRTs are not that reliable, is it a good option to connect a real Amiga with an LCD monitor? Or would that be blasphemy?

[Predseda]

The main difference is emulation is more comfortable. Thats why I prefer real HW

[chip]

I well remember my friend had Amiga 500 connected to a Sony Trinitron CRT 25'' via RGB

It was WONDERFUL

Anyway no idea how LCD could be, sorry

[redblade]

difference: My A500 does not have a Action Replay III, Emulation can read floppies at turbo speed, and I can add more RAM to my virtual Amiga a lot easier.

Emulation is great I normally emulate NTSC machines as default instead of my PAL machine.

[meynaf]

Real Amiga boots a lot faster than the machine used to emulate it.

[jotd]

real amiga + LCD TV works. For LCD monitor you need a scandoubler for most monitors, except if you buy specific models: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=1423923

[Ulysses13]

One thing I would say is that a real Amiga isn't as unattainable as you might think.

I too had a 500+ as the family computer when I was younger. The lockdown etc meant I was thinking about getting back into Amiga but couldn't go and look for old kit in my parents' loft.

I always wanted an A1200 back in the day, so I bought a beat-up, untested, really yellow one on eBay. It was immediately a really lovely nostalgic experience even though the case was broken, and it was a real wreck. It booted.

So, in the year that unfolded, bit by bit I improved it. Nothing big or sudden, but the whole process of (re)learning the ins and outs, and configuring the machine to my liking has been a dream.

I did splash out on a couple of things, but otherwise, it's still the eBay wreck I bought in the first place - and the difference hasn't been the experience of playing the games (I have a Raspberry Pi setup for emulation) it's been the total joy of getting back under the Amiga's skin.

So - absolutely, emulation is awesome (The new Pi400 keyboard computer is ideal) but if you want to go on an Amiga journey, snap one up. Not the perfect one, just a real one that you'll look after. There's no rush.

[yelworC]

There are some differences but these seem to be very special. I can run a Workbench superfast on my small Notebook - much faster than my 040/40 Amiga 4000 - but I can really not use DigiboosterPro Music Tracker on the same Notebook. The software works, but stutters and sucks while playing mods. Even with only four audio channels. My real Amiga can do much more channels. Even the old Protracker has this issue for me.

Another difference is of course the whole nostalgic thing. Maybe it's comparable to listeing to vinyl records. They are not really better and do not sound better, but if you are into it, it is so much better

But there is nothing to say against emulating. I do it, too. We are all guilty

Sometimes it's just easier und more convenient to fire up the emulation on the raspberry pi on the big tv screen and play Lotus 2.

[yelworC]

Emulation often lacks bad lighting and a beer :-D

[mr.spiv]

I am pro-real hw.. I even do all my Amiga coding on real hw, which considering all the debugging and other possibilities of emulation is a bit of dumb. It is the feel and stuff involved. The same like with old cars.. You drive your -60s rust pile and do anything to keep it running at the same time trying not to remake everything. Makes no sense but..

[Konrad]

+ Emulation is almost perfect nowadays. You have a wide variety of options to set to improve your experience
+ It also doesn't take up space. With one computer you can emulate a variety of Amiga models (and other systems). And space is a factor where I live.

o When you turn the Amiga on it's on. As meynaf said, the emulating PC takes longer to start. But my PC is mostly on anyways, so not much of a contra.

- I love and miss the original, gritty and flickery CRT picture when playing games. I know there are filters, and I'm close enough to recreating the picture, but still it's not the same. I must know, as I own an old arcade machine for comparison . The only retro system I own by now...
- I really miss playing around with floppy disks (and cartridges when talking consoles). The physical side of old computers and consoles in general

[Retro-Nerd]

- I really miss playing around with floppy disks (and cartridges when talking consoles). The physical side of old computers and consoles in general.

I have no nostalgia for old physical media. I'm really glad to have WHDLoad/Hdd for the Amiga, Flashcarts for the cartridge based consoles and ODEs for the CD-Rom consoles. Makes the authentic gaming experience so much more convenient.

[petarku]

I am using emulation heavily , as it is really much more convenient to prepare SD hdd for real amiga for example or to do or test something fast. Also i am using FPGA (Mister) and it is closer to the real hardware as it could be but that feeling when i start typing on real amiga keyboard is the reason why I will always keep the real hardware. Maybe FPGA in amiga case with real amiga keyboard could give me more flexibility and in the same time retro feeling. I was thinking about going that path for daily driver

[Promilus]

If someone is obsessed in having plenty of models but can't afford one then emulation (either fpga or software on PC) is decent enough. Also if someone want to get fastest possible amiga system then software emulation on PC is the only real choice. Other than that - the feeling, nostalgia - no emulation replicate those.

[Seiya]

it is enough to see how many topic and post about "ADF" and "Tosec" to wee what people really use. And not only in EAB, but in any retro site in the WWW.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Seiya

it is enough to see how many topic and post about "ADF" and "Tosec" to wee what people really use. And not only in EAB, but in any retro site in the WWW.

I use TOSEC for emulators, real HW and FPGAs...not sure how it clarifies anything?

[ShenLong]

I still have and respect real hardware but my emulation setup is faster than my real hardware so for me my preference is emulation.

[fxgogo]

I run both. I have a love/hate relationship with maintaining the hardware, and getting them to connect to flat screens is not ideal, but neither is maintaining dying CRT’s.

However, running my real hardware with my kids has been one of the joys of my life. My kids actually love the sounds of the floppy and putting the disks in the machines. The physical essence of buttons just can’t be replaced.

So where does that leave me? For quick and flexible setups and incredible render times, emulation all the way, otherwise, it is hardware.

[Caldor]

I use everything... often just as an excuse to tinker and play around with stuff. When I get some new hardware I often try to see how well it runs different computers, with Amiga and C64 being some of the first things to test. So I game on smart phones, Raspberry Pis, FPGAs and real hardware.

For a few months now my focus has been on the MiSTer FPGA. Its just nice how easy it is to use, how many systems it supports and how well it supports them. The non-existing boot time that is less than 5 seconds and being able to switch between settings and games really fast while still having an wide range of support for different controller methods but also different display support methods like CRT monitors and several kinds of display settings to ensure you get the correct ratio and frame-rate.

Its even been found that using USB vs more hardware native serial, it does not actually make a difference in latency, if you enable high USB polling, which I think polls the USB 1000 times per second. It was even found to be faster than the original input sometimes.

I to not consider any way as the correct way to use the Amiga. The hardware adds the extra nostalgia, simply for being the real hardware... which to me seems to often mainly be that you get all the problems you had with the original hardware and at this point when using something like Workbench it also means slower boot times compared to many of the alternatives now and slower floppy read and write.

So it mainly depends on what you want to use it for. When it comes to the full nostalgia experience, nothing beats the real hardware. But you could put a Pi or MiSTer in some empty Amiga casing, add a KeyRah and you can now connect an Amiga 600 or 1200 keyboard and use Commodore Joysticks as well. The great thing about emulation is the compatibility it has, because I am pretty sure its only using emulation you can play all CDTV, CD32, Amiga 500 and 1200 Amiga games. Emulating higher end 060 systems can be a problem even for high end PCs though, but they can emulate it, just not as fast as the fastest ones. Not in my experience at least.

But having all of these options today is just amazing

[Pyromania]

Originally Posted by IceAlchemist

Thank you for the welcome Yeah at the moment due to financial contraints I cannot justify getting one yet.

Btw a quick question, since CRTs are not that reliable, is it a good option to connect a real Amiga with an LCD monitor? Or would that be blasphemy?

This monitor might be too small for some but it looks fantastic playing classic Amiga games. I was not sure about ordering it but I'm glad I did.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1