A1200 is dead, Rasp-Pi 3 - emulation - worth of it?

[wlcina]

Hello,
my Amiga went to silicon heaven :-(
I tried to find another A1200 in working state, but they are expensive (+ postage of course), as only (cheapest - unfortunately) alternative for me is to buy raspberry pi 3 to emulate A1200. Does this raspberry have enough cpu power to emulate A1200
I also plan to use USB gamepad, mouse etc (using hub), or do you have any tips for me guys?

Thank you

[demolition]

It is like asking if a Nissan Micra could replace your broken classic car. For most intents and purposes yes (it will get you from A to B), but it is just not the same.. Emulation is good for some purposes but I think many people in this forum (myself included) strongly prefers using real hardware as software emulation simply doesn't have the same 'feel'.

I guess it comes down to how you were using your Amiga? Just for gaming? Perhaps it is a simple repair your A1200? In any case, I would never throw it away as there is always someone who can fix it. It could also just be a bad PSU unless you have already excluded that.

The cheapest alternative would be to just install WinUAE on your Windows PC which I assume you are using to post here in the forum? It is completely free and then you can also use your USB gamepads etc.

[wlcina]

Originally Posted by demolition

It is like asking if a Nissan Micra could replace your broken classic car. For most intents and purposes yes (it will get you from A to B), but it is just not the same.. Emulation is good for some purposes but I think many people in this forum (myself included) strongly prefers using real hardware as software emulation simply doesn't have the same 'feel'.

I guess it comes down to how you were using your Amiga? Just for gaming? Perhaps it is a simple repair your A1200? In any case, I would never throw it away as there is always someone who can fix it. It could also just be a bad PSU unless you have already excluded that.

The cheapest alternative would be to just install WinUAE on your Windows PC which I assume you are using to post here in the forum? It is completely free and then you can also use your USB gamepads etc.

Thanks for answer.

I used my A1200 just for retrogaming, nothing much else (maybe listening mods, or viewing demos). I already own a rather powerful PC, but I my idea first was to have tiny amiga I can bring everywhere - and play some games with my bro or friends. (North and south, etc). Just plug and play device if I can say that. But what I want is near perfect emulation for games (not stuttering - 50-60FPS (Hz), depends on TV type.

P.S. My A1200 dies probably from capacitor damage :-(

[alpine9000]

PI3 doesn't run State of the Art without slow down, so it's definitely not powerful enough for "perfect" emulation.

But most OCS games run well.

[demolition]

For games the Pi 3 should be able to run most of them without major issues as it only requires A500 speed (unless its an AGA game). As mentioned, some demos and games could experience occassional slowdowns so it will not be perfect. Note that software emulation adds significant latency compared to how the games are experienced on a real Amiga so some games will become much harder and more annoying, and some even becomes unplayable in my opinion. On the upside, the Pi 3 has an HDMI output so it is simpler to connect to a modern screen..

Regarding your A1200, if it is cap damage it can probably be repaired relatively easy by someone who has experience doing this. If you don't want to mess with it yourself, you could recoup some money by selling it as is as the case, keyboard and floppy drive is still worth something even if the MB is beyond saving (which is isn't).

[appiah4]

I find that current state of emulation is good enough to make maintaining real hardware 99% unnecessary; the only reason I keep them is because I'm a collector and it is sentimental and quirky to run those things. Otherwise, the Pi3 makes as good as (or even better than, considering I can add things like accelerators and cheat hardware to it for free) an A500/1200 for me as does the real hardware.

[voyager]

I have build a raspberry PI 3 into a old 2012? I mac to be used like a amiga. I tried all available emulators en distros but the fact is, its to slow. Sometimes it's almost there but then again most of the time its not. SOTA can run if you turn on skip frame btw ;-)
For me it was a disappointment so now I use it with retro PI, it can emulate 8 bit consoles very nice.

[desiv]

Originally Posted by alpine9000

PI3 doesn't run State of the Art without slow down, so it's definitely not powerful enough for "perfect" emulation.

But most OCS games run well.

Considering State of the Art is OCS, and you used the word "most" there, that's not a good thing...

I am surprised, I expected more out of a Pi3.. Emulation software not good/optimized???

desiv

[Daedalus]

The Amiga is a very complex machine to emulate, with a lot going on in the custom chips to emulate. This means it takes rather a lot of grunt to make a good emulation compared to simpler systems.

As for the A1200, as Demolition says, it's probably repairable, and even if you don't want to repair it (cost, hassle or whatever), you'll find there will always be someone who will buy it for parts (e.g. me ). You could even make more by selling the case, keyboard, floppy and dead motherboard separately...

[desiv]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

The Amiga is a very complex machine to emulate, with a lot going on in the custom chips to emulate. This means it takes rather a lot of grunt to make a good emulation compared to simpler systems...

I totally get that an AGA machine would be tricky..

But for OCS/ECS, I would think a quad-core 1.2Ghz ARM machine with a dedicated GPU isn't too bad in the grunt arena... ;-)

Oh well.. Glad my physical Amigas are still running!!! (knocking on wood!!)

desiv

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by desiv

I am surprised, I expected more out of a Pi3.. Emulation software not good/optimized???

I think it's early days. People are spoiled with WinUAE because it's so damn good, but WinUAE has been in development for many many years.

It of course also depends on the emulator's maintainer, how much involvement they have for developing and optimizing it, etc.

So yeah I think the hardware is capable, Amiga emulation just needs to cook for a while longer.
Who knows, maybe Toni decides in a future to port some of WinUAE to Raspberry Pi?

[demolition]

I have an old PC with a 2.13 GHz Core 2 Duo which I also intended to use with WinUAE as I thought it should be powerful enough, but even that one could not run all OCS games smoothly. Some times it would stutter and I'd have to compromise either on the sound quality or introduce frame skipping. WinFellow runs faster but is not as compatible..

[Amiga1992]

Yes we are also really used to whatever the current generation of computers is, but if you were to go back a couple of generations, you would realize how much faster those things are.

I remember enjoying Fellow a lot on my Pentium 3 @ 800Mhz, but I Am sure if I was to go back to it, it'd feel slow compared to modern WinUAE on my i7.

[demolition]

Originally Posted by Akira

I remember enjoying Fellow a lot on my Pentium 3 @ 800Mhz, but I Am sure if I was to go back to it, it'd feel slow compared to modern WinUAE on my i7.

Well, there's a difference between a PIII@800MHz and Core2Duo@2130MHz. Too bad it is hard for an emulator to utilize multiple cores properly.

When I am running VICE C64 emulation in warp-speed on my i7-6700K it only runs at approx x25, so it goes to show that emulation adds massive overhead since something as simple as a C64 can only be emulated at what corresponds to ~25MHz on a modern 4.2GHz CPU.. But then again, VICE is not the fastest emulator around, but one of the more accurate ones.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by demolition

VICE is not the fastest emulator around, but one of the more accurate ones.

There's also that. Older emulators like Fellow probably felt a lot faster because they were not as accurate.

I used CCS64 for a LONG time just because VICE was just too slow for me. CCS64 wasn't nearly as accurate, but good enough for my use!

[Shatterhand]

I used Fellow on my old P233-MMX and I could get 50 fps with many games. Also lots wouldn't work.

The more accurate an emulator is, more horsepower will need.

[matthey]

Originally Posted by desiv

I am surprised, I expected more out of a Pi3.. Emulation software not good/optimized???

The ARM Cortex-A53 is designed for energy efficiency. Let's look at some of the reasons for the slowness.

ARM CPU - Known for weak single core performance
in order - ARM (RISC trait) gives poor single core performance without OoO
smallish caches - L1: 32kB I/D Caches, L2: 512kB L2 L3: None
64 bit - smallish caches, 64 bit pointers and AAch64 lack of code density are not a good combo
32 bit - Most OSs for the Pi operate in 32 bit mode where Thumb 2 has good code density but generally poor performance
single core software - most Amiga emulators use only a single core

The result is you have poorly optimized software with single core performance equal to about a Pentium III. You get some great energy efficiency while not doing much work though .

[wlcina]

Thanks guys for detailed info :-)
I decided to not to buy raspberry then, I will play on my PC instead, and later on I may send my Amiga for repairs :-)
I really appreciate your replies, (and offers for repairs of course)

[jkg]

I'm also highly skeptical towards emulation on the rpi (or anything less than a highend windows rig) but I was actually positively surprised by amiberry on retropie. It takes some effort and tweaking, but it's certainly possible to get a quite usable and _portable_ setup for retrogaming. I would say especially for games that don't require very fast & precice movements with the joysticks etc. Using savestates you can continue later and also avoid starting all over again in more tedious/diffcult games. I find it very nice for cabin trips etc if you're allowed to occupy the bigscreen, but don't expect a full Amiga replacement.

[ransom1122]

If you have the money go the real hardware, if not go the pie3.

Remember the emulation on pie is nothing like winuae on PC, there are many many many features missing within the emulator on pie vs PC emulation.

If you want to splash out on $50 then you have a complete emulation box with games. Not bad for $50.