Amiga Forever Value - Help!

Hi there,

I was an Amiga addict in my teens and just discovered the potential goldmine of the world of the emulators!

Downloaded FS-UAE and then found that I needed a Kickstart file, so downloaded the Value edition of Amiga Forever.

However, having just spent the money, it seems that it's missing a vital rom.key to work on FS-UAE. Is there anyway of getting this without paying anymore for it? I don't have any of my old Amigas to extract the file.

Any help gratefully appreciated!

All the best,

Spog

[Neil79]

This will be locked, however I will help you in PM!

All I ask is a thanks, not a 1 post and run

[prowler]

This thread will not be locked.

Due to an oversight, the ROM.key file is not included in the Amiga Forever Value Edition.

It should be included, IMO.

If its omission is not an oversight, then I don't know what is!

Thanks both, much appreciated.

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Neil79

...not a 1 post and run

Nor indeed a 2 posts and run.

Hi Spog,

Please let us know how you get on with FS-UAE and how it compares to your previous experience with the original hardware.

[FrodeSolheim]

It should be possible to extract the kickstart from the running Amiga - from inside the Amiga. I.e. download and run a tool from Workbench to extract the kickstart, and then copy it out to a directory hard drive for example. I don't have the value edition so I cannot tell if this is against the license agreement for that package or not. Also, I don't know what version the bundled kickstart is, and whether FS-UAE/Launcher would recognize it as an official one.

This page http://fs-uae.net/kickstarts has some links to guides for extracting kickstarts from real Amigas, which should probably work on an emulated one as well (I also have a warning about the missing rom key in Value Edition on that page ).

Note, I haven't tried, as I have Amiga Forever (full edition)

[Neil79]

Originally Posted by prowler

Nor indeed a 2 posts and run.

Looks like that happened

[TCD]

Originally Posted by FrodeSolheim

It should be possible to extract the kickstart from the running Amiga - from inside the Amiga.

Seems like GrabKick would be able to do that...

[wanderer]

This is strange, Cloanto clearly mentions "...includes versions 1.2 and 1.3... which will run the majority of classic Amiga games and applications. 50 games are included.". The user shoudn't need to grab the rom file from a real Amiga.

[TCD]

Cloanto includes a crypted version of the kickstart file. It should be possible to use GrabKick to create an unencrypted version (inside emulation). I don't know if that is allowed by Cloanto's terms, but technically it seems to work...

[FrodeSolheim]

Originally Posted by wanderer

This is strange, Cloanto clearly mentions "...includes versions 1.2 and 1.3... which will run the majority of classic Amiga games and applications. 50 games are included.". The user shoudn't need to grab the rom file from a real Amiga.

Hi, you misunderstood a bit - you can use the same technique as you would on a real Amiga - but in this case using an emulated Amiga instead of a real one.

[bcripon]

Originally Posted by prowler

This thread will not be locked.

Due to an oversight, the ROM.key file is not included in the Amiga Forever Value Edition.

It should be included, IMO.

If its omission is not an oversight, then I don't know what is!

Unfortunately, looking at the Amiga Forever (AF) website, I do not think it was an oversight. They specifically do not have "Cross-Platform" checked for the Value edition. It looks like it was meant as a purely Windows-only solution. Now whether dumping the ROM for your own use is a violation of Cloanto's license, I really have no opinion on that.

It looks like they want you to purchase the Plus edition (as I did) if you want to be able to use the ROM files outside of AF. Unfortunately, the 2013 edition is packaged only as an MSI file so you either need access to some sort of Windows or, possibly, Wine (Windows translation environment) in order to get to the option where you can create your own DVD. I am guessing Cloanto did this because they were receiving too many technical support requests from Windows users who did not know what to do with the ISO file.

If I had made the same purchase as the original poster, I would probably be looking at the same alternatives.


Bob C