fs-uae Amiga Hardware Configuration Wishlist

[PHabermehl]

Hi Dude, hi all,

Frode, the author of fs-uae, suggested to open a thread where specific Amiga hardware configurations to be emulated by fs-uae could be proposed.

My idea is to list such special hardware configs and to add a good explanation for the request so that Frode can not deny implementation

I'll immediately start proposing within the next post.

May the force be with us!
Peter

[PHabermehl]

My first Hardware setup proposal:

I used to own an A2000B, equipped with

- A2630 Processor card
- Math CoPro
- ECS (1MB Chip Ram)
- Retina GFX Card 2?MB (with a NEC MultiSync 4FG)
- 8MB Fast Ram (4mb on Processor Card, 4MB Z2 if I remember correctly)
- Kickstart switch (1.3/3.1) (provided by fs-uae by config...)
- 2 Floppy drives (1x HD, 1xDD)
- 2 Harddrives
- OTI SCYLLA CD Rom drive (VERY crappy but couldn't afford a better one)

This setup was good for some minor office work, especially eMail and some word processing, as for some of the more complex ECS games like Settlers and Lemmings, to be installed on the hard drive.

I furthermore loved to do some fractal rendering which brought some load to the Math CoPro...

At its time, the CD Rom was an absolute highlight, I'll never forget browsing the Fish or Aminet Archive CD Roms or listening to audio CDs played on the Amiga.

So the two main issues to emulate this system are
- CD-Rom, Floppy and HD access at the same time
- direct access to the host CD-/DVD-drive (to use the "real" old CDs, which would be a big benefit for the CD32 emulation, too)
- (minor) emulation of the RTG graphics...
- Processor 68030 probably couldn't be implemented, but a "high speed" 020 or a working 040 should do also...

Now, Dude, what do you think -> is it or or

Best regards,
Peter

[Mequa]

For my AMOSPro emulation packs I use:

Fastest possible CPU + Direct JIT (if available) + immediate blitter + 8MB Fast RAM + AGA (for new AGA extensions). Ideally with AROS ROM if that's working yet. No need for RTG or extra Z3 RAM.

Basically a super-accelerated "classic" Amiga without excess memory or RTG overhead. (FPU not needed but perhaps optional, same with CD-ROM.)

[FrodeSolheim]

Teaser image attached

[FrodeSolheim]

Originally Posted by Mequa

Fastest possible CPU + Direct JIT (if available) + immediate blitter + 8MB Fast RAM + AGA (for new AGA extensions). Ideally with AROS ROM if that's working yet. No need for RTG or extra Z3 RAM.

Basically a super-accelerated "classic" Amiga without excess memory or RTG overhead. (FPU not needed but perhaps optional, same with CD-ROM.)

I have successfully merged WinUAE 2.4.0 into FS-UAE, bringing with it performance improvements to fastest possible mode / immediate blitter in non-JIT mode.

[FrodeSolheim]

OK, let's see here...

Originally Posted by PHabermehl

- A2630 Processor card
- Math CoPro
- ECS (1MB Chip Ram)
- 8MB Fast Ram (4mb on Processor Card, 4MB Z2 if I remember correctly)
- Kickstart switch (1.3/3.1) (provided by fs-uae by config...)
- 2 Harddrives

This is more or less already possible (if not exact, than at least probably close enough ) with the SUPER configuration or the new A4000/040 configuration in the upcoming development version.

Originally Posted by PHabermehl

- Retina GFX Card 2?MB (with a NEC MultiSync 4FG)

UAEgfx ("Picasso96") implemented, needs only a bit more testing

Originally Posted by PHabermehl

- 2 Floppy drives (1x HD, 1xDD)

You can specify the floppy drive type with an uae_option override (type 0 = DD, type 1 = HD):

uae_floppy0type=1
uae_floppy1type=0

Originally Posted by PHabermehl

- OTI SCYLLA CD Rom drive (VERY crappy but couldn't afford a better one)

I might need some help here. I tried to get a CD (ISO file) recognized in AmigaOS using both FS-UAE and WinUAE, but did not manage to get it to show up. Haven't done any heavy debugging yet. But it is possible that I just lacked some Amiga-side software to read/recognize the CD.

Do you remember what kind of CD-ROM device you had? Was this a SCSI CD-ROM connected to an A2091?

If anyone has a tutorial on how to get a CD (ISO file) to show up in Workbench under WinUAE for instance, it would save me some time...

Originally Posted by PHabermehl

- direct access to the host CD-/DVD-drive (to use the "real" old CDs, which would be a big benefit for the CD32 emulation, too)

This is the only item I'm not planning to do right now. (Btw, you know you can rip your old CDs to bin/cue format? And yes, I understand it is a bit more inconvenient, etc )

Originally Posted by PHabermehl

Now, Dude, what do you think -> is it or or

All in all, I would say

[PHabermehl]

Hello Frode,
Amazing progress...

I'm not much into programming and obviously not much into WinUAE (since I'm on Linux only...), but I read that the WinUAE 2.4.0 documentation says that hardware CDRom access is built-in and that WinUAE provides everything that the CD shows up on Workbench. So I (naive, huh?) thought, it wouldn't mean much work for you...
Otherwise, there was a CD driver in sys:Storage/DOSDrivers (named CD0) where you had to configure the device used (via Icon Tool Types)
Usually one replaced the original Commodore CD File system by something else, I remember ASIMCDFS or so?
From my brief understanding, all this should no longer be required by WinUAE2.4.0; CDRom should work out-of-the-box...


Regarding my own A2k Hardware, it was a really crappy ATAPI CD-Rom and a pretty strange controller, don't even remember the name. But it was something like blabla-atapi.device

Sorry that I can't remember much more.

Peter

[FrodeSolheim]

Originally Posted by PHabermehl

I read that the WinUAE 2.4.0 documentation says that hardware CDRom access is built-in and that WinUAE provides everything that the CD shows up on Workbench. So I (naive, huh?) thought, it wouldn't mean much work for you...

That was what I thought too...

Originally Posted by PHabermehl

Otherwise, there was a CD driver in sys:Storage/DOSDrivers (named CD0) where you had to configure the device used (via Icon Tool Types)
Usually one replaced the original Commodore CD File system by something else, I remember ASIMCDFS or so?
From my brief understanding, all this should no longer be required by WinUAE2.4.0; CDRom should work out-of-the-box...

Nothing happened in a plain Workbench 3.1 install. But I loaded the Workbench 3.1 System/Work HDs from Amiga Forever 2012 in WinUAE, and with this, the CD appeared as a device in AmigaOS, so now I have a point of reference

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by FrodeSolheim

That was what I thought too...

CDFS Automount CD/DVD drives enabled in harddrives panel? Nothing else is needed and there is no need to bother with mountlists or cd filesystems anymore

[FrodeSolheim]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

CDFS Automount CD/DVD drives enabled in harddrives panel? Nothing else is needed and there is no need to bother with mountlists or cd filesystems anymore

I found out what my problem was. When playing around and trying to get it to work, I did try the "CDFS Automount CD/DVD" setting. But I enabled this setting while WinUAE was running, followed by "Reset" in WinUAE, and the setting was effectively not enabled.

When starting WinUAE with "CDFS Automount CD/DVD" enabled from start, it worked perfectly, thanks

(I can smell CD (image) automount support in FS-UAE )

[FrodeSolheim]

Originally Posted by PHabermehl

- CD-Rom, Floppy and HD access at the same time
- (minor) emulation of the RTG graphics...

With the latest development release (http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=63789), you can use cdrom_image_0 to insert a CD when using regular Amiga models (the GUI selector is not enabled yet) -Also RTG graphics are working

[PHabermehl]