Not even a beginner yet....

[coustasse]

Just discovered this hotbed of Amiga enthousiasts quite by accident. I have had a 500 since about 1990 and a 1200 about 5 years later - for art and games originally. The 1200 is still in daily use for a couple of games we enjoy. Lost contact when I retired and moved to France.
I still have games for the 500 I would like to play, but last time I tried (last year) loading was a bit sticky! And we still have several games for the 1200 - Settlers I & II, Colonization, Golf and football management games.
So I am interested in the idea of possible use of the PC (XPPro-SP2, AMD64) for some of these games. I would then no longer have to fight my wife for the 1200.
I have looked through the FAQs and the Amiga Forever site and don't really understand much of it.

So...what would I need to get/buy to make my old games playable on the PC? Is it a single piece of software, or can you give me a list?

I used to teach computer use, but was never a computer technician unfortunately. Regard me as semi-senile and keep it simple please

It is sad that while the quality of graphics becomes incredibly complex and memory wasting, the quality of PC games tends to go down hill.

[Zetr0]

@coustasse

Hello there,

Welcome to the EAB, theres plenty of mischief to get up to around here...

now you wont really need to buy anything, unless you have a very old and or slow PC,

If you are running Windows, you need to download WinUAE from http://www.winuae.net

if you are running Linux then you will need to download E-UAE from
http://www.rcdrummond.net/uae/

this is simple to setup.. and there are instructions and guide on how to do so.
(have a look at the green amiga alien guides on these fair boards )

now once you have this, you should be able to run simple a500 games without to much problem, but if you want to play more advanced games as well as workbench work and apps, you will need Kickstart ROMs.

so where can you get the games? well there is my favourite Back to the Roots site developer and long term standing hero of mine (not that he knows it...) is actually a member here, http://www.back2roots.org/News/

Okay lets talk Kickstart Roms

Kickstart roms, provide your amiga with a library that software can use to interact with your amiga, different Kickstarts have different abilities, generally the higher the better..

from kickstart 1.3 all the way to 3.1... WinUAE needs the kickstart rom(s) as much as the original hardware. However cannot offer a download of these as this is still protected by copywright law if you can believe it?!

anyway you can buy them from cloanto in thier Amiga Forever pack
http://www.amigaforever.com/
or you can get away with with a good google search

to use them is simple, the files just need to go into the directory, and they can be used on setup. think of it like building your own custom amiga... you can have a fast CPU, lots of memory and AGA chipset, even a Graphics card..
its very easy, just go slowly and read as much as you can.

Indeed, I so share your belief that PC games are more Eye Candy than substance.

It takes a very good game to get me out of my Retro-Gaming action

anyway.... welcome to the boards, kick back and relax, all good things come to those whom wait and enjoy retro games of course..

[Adropac2]

Everyone eventually comes back to playing the great Amiga

[eLowar]

There's another legal method to get kickstart ROMs. You can dump them and transfer them from a real Amiga, see for example Amiga Legal Emulation - How To Get The Kick.ROM for instructions (there are many more guides for this and other things on the internet, also check the >> Amiga FAQ << button at the top of EAB).

Note however, that much like not every game will run on a real Amiga 1200, a number of games won't run with that kickstart ROM (coming from an A1200) either. To be able to run just about any game you'll need approximately 1.2/1.3 (from an A500), 2.05 (from an A600 I believe) and 3.0/3.1 (from an A1200).

Please also note that the forum rules do not allow any further discussion (beyond the generic "Google is your friend") about the acquisition of unlicensed kickstart ROMs on EAB (see Rules & Help at the top of EAB).

If you need help dumping your own ROM, please feel free to join #abime.net on irc://irc.abime.net (go to http://irc.abime.net/ for a web interface, but "real" IRC clients are much preferred).

[coustasse]

Thanks for the flying start.
Couple of quick questions. a) Does "more advanced games" mean all 1200 games? and b) does this mean I cannot use my old copies of 500 games like Player Manager, Jack Nicklaus, and a number of Foot Mgr games - or is it because that is too complicated?
Not interested in unlicensed stuff - too nerve racking for a pensioner!

It will take me a week or two plus to sort out this info - I still have problems after 4 weeks and three different forums, with a Linux installation that is being bloody-minded to put it mildly, and that is the current priority.

[eLowar]

Advanced (as used by Zetr0 above) means basically everything. The kickstart replacement that comes with WinUAE can't do all that much in my experience. But you'll be able to run anything with a set of kickstart ROMs (I believe Amiga Forever comes with all the essentials, although I personally think it's overpriced if you really just want the basic files and don't care about all the "goodies", but it's up to you of course).

[coustasse]

Thanks for the welcome. This is an incredibly active forum. I am trying to follow the tutorials but am stuck out of sheer ignorance.
a) Trying to set up WinUAE I am told "You need to have a floppy disk (image file) in DF0: to use the system ROM replacement" Precisely what is it asking for? i.e. what is the "floppy disk (image file)" required
b) Should I have, for 500 or 1200 a disk labelled "KickStart"? I have Workbench 1.3 and a whole stack of version 3.1 floppies including Install and Workbench. Are any of these regarded as KickStart disks. It asks for KS Rom v1.3 or 3.1
Like being back in primary school.

[Graham Humphrey]

Originally Posted by coustasse

Thanks for the welcome. This is an incredibly active forum. I am trying to follow the tutorials but am stuck out of sheer ignorance.
a) Trying to set up WinUAE I am told "You need to have a floppy disk (image file) in DF0: to use the system ROM replacement" Precisely what is it asking for? i.e. what is the "floppy disk (image file)" required

It means you haven't got, or haven't used, a Kickstart ROM. You'll need a ROM file or WinUAE is virtually useless.

b) Should I have, for 500 or 1200 a disk labelled "KickStart"? I have Workbench 1.3 and a whole stack of version 3.1 floppies including Install and Workbench. Are any of these regarded as KickStart disks. It asks for KS Rom v1.3 or 3.1
Like being back in primary school.

No - the ROM is a chip inside the Amiga, it isn't on a floppy disk. You'll need to get hold of a ROM file.

[Sune Salminen]

Also, you won't be able to use your old Amiga floppies on your PC without special/extra hardware. The 3,5" drive and motherboard floppy controller in a PC can't read Amiga formatted disks.

A reliable (but very slow!) way to transfer the contents of your disks could be to connect your Amiga 1200 and your PC with a serial cable and then use terminal software to transfer what's on the disk. Or, if your Amiga has plenty of RAM or a hard drive, you can load the whole disk into RAM or copy it to your hard drive, then write its contents to DOS formatted floppies (i think the 1200 can do that?) which can then be read on your PC.

There are various ways to do it, depending mostly on how your Amiga is configured.

If your girlfriend won't let you use the A1200 there's another method you can try that involves installing an extra 3,5" drive in your PC. But with this method you can only read AmigaDOS standard formatted disks, meaning you won't be able to transfer the majority of your games - most games use custom disk formats.

The resulting file when transferred to your PC is called a "disk image".
You can also read the kickstart ROM chip on your Amiga and transfer it to your PC so you can use WinUAE legally for that special warm fuzzy feeling! The resulting file is normally referred to as a "ROM image" or dump.

When I still had my A500, I used a program called Amiga Explorer (think I paid 20$ for it) a copy of my original Workbench 1.3 floppy and a null-modem cable to transfer all my old samples and tracker music (or what was left of it) to my PC, from 15 year old floppy disks. And the 1.3 kickstart ROM from my A500 too. It was worth it.

The real bonus however was that with this setup I could download any game I wanted from the internet and write it directly back to floppy on my A500 so I could play it on the real thing instead of using WinUAE.

Anyway don't worry about all this transfer stuff if you're only going to play games as nearly everything ever released for the Amiga is available for download somewhere out there already.

Good luck.

[coustasse]

Fine. Thanks.

Am I correct in thinking then that I need Amiga Explorer (I already have Workbench 1.3) and a Null modem cable to connect the PC and the 500?

I note you mention an extra 3.5” drive. Just so happens that I have one that I could install, and a slot for it. How would I format/configure it to read Amiga floppies?

“Girlfriend”? My wife is no longer a “girl” and I am doubtful about the other half as well. However, she has the tv on the Amiga 1200 as a screen, and at least switches to the PC without complaint when I need the tv to watch a rugby match. So perhaps “friend” is still valid.

[Sune Salminen]

That's right.

But make a copy of your workbench disk (must be 3.1 and not 1.3 since you have an Amiga 1200, no?) and use that instead. Actually it's good practice to never use your original workbench disks. That way you always have an unmodified setup to refer to.

About the extra floppy drive method - go to the WinUAE website and download adfread. Remember this method works for Amiga -> PC only, not the other way. And don't expect to be able to transfer any game disks using this method.

I'm sorry to hear about what happened to your wife..did she have a sex-change operation?

[Thorham]

Since you own both an a500 and a1200, you could just download the kickstart files, as you own the roms. The downside is, that if the a1200, for example, is in use, you are not allowed to use it's rom file under winuae at the same time. This problem will not go away by writing the roms to disk and then transferring them to the pc. Your best bet is still to buy them if you want to be 100% legal, and make simultaneous use of the rom file and the amiga it was extracted from.

The same applies to all or most commercial software: You may not use one program on more then one computer at the same time, unless the license says it's allowed.

As for transferring original games to the pc, since you own them, you can just download them, and make sure only one of the copies is in use at any time. On the other hand, a lot of amiga games are no longer supported/produced and it's doubt full anybody cares if you copy them. If you only download games you own legitimately, then it's extremely unlikely anybody will care about you doing so. Transferring original games to the pc requires you to copy them anyway, which usually wasn't allowed.

[eLowar]

Originally Posted by Thorham

Since you own both an a500 and a1200, you could just download the kickstart files, as you own the roms. The downside is, that if the a1200, for example, is in use, you are not allowed to use it's rom file under winuae at the same time. This problem will not go away by writing the roms to disk and then transferring them to the pc. Your best bet is still to buy them if you want to be 100% legal, and make simultaneous use of the rom file and the amiga it was extracted from.

The same applies to all or most commercial software: You may not use one program on more then one computer at the same time, unless the license says it's allowed.

Absolutely, you don't want Commodore suing you, do you now?

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by eLowar

Absolutely, you don't want Commodore suing you, do you now?

Maybe if you paid attention to what coustasse wrote earlier in his thread, you'd understand I'm just explaining a couple of pointers here

He wrote: Not interested in unlicensed stuff - too nerve racking for a pensioner!

If he wants to stay 100% legit, then great, if only we all thought like that in the early nineties...

But hey, no offense taken, man

[eLowar]

Well, it's just that I wouldn't consider illegitimately using an ancient ROM file on the original computer and an emulator at the same instant "living on the edge".

Maybe you could make the Amiga skip every other cycle and do the same on the emulator and synchronize them so they don't ever actually run at the same time.

[coustasse]

Well, at least my wife is legitimate, but reversing that sex change could be a problem. No doubt I can pick up an Amiga program that covers it.
Er...off thread. Whoops.

[EmuChicken]

settlers never had a sequel released for the amiga ... at one time it was planned though :-)

... uh, I couldnt be bothered actually reading anything other than the original post... good luck

[coustasse]

Originally Posted by EmuChicken

settlers never had a sequel released for the amiga ... at one time it was planned though :-)

Yes, you are right. My error. Settlers 2 is, dare I say it, on the PC. though I was sure I had seen it on the Amiga. It was the original Player Manager that got me hooked in 1990 - never been the same since.

[Anubis]

So, how is emulation life??

Are you able to emulate programs/games yet?