Difference between revisions of "Amiga line"

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Revision as of 06:22, 7 February 2022

Amiga Line
A1000.jpg
Developer Commodore
Type Home computer
Release date 1985
Discontinued 1997
Emulated

The Amiga is a series of computers released by Commodore, starting in 1985. It was a very powerful and capable machine for its time, featuring a Motorola 68000 and custom chips dedicated to IO, sound, graphics and more. This family of computers became quite popular, especially in Europe, spawning a huge library of games over time. Due to its superior graphics capabilities compared to its contemporaries, it was widely used in the desktop video, video production, and show control business, leading to video editing systems such as the Video Toaster, and was even used by skate companies to edit their videos.

The later Amigas failed to advance vastly on the old models and the family lost its gain to newer video game consoles and other PC architectures. Eventually, Commodore became bankrupt and production of Amiga hardware and games were on the decline since. Despite this, there are still a handful of loyal Amiga users today and software continues to be developed for the classic machines, as well as a newer line of PowerPC-based Amigas released in the 2000s and beyond.

The Amiga was a tremendously complex machine, with multiple revisions to both its hardware and its system software. This can make emulation quite tricky, as figuring out the requirements for any specific game can be fairly difficult.

A commercial package exists, "Amiga Forever", from Cloanto, which elides past many of the complexities of Amiga emulation. It includes fully licensed ROMs, system disks, and (for applicable machines) hard drive OS images for every model that Commodore shipped. The package itself is basically a very sophisticated frontend for WinUAE and WinFellow but comes with pre-configured setups for many games. If you have sufficient expertise, you can manually do everything it's doing, but it's pretty convenient even for experts. It's also the easiest way to get legal copies of the original system ROMs.

Emulators

Name Platform(s) Latest Version Libretro Core FLOSS Active Recommended
PC / x86
FS-UAE Windows Linux macOS FreeBSD 3.1.66
WinUAE Windows 5.2.0
vAmiga macOS git
WinFellow Windows git
MAME Windows Linux macOS FreeBSD 0.264
Denise Windows Linux macOS N/A
Mobile / ARM
Amiberry Linux ARM git
Uae4arm Linux ARM git
Uae4arm Android 1.0.3.2git
Uae4all2 Android Vita 2.3.7.5
UAE4ALL Pandora Linux 2.5.3.4
UAE4Droid Android 1.13
Omega 500 Android 0.2.3
Console
WinUAEX Xbox v19b2
Amiga360 (based on P-UAE 2.3.3) Xbox 360 1.0
PowerPC-based Amiga
Petunia AmigaOS V52.2[M 1]
BlackBox AmigaOS ?[M 2]
  1. No independent releases. Only released as an integrated part of AmigaOS 4.x .
  2. No independent releases. Only released as an integrated part of AmigaOS 4.x .

Models

Amiga 1000

The Amiga 1000 was released on July 23, 1985 for $1285. It had a Motorola 68000 at 7.16 MHz with 256KB of RAM.

Amiga 2000

The Amiga 2000 was released in March of 1987 for $1495. It the same CPU as the 1000 but 1MB of RAM.

Amiga 500

The Amiga 500 was released in April of 1987 for $699. It has the same CPU as the 1000 and 2000 but with 512KB of RAM.

Amiga 2500

The Amiga 2500 was released as a marketing name for the Amiga 2000 with a Motorola 68020 or 68030 CPU.

Amiga 1500

The Amiga 1500 was the Amiga 2000 for the UK market and was released in 1990 for £999 ($1675).

Commodore CDTV

The Commodore CDTV was a Amiga 500 but for the console market. It was released in March of 1991 and retailed for $999.

Amiga 3000

The Amiga 3000 was released in June of 1990 and retailed for $3379. It had a Motorola 68030 at 16 MHz but it could be upgraded to 25 MHz. It had 2MB of RAM.

Amiga 3000T

The Amiga 3000T was released in 1991 and just a 3000 but with a tower case. Hence the T in the name. It retailed for $4498.

Amiga 3000UX

The Amiga 3000UX was released in 1990 and was just the 3000 but with the new Amiga Unix.

Amiga 500+

The Amiga 500+ was released in 1991 and retailed for $465.84. It had the same CPU as 1000, 2000, and 500. It had 1MB of RAM.

Amiga 600

The Amiga 600 was released in March of 1992 and retailed for $500. It had the same specs as the 500+.

Amiga 4000

The Amiga 4000 was released in 1992 and retailed for $3699. Motorola 68EC030 or 68040 at 25 MHz with 2MB of RAM.

Amiga 1200

The Amiga 1200 was released on October 21, 1992, for $500. It had a Motorola 68EC020 at 14.32 MHz with 2MB of RAM.

Amiga CD32

The Amiga CD32 is an Amiga 1200-based console that came with a CD-ROM drive and was first released in September 1993. It could also be upgraded to mimic an Amiga 1200 PC by equipping it with third-party add-ons like a keyboard, floppy drive, hard drive, RAM and mouse. A hardware MPEG decompression module for playing Video CD was also released.

CD32 emulation

Worthwhile emulators to try for emulating Amiga CD32:

See more information about emulation of the Amiga CD32 below:

Amiga 4000T

The Amiga 4000T was released in 1994 and had a 68040 CPU at 25 MHz with 2MB of RAM.

Emulation of PowerPC Amiga and AmigaOS 4

PowerPC-based Amiga computers were made by a few different enterprises under the license of Commodore International after its demise. They come with a new version of AmigaOS aka. AmigaOS 4.x which only runs on PowerPC-based Amiga hardware or Motorola 68K-based Amiga computers with extra PowerPC acceleration boards.

QEMU supports emulation of Sam460ex motherboard manufactured by ACube Systems which is officially supported by AmigaOS 4.1 but usability is yet to be determined.

WinUAE is capable of emulating PowerPC acceleration board, so it could also run AmigaOS 4.x if a compatible PowerPC acceleration board such as Blizzard PPC has been properly configured. Extra ROM files are required in order to emulate these acceleration boards.

68K Amiga Emulation on PowerPC Amiga and AmigaOS 4

AmigaOS 4.x comes with 2 68K Amiga emulators: BlackBox and Petunia, and they will automatically start when trying to run old 68K-based Amiga programs.

BlackBox is an interpretive emulator, thus the emulation speed is mediocre but provides lower input latency and better compatibility; Petunia uses dynamic recompilation in order to speed up emulation but consumes more memory and with less compatibility.

Petunia could be disabled entirely on boot in order to save memory, or disabled only for certain programs that are not compatible with it. Check AmigaOS 4 Documentation for more information.

AmigaOS 4.x never make use of real 68K hardware, even when running on an actual 68K-based Commodore Amiga with PowerPC acceleration board.

On emulated PowerPC-based Amiga, both emulators run quite slow as it's basically running an emulator inside an emulator, causing great performance loss.

External Links

Amiga CD32: