Inserting disks

I had thought that by setting the floppies_dir I'd be able to pick up .adfs in the floppy folder via the in-built menu system (accessed via F12). This doesn't seem to be the case however. Instead, I had to do the following:

floppy_drive_0 =
floppy_image_0 = /Users/amipal/Documents/FS-UAE/Floppies/the_settlers-3.adf
floppy_image_1 = /Users/amipal/Documents/FS-UAE/Floppies/the_settlers-2.adf
floppy_image_2 = /Users/amipal/Documents/FS-UAE/Floppies/the_settlers-1.adf

This means that you start with no disk in DF0 (the main floppy drive in a real Amiga). In order to insert disks into DF0, you go to the menu using the keyboard shortcut F12. Then using the cursor keys, you tab down to "Removable Media" and "DF0: empty". Press return, which gives me the list of disks shown above.

This is how I was able to install The Settlers onto my emulated Amiga's "Games" hard disk. When the installer asks for the next disk, go to the menu and select the next one - the original disk is ejected.

Of course, I now have to work out how to get The Settlers' "special click" working with my Mac's Mighty Mouse. The "special click" is left and right mouse buttons at the same time, something which the not-so-Mighty Mouse doesn't appear to be able to do...

Let's boot!

I'm going to run through how to use the Launcher as a first step into the emulator. In further posts, I will go into more depth about setting up an Amiga system, and explain some of the magic behind the various config items.

The directories created by the Launcher application give you a logical layout where to store the various files required for the emulation:

• CD-ROMs - store ISO files for any CD32 or CDTV games
• Configurations - this is where the uaerc.config file goes
• Controllers - custom settings for joysticks/joypads
• Flash Memory - another function of the CDTV/CD32 emulation, saved games
• Floppies - put your .adf files in here
• Floppy Overlays - (I haven't a clue about this... yet)
• Hard Drives - UAE can read from an HDF file, or a directory
• Kickstarts - ROM file storage, the plural shows that you can store a variety of versions of ROMs
• Launcher - Cache for the Launcher
• Save States - save the emulation to a 'state', handy for games with no save function
• Themes - (I haven't a clue about this... yet)

Now if you remember from an earlier post, I said you'd need a Kickstart file from an Amiga. Copy this into the /Documents/FS-UAE/Kickstarts/ directory. This is required in order for the Amiga to be able to boot and run software. Without it, no Amiga.

Copy any .adf files into the /Documents/FS-UAE/Floppies/ directory. The .adf stands for Amiga Disk File, and is a bit for bit copy of an Amiga-formatted floppy disk. Even if you had a USB floppy drive, you wouldn't be able to read an Amiga disk on a PC or Mac without special hardware - hence why the emulation uses .adf.

Now run the FS-UAE Launcher application. A window will open like so:

Most Amiga games were released for the A500, so I'm using that as the example for the emulation today. In this example, I've selected A500 from the "Amiga Model" drop down - leave the next drop down as "Accurate" (unless you find the emulator is running too slowly).

Under "Removable Media" you should be able to select the .adf files you copied over to the /Floppies/ directory. I've used Lemmings here - always my test subject whenever emulating or trying out a newly acquired Amiga.

Leave the drop down menu saying "Window" alone for now - we'll just try it out in a window before fiddling with full-screen. Now click "Start" - and after a few minutes, FS-UAE should boot up into your .adf files!