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!

GUI

I had a bit of trouble trying to get things working, so had to have a bit of a hunt around the internet for answers. Surely there had to be some sort of GUI to ease the setup of the emulation?

As it happens, one had just been released in the form of FS-UAE-Launcher. When run, this creates a plethora of directories in the /Users/../Documents/ folder, under the heading "FS-UAE" and it is here where we can begin to store bits for the emulations (such as the Kickstart file).

Please bear in mind that the GUI is still in beta, and is by no means a full release. I suggest downloading the current "FS-UAE Plus" for MacOS X, as this will give you the Launcher and emulator itself. I copied the Launcher into my FS-UAE folder in /Applications/.

First steps

I found out about FS-UAE thanks to a post on Binary Devotion, so thanks guys! This then led me to the official website of the emulator. Don't worry - I'm keeping a list of the URLs in the "Useful links" section to the left, so they will be within easy reach should you lose track of this post.

FS-UAE, like any Amiga emulator, requires a Kickstart ROM file in order to boot-up into a working Amiga system. It does come with an emulated AROS ROM, but I don't know whether this will work with games.

Luckily for me, I have a few Amigas available to nab the ROM file from - my A1200 provided the Kickstart 3.1 (v40.68) file I'm using. Various flavours are available with the Amiga Forever pack from Cloanto - not all games will work with the later Kickstarts, so you may need Kickstart 1.3 for particularly old games.

The readme file which comes with the MacOS distribution doesn't say much about where it should or shouldn't reside, so I've installed the FS-UAE folder with the /Applications/ folder on the main disk. Running the FS-UAE.app file straight away opens a window telling me that there isn't a valid configuration file. Guess what I'll be working on next!

It does, however, boot to an AROS screen saying "No valid media". To close the window, you need to F12 - in order to do this in MacOS X, you'll need to set the function keys as standard function keys.

Equipment

I don't have the latest or most powerful Mac system in the world, but it suits my needs for now. I bought a Mac Mini in early 2009, with the following spec:

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.26 Ghz processor
2 GB RAM
120 GB hard disk (split 80 GB MacOS X, 40 GB Bootcamp'd WinXP)
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M
MacOS X 10.5.6

Since then, just like with my A1200, I've upgraded the thing with the full 8 GB RAM, and added in a replacement 500 GB hard disk. I really should have gone for a larger disk to start with, what with all the RAW files I'd end up storing on it (which are now backed up to an external HD thanks to Time Machine). I got rid of Bootcamp too, as never used the damn thing. I've also upgraded to MacOS X10.6.8.

Welcome

I've created this blog to document my attempt at getting a working Amiga system on MacOS X. For a years, Windows has been well served by the excellent WinUAE. An industrious bunch of programmers have sought to produce something similar for other operating systems: for instance, Richard Drummond's E-UAE was a very competent and portable emulator, appearing on a variety of operating systems.

A relatively new addition to this is FS-UAE by Frode Solheim. The focus is this version is games, so I'm expecting a very accurate emulation. It comes with a built-in interface to allow easy selection of games with a joypad or joystick, making it perfect for media PCs and consoles with Linux installed when attached to a TV.

Why am I doing this? Blame it on nostalgia. I used to be quite the Amigan, and was active in the Amiga community until 2009. This was due to my growing interest in photography, and my need for RAW conversion of photos. Until then, however, the Amiga was the only computer I had in the house.

I started out with an A500 and the Batman pack in my childhood, before upgrading to an A1200 on release. That A1200 became the Frankenstein machine, eventually having a PPC accelerator, 96 MB of Fast RAM, two hard drives, a CD/RW drive, PCI backboard with Voodoo 3 graphics card, sitting in a tower case and connected to a broadband connection. This was later superseded by the AmigaOne with G4 PPC processor and 2 GB of RAM.

Anyway, enough history - on with the emulation!