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!

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!