Commodore Amiga / CD32 Guide

AI said before, I'm an amulation enthusiast and I have written guides for pretty much any system out there. These days I've been posting here guides focusing on PC emulation, and I may continue until I cover every system hosted at old-games.ru , get kicked out or grow tired. We'll see.

I'll start with the Amiga because it might be the hardest, apart from the PC, to emulate properly.



The Amigas were a family of 16/32 bit computers sold by Commodore between 1985 and 1993. Before the PC clones equipped with VGA graphics and Sound Blaster cards became common, they were the most powerful gaming platform available for domestic users. The Amigas used the Motorola 68000 CPU, but the secret behind their capabilities was their custom chipset , a series of chips dedicated to audio, video and other tasks that put the Amiga ahead of the PCs for many years. Amigas used the Workbench OS, later renamed to AmigaOS. It offered a desktop, mouse driven icons and primitive multi-tasking.

This is a list of the most relevant Amiga models, chronologically:

A500 (1987): Low cost version of the first Amiga model, the A1000. OCS (First generation) Chipset, Kickstart (Firmware) and Workbench (OS) v1.2 or 1.3. 512 Kb. RAM, although models expanded to 1 Mb. are common.

CDTV (1991): A CD-ROM console based on the hardware of the A500. Not very successful. The CD games are mostly available on floppy disk versions, but with less music and animations.



A600 (1992): A successor of the A500 that didn't catch on. It has a poor reputation because its hardware changes caused compatibility problems with games designed for the A500 . ECS (Second generation) chipset, Kickstart and Workbench v2.X. Most models have 1 Mb. ram.

A1200 (1992): Low cost version of the A3000 / A4000 models, which were the first 32 bit Amigas but were intended for professional use. AGA Chipset (Third generation), Kickstart and Workbench 3.X. 68EC020 CPU and 2 Mb. ram.

CD32 (1993): CD-ROM console based on the A1200 hardware. It's the final model of the Amiga series and had por distribution due to the Commodore bankrupcy.




Amiga emulation.

No matter how you want to emulate the Amiga, there is a series of essential files you are going to need. I'm talking about the firmware of the most popular Amigas, the Kickstart files. Versions 1.3 and 3.X are essential if you want to emulate the A500 and the A1200. For CDTV and CD32 emulation you'll also need their Extended ROMs.

Workbench disks are not as important, but versions 1.3 and 3.1 might become handy later on.

I this guide we'll show you two ways of emulating the Amiga.

a) Using WinUAE. WinUAE is the best Amiga emulator available right now. It emulates all Amiga models, including the CDTV and CD32 consoles, and also an incredible array of Amiga expansions: CPU accelerator cards, harddrive interfaces, graphic cards...

Using WinUAE is easier than it looks.



First we go to Paths section and allow WinUAE to examine our BIOSes folder.

Next, we go to Quickstart and we select an Amiga model. Most games will run in a basic, unexpanded A500 , but AGA and CD32 titles will need an A1200 or a CD32 model.

Finally, we enter the path to the floppy / CD-ROM images, also from Quickstart:



Many floppy games will include intros by pirate crews. Most of the time we bypass them with mouse left click.





The same process for CD-based Amiga models:





By default, WinUAE will emulate a joystick with cursors, right CTRL and right ALT.

If we want to adjust video or control options, the emulator GUI is always available by pressing F12.

b) Using FS-UAE. FS-UAE is an emulator based on WinUAE, but it has been modified to work with WHDLoad packages. In turn, WHDLoad is an script-based Amiga program that allows to install practically any Amiga game in a harddisk. It also allows for user patches and many other options.



WDLoad games will load faster than their floppy or CD-ROM counterparts, and will also likely include compatibility updates and other patches, so they are a great way to enjoy Amiga games on your computer.

On the other hand, FS-UAE won't run just any WHDLoad game out there. It has an internal database and your WHDLoad games need to match it.

To use FS-UAE, we copy our Kickstart ROMs to the Kickstarts folder and our WHDLoad games (without unzipping them) to Hard Drives. If we also copy our Workbench 3.0 disks in that folder, FS-UAE will be able to use game patches.

FS-UAE can download game information and updates to its game database from the Open Retro Game Database, but you will need to set up an account for that.

Now it's time to scan our game collection... we do that with the Update Game Database and Update File Database options under the Amiga logo.



If some of your games don't appear in the gamelist, go to Settings --> Game Database and make sure adult and unpublished games are shown.



Now you can load any game in your list by double-clicking into it. If you're unsure how to exit a particular game, just press F12, like you would under WinUAE.



Click on the X button at the top right top corner of the screen and you'll be done.

 

Fun fact: From v5.1.0 Beta 1, which arrived a few days ago, WinUAE has now built-in Roland MT-32 support.

To enable it, first copy your unzipped MT-32 BIOSes to <ROM folder>\mt32-roms...

Then choose either Munt MT-32 or Munt CM-32L as your MIDI out device...



...and finally run any of the following Amiga games that support the sound device, according to the VOGONS Wiki:

 

I don't think I've mentioned Denise around here. Denise has been a terrific C64 emulator for some time now, but the authors also promised Amiga emulation right from the start. It took them some time to get there, but it finally started supporting Amiga 1000 / Amiga 500 a few versions ago.


Denise running Lotus II

Apart from having another emulator to try things, Denise has the advantage of being easier to use than WinUAE. We'll see if they can keep things this simple if they add further Amiga models / addons in the future, but right now it is a nice alternative for early Amiga games than run from floppy.

Disk images are run from Amiga --> Load Software and Autostart.

If anything, the only change I recommend is to change the Kickstart ROM in \DATA\kickrom for a regular Kickstart 1.3 from an A500. That's because Denise ships with an AROS replacement that's not nearly as compatible.