The collected works of moi

For reasons that now escape me, I once believed it would be a sensible idea to create humongous PDF compilations of all my articles, complete with 637 gazillion pictures. The largest of these megabooks filled several thousand pages, occupying well over a gigabyte of data. Problem is, they were totally layout-locked rather than reflowable as is the modern way, so absolutely painful to read on mobile devices, aside from being a nightmare to update and recompile.

I spent so long designing covers and writing the foreword introductions for these unwieldy doorstops, I thought it would be a shame to bin the 'wrappers' sandwiching them now I've individually split out all the contents into more flexible epub format ebooks. I hereby present a mini-loaf of bread slices minus the meat filling. Perfect for those of you who salivate over the prospect of carb-heavy trailers without watching the full bake-off. You could say it's a few sarnies short of a picnic. You could even descend further into inane gibberish by quoting Yogi bear, only this is wibbly enough and needs to end. Here. Now.

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A pre-Windows 7 guide to running classic DOS games on 'modern' hardware

This guide was originally written in 2005 so it's almost a retro 'how to' emulate retro games article. All jolly meta!

It covers the basic tenets of coercing ancient DOS games into cooperating with what were then contemporary operating systems. Typical problems you may encounter, potential solutions, plus software recommendations are all touched upon.

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The newbie's guide to emulating the classic Amiga

I explore the trials and tribulations of running Amiga games on modern hardware via the two most popular emulators for Commodore’s 16 and 32-bit systems; FS-UAE and WinUAE. I cover how to implement the Kickstart firmware, where to find ROMs and games, and the way in which the various models should be configured for optimal success.

Bookending my tutorial is the story of how I came to own my first Amiga, followed by a waffle-packed rant on the depressing state of current mainstream gaming and the dreaded monopolies steering it.

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Copy that floppy; it's armless

Imagine taking the guts of the hulking Amiga 500 and smushing them into something the size of an external floppy drive case, and it would look a lot like this retro revival prototype set to hit a crowdfunding portal near you soon.

The Armiga is a cunning fusion of old and new technology which aims to recreate the misty-eyed experience of playing classic Amiga games on real hardware via original floppy disks.

It's no coincidence that the design is reminiscent of the Amiga 500 case with its parallel heat vents and convex, bold, upper-case typeface appellation. Beneath the elegant surface lies a 'new-old stock' floppy drive, custom controller and ARM CPU mounted on a Raspberry Pi sisterboard featuring contemporary USB and HDMI connections.

Complimenting this impressive array of hardware is the software-based Amiga emulator solution, UAE4All. United these will allow you to boot games from your gloriously antiquated, grungy, chewed-up old floppy disks, store the ADF dumps onto an SD card, or run downloaded floppy images from a pen drive or memory card. With no capacity restraints you can swap disks to your heart's content... without swapping disks, unless, of course, rekindling that particular torture pushes your nostalgia buttons!

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Guru meditating once again on Mac and Linux

Behold privileged readers! This is our first glimpse at FS-UAE, a brand-spanking-new, shiny Amiga emulator for Mac, Linux and the other one, Win-something-or-other.

It's built on the foundations of WinUAE 2.4.0, lavishing oft-neglected users of non-Windows based systems the opportunity to enjoy the more advanced features boasted by the front-runner in the Amiga emulator race.

The eponymous developer, Frode Solheim, aims to create a sleek, idiot-proof GUI moulded primarily to run on home theatre PCs or gaming cabinets with nothing more sophisticated than a joypad to swap disks, save game states and so on. His focus will be on launching the classic games we all know and love with the minimum of fuss, or the de rigueur tweaking traditionally synonymous with Amiga emulation.

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*nix Amiga emulation reboot

The Ubiquitous Amiga Emulator, aka WinUAE's neglected big brother, has been stagnant for over three years now, shutting Linux and Mac users out in the cold where new features, stability and compatibility advances are concerned.

Thankfully all that is about to change with the release of PUAE; GnoStiC's attempt to pick up the reigns from E-UAE, itself a UAE resuscitation.

With the original source code gathering dust, PUAE takes its inspiration from the lovingly nurtured Windows incarnation. While it's still in beta mode with plenty of bugs to iron out, it already sports a primitive, integrated GUI and is receiving a warm reception from the Amiga community.
The emulator can be configured manually by editing the default.uaerc file, or by tweaking it via the Hi-Toro frontend, before running the standalone application. Technical support and pre-compiled binaries are available from the English Amiga Board's 'other UAE' forum.

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How do I play ROMs?

For the uninitiated, ROMs are 'dumped' images of game data. These can be transferred from either games console cartridges or arcade machine circuit boards, but not computers. If a piece of software is extracted from the media of a multi-purpose system such as an Amiga or Atari ST then the data obtained is called a 'disk image' if it is taken from a floppy disk, or an ISO/CD image when taken from a CD or DVD. The terminology differs though the formats serve the same purpose, and function in a similar way.

ROMs can be played on computers using a piece of software known as an emulator. As the name suggests, these effectively allow you to transform your computer into almost any games machine or computer, past or present, imaginable. The hardware of the emulated system is recreated artificially and games or other software are brought to life by loading files rather than inserting real cartridges into tangible machinery or plugging in arcade cabinets. The main benefit of this is clearly that you don't have to own the original, often rare, hardware or game cartridges of a system in order to accurately experience them. This aside, emulation can actually enhance the original games through the integration of extra features which were previously unavailable, ones, for example which allow you to save your game progress or use overlayed graphics filters to make them more visually appealing.

Emulators are system-specific; there is no single piece of software that will allow you to simulate every games console and arcade machine. Programmers often have different goals in mind when coding their emulators and this has given rise to a variety of software designed to emulate the same systems. Some are better than others, and generally, in each case, there are a select few that are considered the de facto standard for emulating platform x. These include the following...

MAME (multiple arcade machine emulator) for arcade games.

ZSNES or SNES9X for the Super Nintendo, aka the Super Famicom.

Gens for the Sega Megadrive, aka the Sega Genesis.

WinUAE for the Amiga.

ePSXe for Playstation.

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Amiga radar detects activity in Camp Winfellow

In April of this year, the developers of Winfellow, the no-nonsense Amiga emulator for the Windows platform, shook the dust from their sorely neglected source code and began the arduous task of converting it to the C programming language in preparation for a new release. The last offering was made available way back in November 2001, and until recently the Winfellow CVS repository lay dormant, leading fans to believe the project had been abandoned.

So far 5000 lines of code (20%) have been converted, the file system has been updated to use the UAE 0.8.22 code base and several bugs have been squished. The switch from Assembly code to C will bring with it the option to port the emulator to other platforms and make future debugging and the introduction of new features more straightforward. The developers are keen to recruit beta testers to ensure the comeback release is of the highest standard, so please don't hesitate to contact them if you have some time to spare and would like to keep the Amiga spirit alive.

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What are emulators and ROMs?

An emulator is an application that simulates another computer system or console using your PC. If you wanted to play Mario 64, for instance, without having to dig out your Nintendo 64 console from the dim, dank recesses of your loft you could use an emulator instead (incidentally the best N64 emulator is UltraHLE) and download the game from the internet. Games which are designed for other platforms, but are played on a PC are known as ROMs and are freely available on the web.

Note that it is illegal to download and use these ROMs unless you own the original cartridges.
Refer to my emulation links post to find out where to download emulators and ROMs.

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