Amiga Forever Iso
Micol Cohn
Has anyone succeeded getting Amiga Forever's Workbench 3.x working on MiSTer? I bought the Plus package and have it running in Windows, and I was able to find a 6 MB Workbench 3.1 disk I got running on the MiSTer, but what I'd really like to do is bring over the complete 3.x setup.
If I launch "Workbench 3.x" in Windows it runs a Workbench called "3.X ROM" when I check the About... from the Workbench menu. It looks like Workbench 3.9, with 256 colors.
But if I dig into the Amiga Forever files I can't find this Workbench. I can find a 3.1 Workbench with a 6 MB HD that I can put on a MiSTer.
What I'm wondering is if there's any way to get this "Workbench 3.x" working on a MiSTer.
The only clue I can find is this from the Readme inside Documents/Amiga Files:
"The "dir" subdirectory contains directories that are mounted "as is"
in the emulation, like the "System" and "Work" partitions of the
Amiga OS 3.X environment. The "local" subdirectory contains the shared
drive that can optionally be mounted across different systems (unless
a cloud storage option is selected for the same)."
I appreciate the attempt to help me, and I have made some progress. I got into what looks like WinUAE configuration by right-clicking the 3.x entry and choosing edit. This gave me access to configuration, media, etc. I made a 3 GB hd1, formatted it from within the 3.x environment, and showed all System drive files and copied them over. After shutting down 3.x I can now see the hd1 listed in my Media, and it shows as bootable Yes(0). I changed the new hd1 to External from Embedded and that gave it a Windows file path to the Shared/hdf folder. I made a new Amiga4000 folder on MiSTer card and copied over the new hd1 and two Kickstarts (but they kept their names as amiga-os style roms). I went into my minimig config in the MiSTer and configured what you said above (68020 etc). MiSTer looks like it changed the internal name of the rom to KICK.ROM and it tried to boot, but I get a System Request message saying "Not a DOS disk in device hd1" and I can't get past that.
To troubleshoot the issue, configure that hdf file as your hd0 in WinUAE and see if it boots. If it does, then the issue is with the ROM/core configuration in the MiSTer. If it doesn't, then it's probably missing some files (did you make sure to show all files before you copied them?). Also, it may be better to run WinUAE standalone by starting it from Tools->plugins->WinUAE 64 bits.
I got the Tools menu to show the plugin by going into Tools/Options, thanks.
When I set the new .hdf as Pri. Master Fixed/HDD in MiSTer config, is that the same as setting it to hd0? If so, that's where I'm getting the "Not a DOS disk" when it tries to boot.
When I built the hdf I made sure to Show All from the System volume and copied everything over (things like Classes, Libs, C, T, L, S)
Does the new .hdf have to have a special name? Right now it's just called WB3X and all those files that were copied are at the root level.
When you add the hardfile in WinUAE, you can define the device name in that menu. The name of the file itself doesn't matter (wb3x.hdf would be fine). Make sure that it's marked as bootable and try to start the environment in WinUAE (don't forget to set the correct kickstart rom).
In the Media tab it's listed as Yes(0) under Bootable, while the original 3X System volume is marked as Yes(127) under Bootable.
I'm doing all this through the Edit function in Amiga Forever since I originally didn't have access to the plugin until I added it to the Tools menu recently. When I go through the plugin there's only one "Default UAE configuration"; I can't see a 3.X configuration there.
The default configuration should be fine. Just select a 68020 with no FPU, 2MB of chip RAM and 384MB of FAST RAM (Zorro card). Otherwise, you can check the configuration for the 3.x and just copy the relevant settings. But mostly anything with a 68020 and enough RAM should boot your drive. Once the drive boots there, you can transfer it to the MiSTer and try there.
For my latest attempt I made a copy of the Workbench 3.X from the Systems Playlist in Amiga Forever. I then edited this new copy and removed the DHO built in disk named System and made my WB3X disk hd0 with boot priority 0. It boots up, and there's no System disk on the workbench. The WB3X disk is there instead, although it does not have a boing ball badge like the System disk. The problem is that this is the same WB3X.hdf that does not boot in MiSTer, I get that "Not a DOS disk" error when I try.
Very good! Then the issue is on the MiSTer side. Check that you have the correct kickstart referenced in the MiSTer menu and that the CPU is correctly set as a 68020 with data cache in OFF. It should work fine once you configure that image as DH0.
Has anyone tried this with launchbox? One of the new features in 7 is being able to just run an Amiga disk or HDD image in windows and have it load and run with the correct config. Unless I'm missing something this would make adding WHload formatted games to LB as simple as any other systems rom files, assuming it works as advertised.
I've never even heard of this program before. I looked it up, but wasn't really sure if it's legit or not. Have you tried it? I'm interested, and if it works really well. I might even go in for a purchase.
Its a legit program, they even licensed the kickstart roms( basically the amiga FW) so its all legal. I've used the 2016 version at a friends and just as an amiga emulator it seemed to work well. But the ability to just run a disk or whload file direct from windows and have it open, self configure and run the game is new to V7 which is fairly new. I'm in the same boat as you if it works well I'll buy it, especially since it sounds like it would make using it with LB easier. Thats why I created this thread to see if anyone had tried it. I know there are a few Amiga fans here. Another cool option for any Amiga fan with an old PC/Laptop gathering dust is you can now also set it to start and load directly into the emulated Amiga when windows starts.
Awesome! I did some more research, it seems like it's basically a virtualization environment specifically for Amiga (like Hyper-V for Windows) This sounds really intriguing. Hopefully I can give it a go, I've always been stumped with Amiga and C64 stuff. Hopefully the roms I have will work with it. I think the issue with me is more filtering out the games to make sure that I don't have 25,000 games for one system and half of them are revisions or copies or hacks or software.
So I bit the bullet and got both the Amiga Forever and Commodore 64 Forever programs. Man... everything just works. FINALLY!!! It's so easy. This is aboslutly worth it if you have any issue playing the commodore systems.
The way I have used it with launchbox is this. I've pulled a chunk of C64 games from my roms folder and unzipped them. .d64 and .tap files will now be associated with C64 during installation. So double clicking the files will open up the program and create a new .rp9 file (stands for RetroPlatform I guess) This is basically the image of the game. Now you can just throw those into a new Rom folder and import the .rp9 files like any other game and platform import and add the emulator like normal and it'll all work!
The only issue I've run into so far, is with the Amiga Forever 7 program now, when loading up games, they run and a really fast speed, like 2 or 3 times as fast as they should. I've checked the options but am having a hard time with getting it running normally.
I'm still umming and arring over Amiga Forever. I don't know why it would be running faster than it is supposed too, I've not tried 7 but the 2016 version I had a mess with didn't do that. Do you have a high refresh rate monitor or anything that could be forcing it higher? Is it just the framerate of the entire emulation that is sped up?
I"m not sure exactly why it's happening, but it definitely is something wrong with my PC, I tried it on a couple other PCs of mine and it ran at normal speeds. I don't know how well Amiga forever and C64 Forever work together, but they seem to recognize each other and have all the files for each program in each other as well.
I'd suggest giving it a try since they are both very very good products. I rarely suggest software, but these programs are amazing and work extremely well and take a lot of guesswork out of some of these systems that I never really grew up with. If you are on the fence about it, I'd say either download the free version or just bite the bullet. It's only $30 and is basically turn key.
I think I am going to end up getting Amiga Forever as I used to love my Amiga 600. Its a shame USB Amiga style joysticks dont seem to be very widely available. I don't think I'm going to bother with the C64 one though I dont think I'd end up using it. Now if they had a ZX Spectrum version I'd be all over it.
Haha, yeah. I'd love to have a good ZX Spectrum version, I never got to mess around with that system at all when I was younger. I think you'll love Amiga Forever though, it's seriously one of the most robust emulators I've ever used
I've just bought it and yeah it seems it doesn't natively support WHDload as I thought. However it can create RP7 files containing multiple disks then you just load that file and it handles all the disc changes itself. So convenience wise more or less the same thing.
c80f0f1006