emulate an amiga on ubuntu linux (light) with fs-uae

goal

Having an emulated amiga 4000 (040+256Mb RAM) that launch itself without doing anything

everyone seems to have some little emulated amiga, so here is my way. it allows me to test many things i couldn’t be able to test on my real amiga 1200

i like to do things by myself, and share my knowledge with peoples, so this is manual configuration, from the installation of your OS to the end point

if you want to have an already configured solution, maybe it’s better for you to get Amikit or WinUAE, or Happiga (if you own a raspberry pi).

this amiga launch in less than 25s, but i think I can make it even faster

it boots up in 20s after some tweaking

Continue reading “emulate an amiga on ubuntu linux (light) with fs-uae”

smb share on linux with amiga 1200 and easynet pcmcia eth

I’ve made an article about this for IcAROS http://oanemous.free.fr/?p=755, so, now, one is needed for Amiga 1200 classic.

The best way to surf the network, download programs, … today with an amiga 1200 classic is its original case, is buying an easynet pcmcia card : http://amiga.amedia-computer.com/index.php/catalogue/infos/1/1/LC_EASYNETRJ45

For me network is better than sharing usb keys, or connecting the internal CF card to a slot on your PC (that you still can do ofcourse).

The problem

with normal smb conf configuration (look at this article http://oanemous.free.fr/?p=1098) : guest not allowed, a user and a password, I get this behavior :

twice ask for password, then an error : socket access from hades denied! access denied!

it seems that linux password encryption is coming into play there. I tried to use “encrypt password = no” in smb.conf, but i got the same error, AND the smb connection did not work anymore on both AROS and linux side.

Continue reading “smb share on linux with amiga 1200 and easynet pcmcia eth”

access amiga FFS Hard Drive (or CF) under ubuntu

Today a simple trick.

It is sometimes needed for us, amigans, to access the internal hard drive (or compact flash) that fits normaly inside our beloved Amiga 1200.

Many articles around the internet speak about accessing it from Win-UAE under Windows, but I did not find many of them speaking about accessing it under Ubuntu.

Fortunately for us, linux include FFS support natively in the kernel. Anyway, it is not automatic, and we have some steps to follow to mount it.

I assume you know how to disconnect the drive from inside your A1200, and how to connect it to your ubuntu box. I will only speak about terminal commands there. Continue reading “access amiga FFS Hard Drive (or CF) under ubuntu”

[UPD] making your HxC slim floppy emulator work with your Amiga 1200 ESCOM

The problem :


When I received my HxC slim floppy drive emulator, I was very excited. My original floppy drive was 15 years old, and was not working properly, making a lot of noise, and killed 2 of my floppies.

When I plug it into my amiga and switch it on, nothing seems to work : the red light is on, and it makes a “grrrt-grrrt” telling that it is searching for a drive, but the amiga boots again and again on the internal hard drive.

When I push the button, it make a “beep”, but nothing works. The same with a long push on the button normally used to activate the HxC boot menu.

In the early startup menu, if I disable all the boot options but the “DF0:”, it begins to boot and give an error “Not a DOS disk in DF0:”.

Under the Workbench, an “NDOS” disk appears. When trying to go in the DF0: in DOpus, or in a shell window, it says “No disk present in DF0:”.

Continue reading “[UPD] making your HxC slim floppy emulator work with your Amiga 1200 ESCOM”

Installing E-UAE sdl 32bits on ubuntu 64bits

1) Prerequisites :

You should have first installed your ubuntu server 64bits in the way written in this article.

ia32-utils is fundamental to use e-uae 32bits on your 64bits installation.

[it has been replaced by lib32ncurses5 and lib32z1 since]

2) Why 32bits on 64bits ?

Most of the times, 64bits codes are faster than 32bits ones. Anyway, e-uae sdl allows to use a JIT emulation (to get faster 68040 code execution) that is only available on the 32bits version (and not available at all on the normal version of e-uae).

3) Installation of e-uae :

That’s simple. We use the commande apt-get install :

sudo apt-get install uae

It installs the program and all the dependencies needed by e-uae.

4) Get e-uae sdl :

This is quite simple : connect to this web page http://www.rcdrummond.net/uae/

get to the bottom of the page, and download this file : http://www.rcdrummond.net/uae/e-uae-0.8.29-WIP4/e-uae_0.8.29-WIP4_linux-i586_sdl-alsa.tar.bz2

OR, in a terminal :

wget http://www.rcdrummond.net/uae/e-uae-0.8.29-WIP4/e-uae_0.8.29-WIP4_linux-i586_sdl-alsa.tar.bz2

You should unpack it :

tar xvjf e-uae_0.8.29-WIP4_linux-i586_sdl-alsa.tar.bz2

You now have everything you need to get a very nice Amiga user experience !

5) The drawers hierarchy :

Personnally, I organised my amiga-related drawers in this way :

  • root of amiga related stuffs : /home/[yourusername]/amiga
  • e-uae binaries : /home/[yourusername]/amiga/euae32
  • uaerc files drawer : /home/[yourusername]/amiga/uaerc
  • roms drawer : /home/[yourusername]/amiga/ROMS
  • launch scripts drawer : /home/[yourusername]/amiga/alaunch
  • adf storage drawers : /home/[yourusername]/amiga/ADF and /home/[yourusername]/amiga/GamesADF
  • Amiga OS drawers : /home/[yourusername]/amiga/System and /home/[yourusername]/amiga/Work

6) Copy the files needed for emulation :

So, to begin with emulation, you need to get roms and disk images. ROMS are images of the kickstart component included in all Amigas (something like an extended BIOS). They are protected with copyright, then it’s not available in public domain.

There are 2 ways to get the ROMS : you extract it from a real amiga (possible, but you need an Amiga !), or you get Amiga Forever DVD from there : http://www.amigaforever.com/

For ADF files, there are many places on the internet. There are 2 : http://ada.untergrund.net/ for demoscene stuffs, and http://thegamearchives.net/?val=0_2_1_0_0_4_17_0_0_0_0 for games.

Download one, extract it, and put it into ~/amiga/ADF

I’ll presume you got Amiga Forever DVD, and Arte demo (http://ada.untergrund.net/?p=demo&i=94) so :

Mount Amiga Forever DVD it /mnt using :

sudo mount /dev/sr0 /mnt

Copy the content of the drawer xxxx into the /home/[yourusername]/amiga/ROMS using

cp -R /mnt/…./ROMS/* ~/amiga/ROMS

You are ready to launch e-uae emulation using :

cd ~/amiga/

./euae32/uae

This should open E-UAE window where you can choose :

  • disk image to load
  • ROM to use
  • hardware caracteristics of the emulated amiga

For the first time, you’ll do it by hand and try to get your demo working. After, when you’ll get used to it, you could save your preferences into “uaerc” files.

Here are the stuffs you have to change :

XX) Some ressources :

http://obligement.free.fr/articles/euae.php (in french)

http://askubuntu.com/questions/204987/how-to-set-up-e-uae-amiga-emulator

http://fs-uae.net/ (like WinUAE)

my Flash disk as HD Drive & HxC Slim FD Drive emulator (upd 2014 01 27)

Hi folks,

This time just some photos, that could help you to get your Flash Disk and your HxC drive emulator work in your A1200.

-First attempt : i’ve connected the Flash drive in the wrong orientation -> don’t work ! 🙂

-Second attempt : after returning the flash drive cable, it worked perfectly.

So, in order for you not to make the same error, there are photos of the installation (very simple, anyway).

This is unpacking time…

Continue reading “my Flash disk as HD Drive & HxC Slim FD Drive emulator (upd 2014 01 27)”

the amiga demo scene

The Scene :

Historically, the scene was born with the C64 computer.

It was a group of peoples, all around the globe, who were much more interested in exploring the capacities of their machines (and at the same times theirs !) than simply playing games.

They wanted to know/show how much pixels could be written on the same image in a certain amount of time (every 1/50 second, the “VBR” time, or if you prefer the time needed for the electron beam of your tv to go from the pixel in the top-left of the screen to the bottom-right, and go back to its first place). On PAL (european machines), this is 1/50 of a second (a little bit less on NTSC -us- machines). This is synchronized with the AC power outlet.

This amount of time was the kingdom of the demomakers. Continue reading “the amiga demo scene”

the Amiga OS Workbench

Generalities :

Every modern OS comes with a human understandable interface called a “Graphical User Interface”. The first idea of a GUI comes from the 60s and the reflexion about HMI (Human-Machine Interface). You use a GUI everyday, so maybe you don’t even think about it, but, if you think about the beginnings, the first computers were commanded with paper sheets where we make little holes. Thoses sheets were putted into a “reader” that send the informations to the really not powerfull calculator. Continue reading “the Amiga OS Workbench”

what is the “Amiga” computer range ?

Amiga was a computer family which had its glory time in 1990’s.

The name of the first designed amiga-machine was “Amiga 1000” or “A1000”. It included a 256Kb memory, 1 3,5″ disk drive, a desktop tower, a mouse and a keyboard. It could be linked to your tv screen. The “kickstart” (the main system software libraries and procedures) came on a disk (the followers came with it ONBOARD, on chips that are called ROMS).

The other main models were : A500, A600, A2000, A3000, A1200 and A4000. Below are photos and characteristics of each model.

Some people consider the Amiga family as the most innovative personal computer range ever made, even more than Apple and IBM. Continue reading “what is the “Amiga” computer range ?”