Amiga Emulator WinUAE 4.0 release
WinUAE 4.0.0 is a new major version of the Commodore Amiga emulator for Windows. The new version introduces virtual monitor support, latency improvements, and a host of other new features and improvements.
Commodore launched the Amiga computer in 1985 and discontinued production in 1996. The Amiga was a successful home computer, arguably one of the most successful home computers of the 16-bit era.
It featured a mouse-based graphical user interface, multi-tasking, 16-bit graphics and was used in Home and professional environments alike.
While you can still buy Commodore Amigas on marketplaces like eBay, even sometimes in pristine condition, emulation is an option as it makes things a lot easier in many regards. You can run Amiga games and applications on your PC, and don't have to free up space to set up the Amiga and monitor.
Emulation adds other features, more control over hardware features such as RAM, support for different Kickstart versions, multiple external hard disks, a hard drive, and more to the mix.
The main issue that you may run into is that you need to get your hands on a Kickstart ROM. An official source is Amiga Forever which comes in different editions; all include a Kickstart ROM and some games to get started.
WinUAE 4.0.0
The official project website lists all major new features that landed in WinUAE 4.0.0. Probably the most important one from a user's point of view is support for Beam Racing Lagless VSync which reduces input latency to values below 5 milliseconds and replaces the previous Low Latency VSync implementation.
Another new feature is virtual multi-monitor support which you may use to connect virtual Amiga output connectors to individual WinUAE windows to emulate connections to more than one physical monitor.
Other new features of interest include support for overlay graphics LED to indicate floppy or power activity, better fake device driver support to provide valid data to programs requesting it, and several other improvements:
- Host mode FPU emulation mode is finally full extended precision (80-bit) capable
- Debugger supports running Amiga executables from shell
- Harddrive imager now also supports native (mainboard/expansion board) IDE connected CHS-only drives.
- Directory filesystem harddrive fake block size dynamic adjustment now starts from smaller disk size
- Default WASAPI audio device automatically follows Windows default audio device
- Close confirmation option added to misc panel
- Windowed mode resize enable/disable option.
Amiga emulation is probably only interesting to users who worked on the Amiga or used it back in the days. It is great for playing some of the classic games of the Commodore Amiga or watch demo scene productions if that is what you like.
Now You: Do you use emulators at all?
“The Amiga was a successful home computer, arguably one of the most successful home computers of the 16-bit era.”
The Motorola 68000 CPU was a 16/32 bit hybrid CPU.
“It featured a mouse-based graphical user interface, multi-tasking, 16-bit graphics and was used in Home and professional environments alike.”
The original Amiga’s graphics chip had 4,096 colors (12 bits, not 16).
Mr. Doc, he says “of the 16-bit era” and not specifically referring the device as a 16-bit machine. Amiga computers had a line of advancing versions utilizing different Motorola CPUs and custom chipsets.
According to wiki specs, Motorola 68000 is a hybrid cpu family utilizing a mixture of 16/32 bit internal registers, data bus, address bus and ALUs. You shall refer to the specific models for clarifying its features.
The graphics card (or the GPU or the chipset) of the Amiga computers were capable of handling up to TrueColor (24-bit) images (the AGA chipset). Again one must explicitly specify the chipset, and find out its technial specs, for determining the overall capablity of the graphics output.
After all, 16-bit or whatsoever, it provided the most colorful memories for a generation.
Next to Winamp, the Amiga emulator winUAE was the first software I were installing into my Windows PC :-))
Wings, one of my favourites
I loved Wings back in the Amiga days. The remakes or conversions were not all that great, unfortunately.
Can anyone recommend free Kickstart ROM?
There is no free version of the Kickstart ROM.
Wonderful computer.i Actually still own 2 original amiga A500 computers and i love it.made my teenage years more enjoyable.nice to see emulation like this.i cannot seem to get fs-uae to work on puppy linux.
I loved my Amiga, but it is time to move on. I like playing all the ps2 games I never had on ps2 emu