What are YOUR reasons for emulation?

[Chewieshmoo]

OK just wondering. I remember when UAE first hit the scene, it was pretty terrible, I remember also thinking WOW emulation sucks, no wonder, how can a crappy PC EVER emulate the superior AMIGA and it's custom chipset. Back then I had an AMIGA A1200 with 030 CPU @ 50mhz (if I recall correctly) and thought emulation was useless.

Well over the years of course we all know what happened............
As for me due to bad times etc I no longer have ANY original Amiga hardware save an CD32. A few years ago I revisted the Amiga emulation scene and was pretty damned impressed how far it had progressed, hell last year I even bought the latest version of AMIGA FOREVER package and don't regret it. So for me it is simple, lack of real hardware and the prices I cannot afford for real hardware these days, at the very least I can return to the Amiga OS, run some great games etc.

Anyway those are my reasons for emulating Amiga, I was wondering why others might be doing it? Just for games or are there serious uses for an emulated Amiga? Anyone using emulation as a substitute for the real thing? Anyone doing anything serious like art/animation video work? Can these things even BE done with an emulated Amiga? I would really like to know! THANKS!

[Buleste]

TBH I only ever got into miggy emulation because of this site. I wanted to add some screenshots to the main site and it's completely impractical on a normal miggy so I used WinUAE to get the screenshots. Since then I've also found out that there are some games that no matter what your setup they'll always be slow.

[Demon Cleaner]

I began emulating the Amiga with Fellow 0.32, which is already a long time ago, but it worked like a charm. But I discovered emulation due to MAME, I think it was version 0.28, still commandline based. Then I began emulating my favorite systems, which of course are C64 and Amiga.

[woody.cool]

I originally started using DOS UAE yonks ago, then like Demon Cleaner 'upgraded' to DOS Fellow.
Back in them days, I was emulating the Amiga on a Intel Pentium 133 with approx. 64MB RAM which wasn't brilliant. The main reason for emulating at that time was that I only had an A500+ and didn't have an A1200 or A4000 so couldn't play AGA games, which is something DOS UAE and DOS Fellow didn't do anyway, but I did experience Kickstart 3.x (as I'd only got 2.04 in my A500+)

Now that I have lots of different Amigas, my reasons differ. Mostly, though, I use WinUAE to have a workbench environment which I can use to master Amiga CDs together and burn them on my PC.
Basically, I use WinUAE for development stuff, although I rarely finish anything.
On top of that, if I download a game (especially a WHDLoad slave), I can try it out before I waste time transferring it to the Amiga.

[Stephen Coates]

I originally used WinFellow, which I have not used for a long time.

I only used emulation because I used to keep my Amiga in the loft most of the time and we could only be bothered to get it out every now and then, so as I had a PC, emulation was quite handy.

I don't really use emulation much now as i use real amigas more but I still use emulation in locations where an amiga is not avaliable or if a programme I want to run would run better in emulation than it would on a real system.

[Bloodwych]

Nice story.

As mentioned above, I too first used Fellow on a Pentium 75Mhz I think. Just about managed A500 emulation.

Had to wait to use WinUAE, until I had a Pentium II or it would run in slow motion.

Emulation today just makes sense. It's easy, takes up next to no extra room and will be around forever whilst the original hardware dies out.

I love emulating. In fact I have a SFF PC with two pads and arcade sticks built just for this purpose: