Your dream Amiga?

[Harrison]

..... but as time has gone on I now find myself mainly using Amiga software via emulation and leaving the actual hardware behind. Don't get me wrong, I do still love the actual Amiga hardware, but compared to emulation it is now more fiddly to get the variety of software running on the Amiga compared to just changing the settings in emulation......

Heresy!

I cannot believe that you would rather muck about with WinUAE than get your hands on the real deal....admittedly, it is easier to run setups you could never afford under WinUAE (I could never afford an A1200 at the time, let alone the upgrades), however, the scene is still alive with Amiga people, otherwise this board would not exist and we would all be slaves to boards created by Cloanto and the like.

I returned to the scene because of Amiga Forever by Cloanto and it made me want to get involved again, not because of rose-tinted glasses, but because I am a bit sick of Windows wanting to do everything for me, I missed the old days of writing startup-sequences and getting my hands dirty in the CLI.

Besides, there are some cracking games on the Miggy that just don't run too well in WinUAE, even on my 3.2 Ghz, 1 Gig memory PC.

There, that's my tuppence worth.

Merlin

Don't get me wrong, I own a lot of real Amigas (2x A500, A500+, A600, 2x A1200, A4000, CD32) and do run them often. I used to have them all setup in the spare room and used them a lot, but they do take up a lot of room so are now packed away when not in use.

So if I just want to play one game, run something to take screenshots, or access a file for the site then I will use emulation. Also there were some Amiga games that I couldn't get to run on any of my real Amigas, but that I did get to run via emulation.

But, there will always be that sense when running anything via emulation that something you cannot quite place is missing compared to a real Amiga.

[Submeg]

I would much prefer to play games on the real deal, but most of my games are now corrupted, so its impossible to play them so I just stick with the emulation.

[Harrison]

That's sad that most of the games are corrupt. I've discovered that recently with a few of my original Amiga game disks. They either cannot be read at all when trying to load them or they return an error part way through the boot process.

There is one way you can often get them working again. Using Amiga Explorer and writing an adf of the game over the corrupt disk. I've found this works often and so you end up with a working copy of the game again on the original disk, all be it a cracked copy.

[Merlin]

If you get hold of the SPS sets which are ipf files instead of adf's, these are prefect reproductions of the original disks including any copy protection, so there are no piracy issues, I just thought I would mention it....mind you, they are so anally retentive (still pooing rusks, I reckon) about which machines make the images, they don't have a fantastic selection....check the site...

Merlin

[Harrison]

Don't worry, I already have the SPS(CAPS) collection and update with every new release, as I do for all Amiga collections.

I actually prefer to use the cracked versions as I don't then need to worry about any copy protection schemes or passwords. Also most have the trainers built in which can be useful.

[Merlin]

No probs, I wasn't sure what the board policy was on cracked disks, some get funny about stuff like that and SPS doesn't seem to get mentioned much, probably for obvious reasons, at least there are the LSD / Loons etc. docs disks if you get stuck...

Merlin

[Harrison]

Don't worry, we are very relaxed about such things on here. You are welcome to chat about anything including cracked disks, pirated software etc... The only thing we don't allow is direct linking to such downloads on the open boards, but links to sites is OK.

[Submeg]

GAR! Pirates arrr!!!

[J T]

YARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR MATEYS

CAPS really are overly-fussy, cracked ADFs is where it's at. We play the games, relive the fun, not care about the accuracy of the copy protection system and that guff.

In conclusion


(you can tell we are OK with piracy by the fact there is a whole smiley section for them )

[Stephen Coates]

Amiga floppy drives are the best!

Having the sounds coming from speakers, is OK, but no where near as good as actually having motors producing the sound.

Although I don;t tend to have speakers connected to my PC anyway so it doesn't make much difference.