Machine of the Month: Commodore Amiga
THIS MONTH, WE CONTINUE the 16-bit battle between the Atari ST and the Commodore Amiga, where engineers from each company switched sides for one of the weirdest rivalries in computing history. This time, we’re focusing on Commodore.
A cult favorite in the US and a computing goliath in Europe, the Amiga was a multimedia powerhouse way ahead of its time, with functionality PCs would struggle to replicate for the next two decades.
From its jaw-dropping audio-visual demos, to its brilliant sound and image editing, the Amiga would quickly establish itself as an industry favorite among artists and content creators. In spite of a slow start, its multiple advanced processors and 16-bit CPU would eventually usher in a new era of gaming possibilities.
Despite its success worldwide, Amigas are relatively rare in the US, leaving emulation the only real option for all but the most hardcore users. Emulating it isn’t always easy, so let us do the hard work, so you can hit the ground running with this beautiful machine. –JOHN KNIGHT
1 ONCE UPON A TIME…
The Amiga’s story begins at Atari. Disgruntled engineers had left the company after failing to interest management in a 16-bit machine, based on the Motorola 68K CPU. In 1982, they created their own company: Hi-Toro, later renamed the Amiga Corporation. Over in Commodore land, CEO Jack Tramiel would leave the company in early 1984 and buy Atari’s consumer division, giving himself an established brand to sell products under—chiefly his new 16-bit computer, the ST.
>> Unfortunately for Commodore, Tramiel swiped its most important engineers to work on his machine, and Commodore didn’t have enough engineers to create a new 16-bit computer. Meanwhile, Amiga was bleeding cash and owed money to Atari after a rather predatory loan. As Commodore needed a new machine, it simply bought out Amiga, paid off the debt to Atari, and rebranded the Amiga as its own.
>> Launched in July 1985 as “The Amiga from Commodore” (later the Amiga 1000), it was a month behind the Atari ST. The Atari put up a strong fight with a lower price and twice the RAM, but the Amiga had a large 4,096-color palette, a proper multitasking GUI, and a far superior sound chip. More importantly, the Amiga was designed around multiple co-processors for audio, video, and memory access, thereby freeing up the CPU, and generally outperforming its competition.
>> Modification was popular, and it was common to fit expansion boards with a second CPU, allowing Mac or PC functionality. The Amiga quickly branched off into different, more advanced models, but it was the budget Amiga 500 that was the real hit.
2 THE MOMENTUM FINALLY HITS
Released in 1987, the 500 was almost half the price of the 1000 launch. Costs were cut by repackaging the bulky desktop case into micro form, new chipsets allowed a simplified design, and lower RAM prices allowed 512K of RAM. Selling in normal retail outlets made the 500 the best selling Amiga, where it finally won its reputation as a formidable games machine.
>> If you’re American and well familiar with Amigas, you’ve probably been involved in the film or television industry. By combining an Amiga 2000 with NewTek’s Video Toaster (1990) expansion card, users could “genlock” with video signals, matching their refresh rates, allowing video overlays and easy effects. For a few grand, someone could get into professional video editing for less than a tenth of the cost of existing systems.
>> Like the Atari, the Amiga never really took off in North America, despite being American itself. The Amiga sold nearly five million machines in its lifetime— against Atari’s 2.2 million sales—most of which were in the UK and Germany, with only around 700,000 sold in the US. Therefore, most software is European, designed for PAL machines.
>> The Amiga continued evolving, with 32-bit models in the ’90s, and a failed attempt at the console market with the CD-32. As the ’90s progressed, PCs were getting cheaper and Commodore could no longer compete, filing for bankruptcy in 1994. Nevertheless, you can still buy Amiga clones, and AmigaOS is still going, along with its rival, MorphOS. Both run on PowerPC, if you want to make use of an old Mac.
3 HOW TO EMULATE IT
Before we continue, serious users should consider commercial packages such as AmiKit and Amiga Forever, which integrate Amiga emulation into your desktop, preloaded with many classic Amiga
programs. If you want to use an Amiga desktop as your actual OS, there’s AROS, an open-source re-implementation of AmigaOS for standard x86 PCs and Raspberry Pis. Icaros ( https://vmwaros.
blogspot.com) is the most popular version.
>> Our preferred emulator is FS-UAE, available on Windows, Linux, and MacOS. For Windows, the recommended download includes a GUI interface and an executable installer. For Linux, packages should be in your distro’s repository, but make sure you install not just the fs-uae package, but also fs-uae-launcher.
>> If these packages are older than the current release, the current version is in the main download, providing a tarball with precompiled binaries. Just extract the package, open a terminal in that folder, and enter the command:
$ ./Launcher
>> Before running any programs, you need to define your machine, which will be under “Amiga Model” in the main tab. Now for the tricky area of system ROMs: FS-UAE comes with an open-source replacement ROM, but its compatibility rate is very hit and miss. You’ll have much better luck with a proper “Kickstart” ROM—the proprietary ROM used to run Amigas.
>> There are many nefarious websites with these ROM images, but legally these rights belong to Cloanto, which ships Amiga Forever, containing the Kickstart files. If you are using a Kickstart ROM, the most common Amiga model was the 500, so we recommend choosing A500 as the model, with a 1.3 ROM. If you’re using FS-UAE’s ROM, we had the most luck setting the Amiga Model to A1200.
>> Unfortunately, we only have room for showing how to run .adf disk files—equally as common are .lha files, but these take far too much preparation to document here. To load something, the main tab has a “Floppy Drives” section, but this really only works for single disk programs. For anything using multiple disks, open the “Floppy Drive” tab. Click the button on the right to browse for disk image files. For additional disks, press the “+” sign in the “Media Swap List.”
>> Click “Start” to launch the emulator. Once it’s running, Alt-Enter engages full-screen. By default, FS-UAE emulates the joystick on the keyboard, with the arrow keys for directions, and right Ctrl for the fire button. F12 opens a menu where you can pause the system, load and save states, redefine inputs (such as adding a real joystick), and change removable media.
>> The removable media is where you change disks when prompted mid-game. To change a disk, simply press Enter on the current disk, then you’re given the selection of disks you defined earlier.