Some of the oldest classic flight sims look and play best, not on PC but on the Amiga. While the PC was using CGA or EGA graphics, the Amiga had resolutions approaching VGA (albeit with fewer colours). The sound capabilities would continue to outstrip the PC until the advent of Adlib/Soundblaster dedicated soundcards!
This is a general purpose guide on setting up Amiga emulation with the WinUAE emulator. It will cover installing the WinUAE emulator, setting up the Amiga Workbench on an emulated hard disk along with a number of utilities to improve the look and feel. Finally, it will cover enhancing the CRT look and feel of an emulated Amiga.
There some excellent resources and tutorials that cover the above, so instead of re-inventing the wheel, those guides and tutorials will be referenced. This guide assumes you are installing onto a Windows 10 host PC.
Installing WinUAE and the Amiga Workbench
One of the best available WinUAE and Amiga Workbench installation guides are those at the Green Amiga Alien Guide. Absolutely essential reading for anyone new to Amiga emulation, they were created by Paul, who sadly is no longer with us. Without these guides, I don't think I would have been able to get Amiga emulation working as easily as I did.
They were last updated around 2006/2007 and even today they are still incredibly useful for anyone wanting to try Amiga emulation. They are based on WInUAE 1.3.4 and because development has continued, the current release is WinUAE 5.3.1, so I'll be adding supplemental information for the later version.
WinUAE tutorials
All of the general WinUAE guides are worth reading, if you're new to Amiga emulation.
Supplemental to WinUAE installation
When it comes to installing WinUAE, you can follow Paul's guide. Additionally, you need to get WinUAE 5.3.1 64 bit release from the WinUAE site.
The Interchange Preservation Format (IPF) is a format optimised for preserving floppy disks and popular for preserving Amiga disk images. The library mentioned is available from the Software Preservation Society, you'll want to go to the downloads page and get the User Distribution, Version 5.1 Windows 64 bit.
I ended up installing WinUAE in a different folder, outside of the default Program Files folder. e.g. D:\Games\Amiga\WinUAE 5.3.1\
Supplemental to other guides
Although some of the screenshots will differ from the current WinUAE version, the information contained within is still accurate.
Setting paths
The paths section of the WinUAE config utility allows individual paths to be set for each of the file types stored on disk, e.g. configurations, screenshots, Kickstart ROMs, videos.
Each folder was set as sub folder within the WinUAE installation folder as the screenshot shows.
Adding help
A Windows help file can be added to your WinUAE installation. The online help and an offline help file can be found at the WinUAE help site. Once the offline help file is downloaded, it should be placed in the WinUAE installation folder. It should be opened from the installation folder and confirmed it is safe to access, otherwise opening help from within WinUAE will show an empty content frame in the help window.
Installing Workbench
Installing Workbench involves creating an emulated Amiga hard disk, installing Workbench onto it, along with a number of other enhancements. I followed Paul's guides to create a Workbench 3.1 installation.
What I used
This is what I used to create my Workbench installation:
Kickstart ROM: KS ROM v3.1 (A1200) rev 40.68 (512k)
Workbench: Workbench v3.1 rev 40.42 (1994)(Commodore)(M10)
As I'm not an Amiga expert there may be better alternatives, but this seems to work well (at least from my limited experience).
The Workbench disks used the TOSEC Naming Convention (TNC) and the disks I used had the [!] flag, indicating a verified good dump.
The guides I followed
These are the guides I followed to create my emulated Amiga:
Introduction: To get the necessary software.
Chapter 1: To configure WinUAE
Chapters 2 & 3: To install Workbench.
Chapter 4: To install the Installer.
Chapter 5: To install Picasso96.
Chapter 7: To install ClassAct.
Chapter 8 (Method 2): To install NewIcons with ClassAct.
Chapter 10: To install WHDLoad.
It's also worth reading Chapter 11, as this gives a excellent step by step introduction to using WHDLoad.
Supplemental to Introduction
The WHDLoad_usr.lha package can be obtained from the WHDLoad Support Page.
Supplemental to Chapter 1
Although the ROM properties look different, the information in the guide is accurate. The 'Hard drives' properties are now called 'CD & Hard drives', however the information in the guide remains accurate.
The CPU properties are now called the 'CPU and FPU' properties. This page has changed over time and the settings I used are shown in the screenshot.
CPU is set to 68020.
24 bit addressing is unchecked.
JIT is unchecked.
MMU is set to None.
FPU is set to None.
In CPU Emulation Speed, Approximate A500/A1200 or cycle exact is checked.
In Cycle-exact CPU Emulation Speed, CPU Frequency is set to 4x (A1200).
The RAM properties we set as shown in the screenshot. In Memory Settings:
Chip is set to 2 MB.
Slow is set to 512 KB.
Z2 Fast is set to 8 MB.
The RTG properties have moved to the RTG board section.
The Chipset properties no longer have an Faster RTG option, which has been moved to the Miscellaneous properties.
The Display properties have changed considerably, settings can be seen in the screenshot. It is recommended to set RTG to Windowed, as this makes it easier to follow the guides.
Fullscreen resolution is left as a personal preference and/or capabilities of your display.
Default refresh rate is selected in the dropdown menu.
Centering is unchecked for Horizontal and Vertical.
The Sound properties have also changed, settings can be seen in the screenshot.
The dropdown menu is set to Paula.
The Sound Buffer Size is set to 8.
The Drivers section is set to WASAPI but other drivers may also be available depending on your setup.
Audio Filter is set to Always on (A1200) as this seems to reduce audio crackle.
The Misc properties have been renamed to Miscellaneous.
The Faster RTG option can be found here and should be checked.
Windowed style should be set to 'Standard', 'Direct3D 11' and 'Hardware D3D11' in the dropdown menus.
There are RTG board properties, they are set as shown in the screenshot. In the RTG Graphics Card section:
Board is set to UAE (Zorro III).
VRAM size is set to 32 MB.
Refresh rate is set to Chipset.
Other Chapters
The step by step guides for the remaining chapters remain completely accurate. I was able to follow the guides step by step without any issues whatsoever!
Additional WHDLoad information
There's an excellent article, Demystifying WHDLoad by Chris, on the Pure Amiga site. Well worth a read for getting some background and instructions for WHDLoad.
Kickstart support files
Chris' guide mentions some older games will require the older Kickstart v1.3 ROM and .pat
and .rtb support files. Aminet currently hosts the support files.
Period correct graphics
Now you have a working Amiga Workbench, this next section is optional and down to personal preference, but highly recommended.
When it comes to achieving period correct Amiga graphics, I recommend this guide from John Novak, Achieving period-correct graphics in personal computer emulators — Part 1: The Amiga.
With an almost academic level of detail, it's some excellent work. It discusses the Amiga, aspect ratios, CRT shaders, phosphor and shadow masks and finally bloom and glow. If you follow the guide you'll have some authentic Amiga CRT emulation.
This section will add some supplemental information, I found useful when going through his guide. However before embarking on the guide I recommend taking a copy of your current WinUAE Workbench 3.1 configuration settings.
Supplemental advice
When you read the 'CRT shader' section look out for the link to get the WinUAE Commodore 1084S Shader Pack v2.
In the 'Running games in NTSC' section, it briefly mentions setting WHDLoad tooltype options. To open/edit tooltype options:
Click on the game icon.
Go to the Workbench bar.
Select the Icons menu.
Select the Information... option.
ReShade shaders
When it comes to installing ReShade, the latest version (v6.3.3 at time of writing) is compatible with the guide.
It took me some time to work out how to enable the shaders. You'll want to open up the ReShade configuration panel. On the settings page you need to add the path to the new Shaders added with the Shader Pack v2.
If you have followed the guide advice, the Shader Pack v2 should have been extracted to your WinUAE installation folder.
The 'Effect search paths' to add will be:
<WinUAE folder>\ReshadeShadersYou can now configure the shaders as described in the guide.
It might also be worth setting the ReShade screenshot folder to your WinUAE screenshot folder.
Finally...
A huge thank you to the maintainers of Paul's Green Amiga Alien Guide. To John Novak for making a modern LCD display look like an Amiga and to Chris for demystifying WHDLoad!
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