UAE4ALL basic setup (AMIGA's emulator) + updated release (v20220507)

[Apaczer]

Latest release:

rev.1.1 - https://github.com/Apaczer/uae4all/releases/tag/v20220507

AMIGA 500 setup for UAE4ALL emulator:

I) BIOS

1. You will have to find the most common BIOS file: Kickstart (USA, Europe) (v1.3 Rev 34.005) (A500, A2000).
2. Rename the BIOS file to: kick.rom
3. Move this file to /.uae4all folder in main part.

II) GAMES loading

1. Roms should be in *.ADF format or compressed *.ADZ , and be aware that some cracks may work better than another if at all (experiment with different revision, you can even mix multiple disks revisions within 1 game)

For stock UAE4ALL (bundled with 1.3.3 MiyooCFW):

2. Boot up emulator and use internall disk selector
3. Load first disk to DF0
4. Start the Amiga from main menu

For updated UAE4ALL (v20220505):

2. Load first disk directly from GMenu2x file selector

If you need to load another disk then:

• open the menu with "Reset" buton
• mount second disk to DF0
• then Resume the Amiga in menu

III) Controls (for V90):

B: Joystick fire button
Y: Mouse left button
X: Mouse right button
L: Switches between joystick and mouse control (when using mouse press R to change the mouse speed)
R: Virtual keyboard, use the B button to press a key (A, X & Y can be used to map a key to, return to the main menu to reset keymaps).
RESET: Brings up the UAE4all menu
SELECT + R: Quick load state.
SELECT + L: Quick save state.
START: SuperThrottle on/off
SELECT + Y: increase Throttle (only under v20220507 release or later)
SELECT + X: decrease Throttle (only under v20220507 release or later)

IV) Recommended settings:

A) For smooth 60FPS video:
Frameskip - 0
Throttle - 20÷40

B) For non-distotred & smooth audio:
Frameskip -> auto
Throttle -> 0÷60

---

NOTES:

• savestates work well, but you need to load corresponding disk image - the one you were using while making that save.
• games usually boot up slowly (the charm of older PC's), you can speed up that proces with START buton which will enable SuperThrottling in emu.
• additional DF1 disk image may be used only for games that support multidisk feature.
• use Screen_pos option in menu to move image vertically for non 320px high resolution (there isn't any scaling implementation, so you're left with original resolution output either)
• no hard drive/disk emulation

COMPATIBILITY ISSUES:

• https://github.com/Apaczer/uae4all#compatibility-list
• for better performance it is recommended to use stock UAE4ALL by @jamesofarrell (from 1.3.3 MiyooCFW, source provided here)
• for wider compatibility please use v20220505 revision of UAE4ALL by @Apaczer (from this repo)

Please share any suggestions if I missed smth.

[jSTE0]

@Apaczer Nice work on the emulator, at least we now have the source for it. How much slower is the UAE 68k emulator compared to FAME (in terms of %)? Have you tried building this with FAME instead?

[Apaczer]

Nice work on the emulator, at least we now have the source for it.

TY! I asked stock's emu author for original src, but it gone missing (that gave me oportunity to test other forks and found UAE to be more stable).

How much slower is the UAE 68k emulator compared to FAME (in terms of %)? Have you tried building this with FAME instead?

Overall the UAE4ALL is very well optimized under ARM, only some games shows challenge. Good benchmarking titles I found (starting from most intensive):

• Epic (bad perf. on both emus )
• Jim Power (playable on stock / choppy frame rendering on latest)
• Zool 2 (good perf on both, little better on stock IMO - need PGO)
• James Pond 2 ( good perf on both - need PGO)

The stock and my updated realese use PGO for initial builds, otherwise above games present video stuttering (no audio underruns). I would say the difference is negligible for most part (5÷7%).
My fork is based of RetroFW and jamesofarrell's is possibly from zear (the changes between two are unclear from git's history). I've tested FAME on both with PGO (I think 😅) and saw no improvement ,what is suprising zear's src performed worse (see edit). Might be a matter of better flagging or more precised profiling as stock works flawlessly. What is interessing first build from jamesofarrel was very badly optimized, but he couldn't recall what was done for second (stock CFW 1.3.3.) realese.

EDIT:
I remember now, that I couldn't invoke PGO on zear's src at all, so I left FAME behind (considering it was far less compatible).

[Rezzy-dev]

Has anyone had any luck getting Knights of the Sky running on UAE4All (on Miyoo)? What is the performance like?

[Apaczer]

@Rezzy-dev,
I didn't try Knights of the Sky but it requires 1 MB Chip RAM and OCS hardware (for non-HD version), so should run on this emulator. TBH there were performance issues when emulating polygons with Epic so I wouldn't count on great experience, but it may run better than PC version on DOSBox.

[Rezzy-dev]

Ah, I see. Thanks @Apaczer! :) I just want to get one canvas-winged flight simulator that is running at a decent/playable speed on Miyoo. Will give this a go, I'm curious.

And yes, I'm afraid DOSBox is not well optimised for the ARM architecture. It cannot run any game released after 1992 playably (unless the game has very low perfomance requirements). Hopefully UAE4All does a lot better. The only problem I have with Amiga in general is that only a small subsection of DOS games are available on that platform, unfortunately.

I'm currently trying to use a combination of Sega Mega Drive, SNES, and Amiga to compensate. But there are still quite some 90s games that are DOS exclusive.

And canvas-winged flight simulators are one of the hardest things to find -- there are so few of them.

[thogi99]

First of all, @Apaczer this guide and you're work on this is much appreciated. Able to get several things running where DOSBOX is too slow.

Asking this here since other configuration info is here. Is anyone else running this on a V90 or other device where the Amiga screen is larger than the device one? Any suggestions on how to best navigate it?

I'm also assuming that setting up a directory on the parent system as a hard drive is not available in either version (as it is in other version of uae4all). Am I wrong in this?

[Apaczer]

Thanks for kind words, I found Amiga to have a lot of memorable titles for me (Superfrog , JamesPond 2). I also saw that UAE4ALL performs better with similar ports than DOSBox, but for compatibility you would possibly want to stick to latter - there may be some graphical/sound issues with few Amiga games as renderer code is rather outdated e.g. in ZOOL.

As for games with large resolution input there is no scaling options in this UAE4ALL fork, so your best option is only to move output image position vertically with Screen pos option in main menu. I may work on importing SCALER from another repo in some time.

There is also no hard drive emulation or *.hdf support through DH0 mapping, and not sure how to implement it.