Boing Ball  Amiga Emulator FAQ

Winuae Interface FAQ

Requirements

a) Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10, 11.
b) DirectX 8 or later.
c) WINUAE.EXE installation program.
d) Kickstart ROM(s) from your own Amiga or 'Amiga Forever' (Plus or Premium editions)
e) Some Floppy Disk images in ADF format or CD ROM.

Instructions:

1. Run the installation program to install WINUAE onto your hard disk. If upgrading, use a new directory or use may loose configs, ADF files and Hardfiles.
2. Copy the Roms and kick.rom file to the WinUAE directory.
3. Copy any required ADF disk images to your hard disk e.g. an images directory
4. Run the WINUAE.EXE program and the configuration window will appear.
5. Configure WinUAE to emulate the Amiga:

Amigas

The A500 normally has a 68000 processor and 512K or 1MB Chip RAM with 1.3 Kickstart and OCS/ECS or 2.04 Kickstart for the A500+ with ECS.
The A1000 normally has a 68000 processor, 256K RAM, OCS and Kickstart 1.0 to 1.3.
The A2000 shares the same hardware as the A500 but uses ZII memory, and gfx card option.
The CDTV normally has a 68000 processor, 1MB of Chip RAM with 1.3 Kickstart and ECS Chipset with CD Drive.
The A600 normally has a 68000 processor and 1Mb of Chip RAM with 2.05 Kickstart and ECS.
The A1200 normally has a 68020 processor and 2Mb Chip RAM and 3.0 Kickstart and AGA (Winuae 0.8.8 or better).
The CD32 normally shares the same hardware as the A1200 but has a built in CD ROM drive.
The A3000 normally has a 68030, 1Mb Chip RAM, possibly some Fast RAM and ECS or Gfx card.
The A4000 normally has a 68030/040/060 processor, 2Mb Chip RAM, 2Mb or more Fast RAM and AGA or a graphics card (use Picasso96 to simulate one).
Winuae 3.x+ can be used to emulate the new PowerPC (PPC) processors or 3D graphics cards in Winuae.
More information about Amiga models can be found at the the English Big Book of Amiga Hardware.

RAM Setup

Chip: Default is 2Mb, reduce this to 512K or 1Mb if emulating a A500.
If using more than 2Mb Chip, you cannot set up Fast RAM but can use Z3 Fast RAM.
Fast RAM: Set up 1Mb or more Fast RAM if using Workbench programs. (See Z3-Fast)
Slow RAM: Used to emulate 'fast' RAM via trapdoor on the A500.
32-bit Chip: Can use between 16 MB and 1 GB of RAM.
Z3-Fast : Used to emulate RAM on fast ZorroIII boards, use this for more ram instead of the Fast RAM option.
RTG: Used to emulate RAM for ReTargetable Gfx boards (Picasso96).
A3000/4000 Motherboard: You can specify upto 64 Mb of Motherboard Fast or Processor board Fast RAM.


ROM Setup

Boot ROM File: Insert name of kickstart file here, defaults to kick.rom. If using more than one rom, then enter the name of the correct rom file e.g. kick31.rom. ROM files are supplied with packages such as Cloanto's Amiga Forever or can be grabbed from a real Amiga.Winuae 2.32 has a AROS KS ROM built-in to the system.
Extended ROM File: For things like CDTV and CD32 Roms.
Shapeshifter support: Tick this box if using a Mac emulator from Winuae, needed to allocate needed ram during boot.
MapROM emulation: Tick this box if using BlitzKick type tools.
Flash RAM file: Used to save NVRAM (non-volatile RAM) settings like the CD32.
Cartridge ROM Files: such as those for the Action Replay.

When you first run Winuae, it will do a ROM Scan to check for rom files specified in Paths.


CPU/FPU Setup

Use the 68000 processor (default) if emulating the A500 or A600 Amigas at 7MHz
The 68010 is faster than the 68000 but not as compatible and may crash some games.
The 68020 is a 32 bit processor and much faster than the 68000 as it runs at 14MHz and has instruction/data caches and a MMU
The 68EC020 uses 24 bit addressing but no MMU and is mainly used in the A1200.
The 68030 is used in the A3000 and A4000 desktops and runs at 25
The 68040 is used in top end A4000 desktops and includes an internal FPU.
The 68060 is used in the A4000T and on accelerator cards for other Amigas and includes an internal FPU. It runs at 50MHz.
The 68881/68882 are seperate Floating Point Unit (FPU) chips for the 020 or 030 cpus.
The PPC CPU emulation (Blizzard PPC / Cyberstorm PPC) for PowerPC cpu. This requires the PPC plugin.

CPU Emulation Speed

Use the options given to adjust the speed of the emulation, if defaults to Adjustable so that it spends more time on CPU emulation than Chipset emulation. Move it towards Chipset if the ECS/AGA/Sound requires more priority.
If games run too fast, use the Match A500 Speed option instead. If the emulator is running too slow, use 'Fastest possible, but maintain chip timing' setting, also this will maintain chip timings as well for ECS/AGA chipset..
JIT (Just In Time) has been added from 0.8.16R1 to speed up emulation, you can tweak the settings in JIT Settings if you wish. Set amount of memory to buffer 68k code. See docs with WinUAE on more on how to set this up. You can use 68020 or higher for JIT.


Display Setup

Select the screen resolution to display Amiga display on. 320x200 and 640x400 are commonly used modes on the Amiga. Use Lo-Res for games if required. The 8 to 32 bit selection determines the depth of colours available.
You can use the Correct Aspect ratio option to ensure the Amiga display is not distorted, the Full-Screen options (native or RTG) allows you to fill the entire PC display when using Amiga emulation otherwise you can display the emulator in a Window.
For Line mode use Double to get the best screen mode and X/Y-Centerings can be adjusted to your setup.
There is a Detect Pixel Format button, press this to configure your display when setting up WinUAE for the first time if not done already.
Use Refresh to adjust the screen refresh interval and the FPS Adj. (Frames per second) adjust to compensate for too fast or too slow screens to be playable.

Chipset

Chipset type: You can select which custom chipset to use:
OCS is the Original Chipset used in the A500, A1000 and 2000.
ECS (Agnus, Denise, Full) is the Enhanced Chipset used in the A600, A3000.
AGA is the Advanced Graphics Architecture used in the A1200, CD32 and A4000 modems.
The screen mode will default to PAL (640 x 256) or you can use NTSC (640x200) screen resolution.

Later chipsets can use older chipset modes as well but if you get corrupted graphics, switch to an older chipset to correct them. OCS provides upto 32 colours (4096 in HAM mode), ECS provides 32 colours and higher resolutions while AGA provides upto 256 colours (256,000 in HAM mode).

Misc options: You can specify where to enable Immediate Blitter for faster graphics or Faster RTG to turn off chipset features if using Picasso96 screens or even Cycle exact CPU and Blitter to adjust between CPU and Blitter performance and Genlock connected if using Genlock features for video work.

Collision levels for games:
None: No collision detection enabled.
Sprites: Enable collision detection between hardware sprites (not sure this includes Bobs).
Sprites vs Playfield: Enable collision detection between sprites and background graphics.
Full: Enable all collision detection for everything.

Floppy Drives

You can emulare all four floppy drives named DF0: to DF3: (Disk Floppy number).
If you do not want to write to the disks, enable the Write-protected flag.
Also you can configure the floppy drive speed to load faster, slow or more compatible speeds.
You can create blank floppy disk images using the filesystem of choice: OFS (Orginal FileSystem), FFS (Fast FileSystem) or Custom format and with optional boot block, to allow you to boot from them.
Finally on the Sound tab you can also emulate the sound of the floppy disks including loading and the drive disk check sound.

CD and Hard Disk Drives

Winuae allows you to emulate the CD-ROM drive and Hard disk drives. The early A500 and A1000, A2000 supported SCSI drives and custom built drives. The new A600, A1200, A4000 supported the more popular IDE ATAPI drives in 2.5" or 3.5" sizes.
Filesystems supported include OFS (Original File System) with Workbench 1.0 to 1.2, the FFS (Fast File System) was introducted with Workbench 1.3 which improved disk performance, the disk space used is stored as a 'bitmap', it removed redundancy data and includes data-valifator to 'repair' corruption in case of a crash or failure. Limitations include 32-bit address restrictions limitaing drives to 4GB. Workbench 3.5 and later removed this restriction. Third party file systems can also be emulated including PFS (Professional File System) and SFS (Smart FileSystem).

Winuae supports Hard files which stores data in a HDF formatted file, a Directory based system using Host's file system, an Archive file (gz, zip, 7z, lha) or access a real Amiga formatted hard disk connected to the host. Directory format can be used to access CD or DVD drives instead of using AmigaOS' CD file system, and is used by third party kits like AmiKit and AmigaSYS.

Any disks require a HD Controller to be specified such as IDE, SCSI, or an Accelerator card with a HD controller and they will need a rom file to work.

You can mount your host drives (C: , D: etc) at start so you can access your host's file directory, any removable drives (USB), network drives, CD/DVD drives and Tape drives (used by Amiga Unix system called AMIX).

I/O Ports

Printer: This defaults to your default printer setup. Works mostly with LPT type printers, need TurboPrint for USB Printers.If your printer supports it Winuae can now use Postscript or emulate PS using Ghostscript to print to non-standard printers such as Inkjets if you don`t have a driver. Printer type can be Ascii only, Passthrough, Postscript or Epson Matrix type printer (9 or 48 pin).
Serial: This defaults to None. Select the serial port (COM1, COM2 etc) you wish to use a modem or other device via WinUAE.
If Direct is enabled then it will fixes PC to PC Lotus 2 serial link problems when using serial port.
The Shared option allows for serial-on-demand (shared serial port).
RTS/CTS will enable hardware handshaking on the serial port.
MIDI: This defaults to PC MIDI/Joystick port if one is available on sound card etc. Note, on the Amiga, MIDI was usually used via the Serial port and most Music programs expect it to be on the Serial port.

Game Ports

Amiga Mouse Port 0: This defaults to the Windows Mouse to emulate the Amiga mouse.
Amiga Mouse Port 1: This defaults to the keyboard, if you have a Joystick or Joypad installed, you can switch it to your favourite Game Controller if a driver is installed on the PC. Other options include Keyboard layouts A,B,C, X-Arcade modes or mouse.
For Keyboard, use Num keypad cursor keys (4,8,6,2) and 0 to fire.

Misc Options

Advanced:
Untrap mouse = middle button: If mouse freezes, use middle or scroll button to unlock it.
Minimise when focus is lost: Minimises the emulation window if you switch to another program.
Show GUI on Startup: Displays Winuae config screen before starting Amiga emulator.
Use Ctrl+F11 to Quit: Just press this key combination to quit Winuae.
Don`t show Taskbar button: Disables taskbar button.
Always on top: Ensures winuae screen is on top of PC screens
Disable screensaver: Stops screen saver from starting when using emulator.
Synchronise clock: Sync's Amiga clock with PC clock.
Faster RTG: Speeds up retargetable graphics in the emulator.
SCSI and CD/DVD access: Select type of API to access SCSI and CD devices to suite your OS.
Window style: Select type of window you want to use for emulator (standard, borderless, minimal, extended).
Graphics API: Direct3D or DirectDraw depending on your graphics card.

Older settings:
On Screen LEDs: Displays Amiga disk/power LEDs in full screen mode.
uaescsi.device: Adds support for IDE/SCSI CDROM drives on Amiga side.
Disable powersaving features: Prevents PC going to sleep when using Winuae.
bsdsocket.library emulation: Use this option to allow emulator to connect to internet via the PCs TCPIP connection.
Don't use RGB overlays: Not sure what this does.
Catweasel: Enable Catweasel floppy controller support.

Language:
Select the language for Winuae interface (by default this is English).
For other languages create and/or copy a translation DLL to the WinUAE Program folder and it will appear in the list of languages.
You can use a program such as Resedit to create and modify the translation DLL.

Keyboard LEDs:
Enables Power or Floppy disk LEDs to be shown as keyboard lights on the keyboard instead to emulate Amigas LEDs.
USB mode: Enable USB keyboard use.

Logging:
Create log file: Allows debugging of programs to record what happens when programs crash. See Illegal mem access options to record them too.

Load State:
Load a saved state from disk to resume a session saved earlier. Press END + F5 to restore state

Save State:
You can now save or load a Save State which will save memory to a disk file (.USS) and reload it later. Ideal for saving the current state of an Amiga game which does not allow to save itself and so you can restore from that position later. Press SHIFT + END + F5 to save state

Priority

When Active:
Allow Winuae to run at different priorities if Winuae is active for some time. Default is Above Normal.

When InActive:
Allow Winuae to run at different priorities if Winuae is not active for some time. Default is Normal.

When Minimised:
Allow Winuae to run at a different priority when you minimise the Winuae window or screen to use the PC side. Default is Below Normal.

You can Pause emulation and disable any sound when Winuae is not in use to speed up PC side more.

File Associations:
Lists the file extensions of files that are associated with Winuae. This is usually:
uae = Configuration file
adf = Amiga disk format
adz = Compressed amiga disk format
dms = Disk masher format
fdi = Formatted disk image format (used by Disk2FDI)
ipf = Interchangable Preservation format for disks (see SPS)
uss = User save state

About Display

This display lists the contributors to WINUAE program. The names below will launch your default web browser and display the appropiate web pages. Note, Picasso 96 has RTG (retargetable graphics) drivers to use your PC graphics card in Amiga Emulation via workbench and would be advisable to download this and install it on your Workbench hardfile or dir (if you have one set up). For additional programs and utilities try the add ons from AIAB, AmigaSYS and AmiKit.


Sound Setup

Here you can emulate sound to Disabled, Disabled, but Emulated, Enabled and 100% emulated.
Good sound emulation is dependant on fast PC processors, on the Amiga it is done on the Paula chip independantly of the processor. Normally the Amiga uses 8 bit mono/stereo sound with 4 voices. You can improve emulation by adjusting the options on this screen, if you have DirectX, you can use DirectSound for instance or use WASAPI (Windows Audio Session API) used by Vista or later.
Options include Frequency (11K-48K),Volume, Stereo mode (mono/stereo) and Sound buffer to allow for smoother sound play back.
Use the Emulated option to emulate Amiga sound, use the 100% accurate if more sound accuracy is required (see CPU options to allocate more Chipset priority).
In v0.8.14, Sound Buffering and Interpolation is added to improve the quality of sound playback. If sound pauses or is jittery increase the buffer size.
The Floppy drive sound (as it searches, read or writes to a disk) can also be emulated with volume control.

Floppies Setup

The Amiga can have upto four floppy drives named DF0 to DF3 (e.g. Disk Floppy 0). You can specify the Disk image you wish to load up in the four slots given, always start with DF0 as that is the boot drive, the image is usually a ADF or a ADZ file which can be found and loaded via the ... button to select the image you require from the hard disk or a floppy drive (A:) and the Eject is there to emulate ejecting a floppy disk from the Amiga.

If no image is selected or the disk image is not bootable then the insert disk screen will appear, if that happens press F12 to bring up Floppies again and you can change disks, this is also helpful when a program requires a disk change. Press END key and either F1, F2, F3, F4 to do a disk change and using SHIFT+END and F1-F4 will eject the disk.

The Create Blank Floppy button will create a blank 880K ADF, useful to store data or save games onto. Some games will require smaller 830Kb OFS disks to save games (to do this turn off the FFS button in the Format options in Workbench). NB: You must format the disk before it can be used to save onto. Some games require special formatted disks to save onto, see FAQ page for link for Save Disk Images.

From v0.8.14, you can now disable the other floppy drives DF1-DF3 to save memory for those old games that require every extra byte. Also, you can speed up floppy access upto 8 times as fast. You can now Create Custom Floppy for in-game saves (or download a save game disk from Back2Roots). To improve speed of reading from floppy disks then you may set the Floppy speed to improve performance.

If you have AmigaForever installed, you can find adfs in the C:\Users\Public\Documents\Amiga Files\WinUAE\adf folder on your hard disk, and if you have the AF CD, you can find adfs in the AmigaFiles\Shared\adf folder.

Hard Drives Setup

This allows you to emulate a hard drive for the Amiga. There are three distinct types:

a) Directory. This just uses a PC directory structure to store the Amiga files. The advantage is that you can copy files to/from the PC and Amiga sides at will. So you can copy archives directly into the a directory to be unarchived from the Amiga side and so on. The Disadvantage is that it can take more disk space up (esp. if you have large cluster sizes), and you cannot use File Comments or some Protection Flags (e.g. Script, Pure). Just create a new directory and specify the path to that directory for your virtual Amiga hard disk.

b) Hard File. This is just one big file which emulates Amiga hard disks better with all the features of Amiga HardDisks and probably won't take as much space as Directory HDs. Disadvantages are that you cannot easily expand hard files and you cannot access them from the PC side. To set up a hardfile, specify the path and filename, the Device name (e.g. DH0, DH1 etc),and its size in megabytes e.g. 100 for a 100MB HardFile.

c) Hard Drive. In later versions of Winuae you can add Amiga Formatted hard drives to your PC and select the disk from within Winuae to be able to read the contents of it from the emulator. You will need Windows 2000/XP and Admin rights to use this feature!

You are not restricted to using one Hard disk but you have as many as you require and mix types so that you can use a Directory HD just to swap files between UAE and the PC and use a Hard File to boot and run Amiga disks from.

You can Remove HardDrives from here and view the Properties of Hard Drives as well. You can also access Amiga CD ROM disks by specifying the drive letter of the drive on the PC e.g. D: or E: (without the slash) as a Directory HD and Read only. Alternatively, tick Add PC drives at startup, to allow access to PC disks such PC volumes and Zip disks when starting Winuae. (Use uaescsi.device for CDROMs).
Please note: Always backup your hard files in case of deletion or corruption (get a copy of DiskSalv or other utility to fix FFS disk problems).

From Winuae 2.3.0 you can also mount CD disk drive or images in cue, ccd, mds or iso formats.

Configurations

Finally, you can save your configuration as a file and load up different configurations to emulate different Amigas. So you can have one for basic 512K Amiga 500 upto a Amiga 1200 with 8Mb Fast, Hard Disk and CDROM access. Just use the Save and Load buttons. When starting Winuae to load software, always load the config you need first before clicking OK. Alternatively, save one configuration as default to be loaded automatically.

To change config or exit press F12 to get the config window up. Use Misc tab to display Reset or Quit Winuae options. To boot to another game, press F12, eject previous ADF, load another ADF, press Reset and then OK. You can view Configurations via external links in the Info section for v0.8.14.


Output Tab

New in 0.8.21 is the Output tab which allows you record video and audio (from selected Codec's) to an AVI file.

Filter Tab

Here you can adjust the screen size on the fly using OpenGL or Direct3D subsystems.

 

Input Tab

Here you can configure keyboard and joystick keys or movement to whatever you want. It has a 'Compatibility mode' and four custom configurations where you can change what keys or joystick positions you want mapped to for things such as CD32 joypads which have multiple buttons that you may want to map to buttons on your PC joystick and keyboard to suite your tests.
You can also adjust settings such as Joystick dead zone, Autofire rate, Digital/Analog joymouse speed, Mouse speed and so on.

Most of your keyboard retains its regular functionality under UAE, but there are a few notable exceptions:

Replacements for an Amiga

  Configuration A Configuration B Configuration C
Up Keypad 8 Cursor up T
Down Keypad 2 Cursor down B
Left Keypad 4 Cursor left F
Right Keypad 6 Cursor right H
Fire Keypad 0 Right Control Left ALT

CD32 Joypad Emulation

/ Rewind
* Play
- Fast Forward
7 Green
9 Yellow
1 Red
3 Blue

Paths Tab

On this tab, you may specify the location of Kickstart ROMs, Configuration setting files, saved Screenshots (from Output), saved State files, Video path and Saved Image paths.

 

Quickstart Tab

This screen is useful to use pre-set Amiga configurations and load up disk images for quick emulation without having to go through the the rigmorole of set up a complete configuration to play a game etc.



For further information or advanced features of UAE please read the documentation in the Docs directory that comes with WinUAE or check out the FAQs at Cloanto's AmigaForever page.
To copy Kickstart from your Amiga or make Disk images, copy the files in Amiga Programs to a 720K disk or over a serial network if you don't have CrossDos to your Amiga using Cloanto's Explorer program or something like AmiTrans.

Two sample configurations for A500 and A1200 are provided here: UAE Configurations.

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