Amiga Forever 9.1 Review and Tutorial - Episode 93
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- Опубліковано 24 кві 2021
- This week on 10 Minute Amiga Retro Cast I am reviewing the fantastic Amiga Forever collection from our friends at Cloanto. Just a few weeks back they have updated to version 9.1 and added some fun and interesting features we will be chatting about. You just may learn something new, too!
Want to buy Amiga Forever? Sure you do!
www.amigaforever.com/
Follow me on the Socials!
/ 10marc1
/ 10minuteamigaretrocast
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www.amigaartwork.com
And visit my Patreon so i can feed my twelve starving children and hungry puppy. Or maybe buy more Amiga stuff to review for you. It's one of those two...
/ 10marc - Наука та технологія
You just made using Forever 9.1 alot better, your channel is incredible
Now where is that "Blushing" Emoji? :)
Doug I love your suggestion of a "Do-it-anyway" button!
(and the suggested educational feed-back/warnings)
With such new powers the UAE Universal Amiga Emulator becomes an UNLIMITED Amiga Emulator!
Fun Interesting times ahead for everyone playing or serious about emulated Amiga hardwarez...
Thanks so much. Yes, a "Do it Anyways" button for life in general would be helpful.
This is yet another VAULT of info from Doug!! Thank you for breaking this down. Finally! I always update this but never really dove in to what it truly offers. Now your video has made this so even someone as dumb as I am can use all its awesome!
Awesome! Glad it worked well for you. Now if we could only get it to play back on your new 060 card!
@@10MARC LOL
Man, 10MARC is fantastic. I’ve attended paid work trainings that pale in comparison to videos that Doug makes. I’m glad he has a Patreon that lets me feel like I’m helping to subsidize some of this amazing content. Thanks, Doug!
I swear this is not a paid endorsement! ;) Thanks for the very kind words!
Really good point Doug regarding the customizing of settings.
Thanks! There is a lot under the hood that many ignore, and this stuff is usually not covered in regular reviews. I like to dig a little deeper, but not so much that people are bored and overwhelmed.
I purchased Amiga Forever 9 just a few weeks ago while they were offering it discounted to previous customers, but I haven't installed it yet. Guess now is a good time to check it out.
I think you will enjoy it for sure!
Yet again another superb guide Doug. And yes I agree 100% with your assertions, hopefully Mike will listen. I have always purchased the latest version of Amiga Forever, mainly to support him. All I ever do however is fire it up when the new version comes along, have a little play. Nod that it’s nice. And then sadly that’s it, I never look at it again until the next version. Which is a real shame. It offers so much. The GUIs a lot nicer and easier to use. Let’s face it, whilst WinUAE is an amazing piece of software that does everything you could wish, it’s back end can only be described as something only it’s mother could love. (I don’t want to upset anyone here, it works and I’m not complaining).
Being an owner of an Amiga 500 with 3.1.4 kiskstart, 2mb chip ram and 128mb Fast z3 ram with an 030 processor I can’t actually cannot select this as a custom option in Amiga Forever. Which is a real shame. I’d probably use Amiga Forever if I could create the setup I desire.
This is very true. Mike should consider the modern accelerators that we are buying and make sure his software can make a similar setup. The inability to add Z3 Fast Ram to an A2000 setup baffles me - we have been doing that with real hardware since about 1988 when the first 020 boards came out.
Cheers Doug - I've had a lifetime subscription type thing with AF for a while, but only really for the reasons you stated at the start (legal roms and usable WB ADFs etc).
You've just encouraged me to download the latest update and have a proper play.
Being able to read/write to my A500's CF card is awesome, I had no idea it was capable of doing that.
So I can now take 'my Amiga' (really just the hard drive) with me (on my laptop) but plug it back into the real Amiga when I'm at home etc. Nice!
That is a really good way to look at it! You can take your Amiga with you now. Very clever!
Glad you enjoyed the video.
I never used Amiga Forever, going to go purchase it today! Thanks Doug. Great video!
It is a great way to explore the different Amiga's! I hope you enjoy it, and tell Mike I sent you!
I purchase Amiga forever even though I don't use it. Would rather they had the money
That is a nice thing to do. I occasionally use it to test things out, but 95% of my Amiga use is on real Amiga's. I have been backing them up to Amiga Forever, and that is handy.
Everything should have a "do it anyways" button.. :D This is really interesting, last Amiga Forever I bought was 2008 or something! Might upgrade, hmm.
Nothing drives me crazier than Software companies removing features and options that used to exist. Microsoft is one of the biggest culprits - removing good features and replacing them with colorful fluff instead.
@@10MARC I guess the "Do it Anyways Button" is to buypass the Forever program and just run WinUAE which I believe is included in it's original unaltered state.
@@10MARC Apple is even more eggregious when it came to OS X. It removed the built in personal web server, and it stripped almost all of the functionality of OS X Server. As well as taking out Cover Flow from it's music listening apps.
Nah NTSC stands for "Never The Same Colour" and was an early and outdated video standard... :)
Great preview BTW
Oh yes, it is my solemn duty to continue the old NTSC vs PAL debate.
You are right, i bought it for the same reason ;) And i like the physical version.
I have the physical version and it is nice to have all the DVD extras. The price for the download version is absurdly low!
Learned something. Someone once told me U stood for Unix Amiga Emulator, which I thought was weird as at the time I never heard of an Amiga Emulator for any Unix
There is a Linux version that has about 1/2 the features of WinUAE. That's the one that runs on the Raspberry pi
remember the early days of UAE when it was kinda 'unusable' (well, rather buggy) and all the chit chat about how Amiga couldn't really be emulated properly .... amazing project imho, that they got it working as well as it does
opens up all kinds of possibilities for easily running Amiga programs in environments that would have been extraordinarily expensive to do on actual hardware, perhaps even impractical depending
do love running my old Amiga 600, but emulation is way cool as well
Well, UAE used to actually stand for "Unuseable Amiga Emulator"!
@@10MARC yup, think tongue-in-cheek ... but, not far off the mark
I first bought Amiga Forever after the Retro Bug bit me. At the time I did not know about the ROM's which turned out to be a blessing. I played with it for a while and your right about moving over to WinUAE because that's where I went. I did upgrade Amiga Forever and the last time I bought it was when I wanted to play with the PPC and install OS4.1 Classic so I bought both from ATOL just to get going. I did play with it for a while but I ran into issues so I got discouraged by it but that obviously was user error on my part. I will buy a physical copy of the new Amiga Forever, I really like to put my hands on something. Even though I have Classic Hardware I do like to play in emulation from time to time and having an install on my notebook means its all portable so if I am at work and desire to play a round of Battle Chess its there for me to do so. I have used WinUAE to setup my CF Cards for my Classic Amiga's never used Amiga Forever to do it. Having CF or SD Card backup images comes in handy for when you mess something up and don't want to spend hours undoing something or when an accelerator card decides to bugger up a CF Card the first time it actually writes something to it and yes I have an HC508 card that does not like CF Cards so its not currently in use.
Very similar story to mine. I would often try Amiga Forever, and then just toss it away in frustration and go back to WinUAE. I now use Amiga Forever for it's strengths, but occasionally go right to WinUAE for some of my more advanced builds.
I have an older version of it. The main thing I use it for is the Amiga Explorer program. I used it yesterday to transfer some files to my PC, and I've used it to backup hard drives and floppy disks in the past. It's great.
I use WinUAE for normal emulation, though.
Yep. Amiga Forever is great - I decided not to cover it, since it would have added another 15+ minutes to an already long video!
uae also used to be called "ubiquitous amiga emulator". :D
i also use amiga forever since 1998! version 2.0 was the first version i purchased. followed by 3.0, 5.0 and 6.0 (skipped 4.0). after a long break i returned to amiga in 2013, purchased both amiga forever 2013 premium and c64 forever 2013. in 2014 i upgraded both to amiga forever 7 (boxed) c64 forever 7 (digital).
some years later (when amiga/c64 forever 8 came out) i purchased a lifetime license for both emulation products. version 8 of both products i got only as digital download since there was nothing new on premium edition dvds compared to version 7.
two weeks ago i had the opportunity to meet our good friend mike battilana from cloanto in person again in my hometown klagenfurt (for the first time since amiga34 show in 2019 and since that damn human malware dropped in). and mike gave me boxed premium editions of both amiga/c64 forever 9! many thanks, mike!
like you i also mostly use roms and adf to create my own emulation evironments in winuae directly. i also don't use the frontend very much. i only use frontend of c64 forever for adding c64 games and making these games ready to run. that's convenient.
currently i'm waiting for cloanto to fix a bug introduced in version 9. when working with .rp9 files there are tons of dllhost.exe processes spawned which don't quit after not being used anymore. you can only get rid of these running processes by rebooting the system. that's a bit annoying but cloanto is already working on that problem. :D
there's another bug which is there for years: after every upgrade to a newer version of amiga forever ralphschmidt-cyberstorm-ppc-4471.rom file is 0kb therefore unusable. so everytime i after upgrading amiga forever i have to restore ralphschmidt-cyberstorm-ppc-4471.rom file. :D
regarding file sharing between windows and emulation, i always use ONE shared folder on my windows pc for such purposes. for safety reasons i NEVER add my actual windows partitions to an amiga emulation. as i said, just ONE folder.
btw. doesn't ntsc stand for "never twice the same colour?" :D
Great info! Thanks for pointing out the .dll big, I had not noticed it. Yes, Mike is truly a kind person and a pleasure to talk to.
I can't imagine anything bad happening by adding the PC drives to a WinUAE session, but I suppose anything is possible. I only enable that when I need to transfer something.
Yep. Never Twice Same Color is my favorite acronym for NTSC!
I bought the first version that come out in the 90s 😊
Me too! It was possibly earlier than 99 that I mention in the video. I don't even remember the year I bought my A1200!
I've always used WinUAE only to prepare CF cards for my actual Amiga 1200 and never needed another thingy :) And I don't see any other reason to use AF, but it was nice to see the details with pros and cons... Thanks...
That's a fantastic pairing of leveraging modern platform's abilities to aid older machines. Love it
This is a very popular use for it. I use it to fire up a game now and again myself.
Great video Doug. Well done. Personally, and I know this is polarizing, but I think Mike charges so little for the legal Roms, and what AF is, is a "fire and forget" solution for noobs like myself. I actually love it. It doesn't stop the more hard-core using WinUAE for "whatever" so I dont see what the contention is all about. The prices are great, and the interface for a noob is spot on. I love the new arcade view. I also love your "workaround". Great job as always. Stay safe mate :)
I would be interested in knowing what percentage just bypass AF and just use WinUAE with the AF ROMS and Workbench. With my friends it is about 80% but they tend to be high end hacker types.
@@10MARC Sadly I think the question is, how many use WinUAE with illegal Roms. That's the real shame IMO given the price is so reasonable. Maybe (outside of Amiga Essentials on the Google Play Store) he could offer an easier, low cost ROM package?
If somebody cannot afford the $10 he is asking for for Amiga forever, then maybe they should not be dabbling in a retro hobby! Hahaha.
12 starving children, named Amiga 1000, 500, 3000, 1200, 2000, 4000 times 2. lol
Maybe...
Cool
I appreciate that. Glad you liked the video. The more I use Amiga Forever, the more I learn about it.
@11:10 exactly what I did in AF8 when I discovered that limit.. Have been asking Mike a few times to select any KS (even custom home-made) for any system, but we are still stuck with the pre-allowed versions for each of the emulated Amiga-model.
Not a perfect solution, but it certainly does work! I do understand his point for locking them out, but he needs to understand that his target market wants that feature available.
A lot who want to use a Amiga out of the box might go for a Pi setup or MisTer. Having a do want you want might get some back. Make Amiga Forever 10 the best one out.
You have a point. I have a pi400 that I like a lot, but it is harder to use and less compatible that the default machines set up in Amiga Forever, and enable JIT CPU processing, and you don't get any faster!
Amiga Forever is essentially an "Amiga out of the Box" for people who only have space for their Windows computer. If you get the full package what you get IS ready to run.
This is very true - it's faster and more compatible than a Vampire V4, and runs right on your existing machine.
Not as fun as real or new hardware, though, IMHO.
Great vid Doug. I do like Amiga Forever, and I would love to use it as my daily driver, but to your points, is it just not quite there for power users. I just upgraded last year, so not sure those few features are worth the upgrade.
Last year's version is perfectly good for most people, but if you have the paid version it may be worth it to see if the upgrade is free. You can usually check in and check for updates
first, i like your video's very much. I have almost alle type's of the amiga, here in the netherlands
You're right. Douglas makes good explanatory videos. Please don't forget to Like and Subscribe.
Thanks very much! I appreciate that. There seem to be a lot of Amiga fans in the Netherlands!
Very kind words my friend.
Doug is Nutz 😂
Possibly.
well, have not dived in to the structure of AF, but I bet there is a config file for each machines, allowing for different settings and roms.
You are probably right. A lot of his code seems to be in XML format, and can probably be edited. Sure would be nice if we did not have to do that... And if we do, then we might as well just use WinUAE! That's the dilemma. Make it customizable easily, or we will probably use a different product.
@@10MARC
I guess so...
However, I do not think Cloanto cares about Amiga or you as a user, as long as you buy the ROMS from them regulary...
Actually... I suggest that people should go with the 3.1.4 ROM and use a core Emulator (WinUAE, FSUAE, WinFellow or in my case Amibian), yes it cost a little bit more... but there is actually something done to it, to make it "better", even if most of the contributers where not get paid? as I have heard it.
The old ROMS and Workbench stuff is stagnated, just a slow but steady way to get money for nothing. and what they do is basically a launcher for WinUAE or Winfellow, which they also do not contribute too? but use.
So go for the cheapest option, DL from Google Apps and Android.
So... Yea!
Either way, it is quite relaxing to watch your videos.
Mike cares more than you might suspect, but it may not always come across that way.
I am a big user of Amiga OS 3.1.4 and I really do wish the creators would get paid for their efforts. Hopefully some century it will get resolved
Short answer: no, long answer: I have asked Mike.
@@peoyli
Stupid, hardcoded the settings then? But what are all those ini files that seems to be settings for WinUAE, for then?
Anyway, yet another reason not to use it.
Now if you go in to the cloanto amiga forever folders and use the winuae or winuae64 program files directly, are these the original Winuase software and does it run the way you want it to do?
If you launch the WinUAE that comes with Amiga Forever, it works 100% how you would expect it to run. I just put a shortcut to it on my desktop for when I need it.
"Meat and potatoes" an excellent choice of terminology... it may sound a bit corny, but you're doing a grape job here Doug! Please lettuce know about any improvements to future versions. Yours sincerely Dew C Melons.
My eyes just rolled so hard they fell out of my head, Pete. Expect a bill from my optometrist.
@@10MARC 😄
Legal ROMs ftw! Never used the Amiga Forever before, but after seeing this, might have to play around with it some. It looks like the configuration stuff may be easier to work with. We use WinUAE for a lot of things in our videos, Amy's voice with Say, artwork with DPaint, etc, it is just more convenient sometimes than lugging out the real stuff. We do of course still greenscreen their faces with real hardware. Now you might want to be careful though when you're putting your PC drives into the Amiga environment, messages could be intercepted by Miss DOS!
Wait... You create Amy's voice with say?!?!? Are you telling me she is not real? OMG Clicky is going to be FURIOUS when he finds this out! He's real.... right?
@@10MARC Oh um, that was meant to say Amy uses it. Yeah, that's it. Those 5th dimensional AREXX scripts are something else I tell ya. You should see the libraries folder for that.
Whew! What a relief! You had me worried there for a minute.
Does the license you get when you purchase the Amiga Forever DVD allow you to install on more than one computer?
I don't recall having a problem using it on a few machines. It seems to work OK
Hey Doug.Do you happen to know what the specific way to use HDF files with Amiga Forever is? I'm using the premium edition and have tried everything I can think of :-/
Never had an issue with them. On the properties screen you generally just point to your HDF file and it boots from it. You will find my email on my "About" page in UA-cam. Send me a message there and I will describe it further.
@@10MARC Thanks so much! Just sent it.
I’m a vegetarian too - woohoo!!
Great choice!
@@10MARC just like the Amiga!
Thank You. I already own Amiga Forever 9, but I found Your video very interesting. Coming back to Amiga scene after so many years, I just got confused by the new OS... 3.5 , 3.9 , 4.0 , 3.1.4 ...what a mess.... Must I change the Roms on my real machines ? Can You point me in some direction ? Thank You!
Make sure you check out my tutorials on Amiga OS 3.1.4 - I have a playlist on my channel page with all of them in it.
AmigaOS 3.1 was the last one Commodore played a part in.
AmigaOS 3.5 and 3.9 came in the early 2000's from Haage & Partner - they were quite good and modernized the Amiga substantially, but required a CD ROM and 6MB of RAM to run. They closed shop and that branch died. It used 3.1 ROMS
Amiga OS 3.1.4 is a new upgrade from Hyperion, but its legality is questioned by the current license holders (Cloanto) - there is an unpleasant lawsuit that will hopefully be resolved soon. This version is quite good and stable, and fixes some shortcomings of 3.1 like offering integrated Large Drive Support. It really needs a 3.1.4 ROM, but will work with a 3.1 ROM.
All of my main machines are upgraded to AmigaOS 3.1.4, and I have virtually no compatibility issues.
@@10MARC Thank You !
Hi Doug, apologies in advance if this is too long a question Anyway thanks for a great video and you answered a question I have been trying to figure out for a while now, and your video prompted me to try again. I now have 3.1.4 installed on AF and it works fine as per your video. However when I am trying to run the update disk and it asks for CPU drivers. I am trying to get it running a 68040 but that's where all the problems start.
Can you point me in the right direction please or I guess I will just have to run it without the update installed. Thank you anyway
Best wishes
Dave
The error on startup says -
Loading Workbench:Libs/intuition.library failed: invalid resident library
C:LoadModule failed returncode 10
A 68040 or 68060 processor was found in your system but a corresponding CPU library is missing.
This may lead to serious system instabilities.
Please insert "Install3.1.4:" disk and reboot the system from there, install the CPU libraries of the CPU board vendor or a suitable generic replacement.
The update disk readme says
---------------------
Intuition-V45.library
If you are already using the optional intuition-V45.library, the
Update3.1.4.1 installer will attempt to update it automatically.
If not, remember that this Update disk contains a new version of the
optional extension of the Intuition system library that is responsible
for the graphical user interface. Enabling this extension will allow
you to partially drag windows off the screen.
Unfortunately, this version of the library is incompatible with the
CyberGraphX system, and that is why it is disabled by default. It is
however, compatible with the P96 graphics system.
To manually install and enable this feature in case you do not use
CyberGraphX, you should perform the following steps:
*) Select "Execute command" from the Workbench menu, and enter the
following commands:
rename LIBS:intuition-v45.library to LIBS:intuition.library
*) If your OS 3.1.4 installation was performed over the 3.1.4 ROM,
LoadModule has to be installed manually. For that, insert the
"Modules" disk, and open a CLI/Shell an type:
copy df0:c/LoadModule sys:c
If you are somehow unable to find your "Modules" disk you can
download LoadModule from aminet.net/util/boot/LoadModule.lha
The Startup-Sequence of your Amiga will also require a modification if
you have a new 3.1.4 kickstart rom. Select "Execute command" from the
Workbench menu, and enter the following command:
Ed S:Startup-Sequence
A window containing the startup script of your Amiga will open. The
first lines on the screen should read as follows:
If Exists C:LoadModule
C:Version exec.library version 46 >NIL:
If Warn
C:LoadModule ROMUPDATE
EndIf
EndIf
Replace them with the following:
If Exists C:LoadModule
C:Version exec.library version 46 >NIL:
If Warn
C:LoadModule ROMUPDATE
Else
C:LoadModule LIBS:intuition.library
EndIf
EndIf
Then save the result back to disk by pressing the "Esc" key, then the
"X" key, then press "Return". And finally reboot your machine.
Sounds like you need the libraries for the faster CPU's. You can get those on Aminet, or even better just load "BestWB" from Gulliver - those have the CPU libraries built into the install. A third option are the MMU.lib installation.
Just do a Google search for BestWB gulliver amiga and you will find the download.
@@10MARC Great advice Doug thank you. Installed BestWB and it works now although trying to get full screen on A Surface Pro 3 AND getting the mouse pointer to be a decent size is proving a challenge, I can have full screen and a tiny mouse cursor or a large cursor and not quite full screen, still Its nice to get the amiga going again even if its only emulated. Loved the video on AF so thanks for that. Appreciate everything you do. Take care
Hello! I'd like to ask if it is possible to play some 3D games on Amiga Forever? Specifically I'm looking to play games like Alien Breed 3D II and Genetic Species. Has anyone had luck emulating those games with AF?
Oh sure. Those work fine. You can emulate an 060 chip with 256 MB of RAM if you want! Plenty of power to run those games at full speed!
@@10MARC Thanks for the reply! Alright now that I know it's possible, just have to try fiddling more with the program settings
have you seen the new PiStorm? looks very cool
Yes, I have one coming in. I am looking forward to seeing how she works.
I have AF 7, is 9 significantly better or for me are the difference to trivial to bother?
I like the new enhancements. One of the most useful to me personally is that the interface can use the 64bit version of WinUAE now, which can address more memory. For the tiny or non-existent upgrade price (depending on which version you bought) I would certainly upgrade.
When I use my Xbox One controller as a gamepad the joycons sensitivity is really fast and moves too quickly so I can't play games too well. Is there a way to fix this?
I don't recall a sensitivity setting. I have used XBox 360 and Generic USB controllers I and I have not seen them move too fast. Maybe a setting within Windows itself? All my controllers tend to be USB
You talk about using CF cards with Amiga machines. Don’t understand how that would work on my 1000. Or is that not possible on older machines?
You can use most A500 Accelerators such as the Classic 520, ACA500+, many Terriblefire, the Vampire 500V2 and others just fine on an A1000, and those either have CF interfaces, or IDE interfaces, or both!
would there be an amiga forever without winuae ??
No, probably not. But there would be no Adobe Photoshop without Windows or Mac, either... And Mike has a close relationship with the team that does WinUAE I believe.
is anyone able to open .lha files with whd content? when i do, the program freezes up and needs restarting.
Seems to work OK for me, You have the latest version?
@@10MARC yes, latest version updated through the program
@@gattmawer3030 OK. Just for laughs, make sure that the properties of the LHA file were not transferred as "Read Only" - sometimes Windows has its way with Amiga Properties.
You are also welcome to email me one of the LHA files you are testing and I will test it on my machine. You can find my email in the "About" section of my page, or any of the contact points in my video descriptions.
@@10MARC strangely enough, it has started working after rebooting the whole system (something i dont do very often on this system), and without further intervention. I hope it stays working. thank you for your attention, and good job with your vids.
Do they have a Linux front end yet?
I no longer run Windows at all. I'm now 100% Linux.
I would be happy to pay for a product that works on my system., but buying a product for another OS, that I have to tear apart to make use of is insane.
Would you buy a Mac at full price, if you had to desolder chips and put them on your own motherboard? I wouldn't.
Cloanto doesn't seem to want my money, just like apple doesn't. Because they don't make a product I want to buy.
You are correct. I doubt if a Linux front end for Amiga Forever will be made. It is so heavily entwined with WinUAE that it would take a total rewrite to work with the Linux version of UAE. Probably not worth it since he might sell 15 or 20 copies of it.
@@10MARC It's a shame. I thought UEA was the basically the same across all platforms, with WinUEA just being a GUI for UEA on WIndows.
No, they're dramatically different. winUAE has about 10 times as many options as the one on Linux. They both do the job okay though.
I haven't tried it, but can't you use WINE to run it on Linux? Or just run a virtual machine to run a copy of Windows. As for Apple not making a product you want to buy... they are no different to any other manufacturer. They make products some people want and some people don't. They don't want to make generic PC compatible computers. That market is flooded, and the profit margins are slim. You might as well criticise Nike for not producing wedding dresses.
@@another3997 I think it runs OK using Wine - I have not tried it, though
Why does all your 10 minutes of Amiga Retro always last a lot longer than 10 minutes?
Because everything beyond 10 Minutes is FREE BONUS CONTENT! Aren't you lucky! 🤣😉
Yay! I am so lucky. 😬