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Amiga Emulation
Amiga emulation refers to the activity of emulating a Commodore Amiga computer system using another computer platform. Most emulators run on modern systems such as Microsoft Windows or Macintosh. This allows Amiga users to use their existing software, and in some cases hardware, on modern computers. Attempts have also been made to create a hardware Amiga emulator on FPGA chips (Minimig). One of the most challenging aspects of emulating the Amiga architecture is the custom chipset which relies on critical cycle-exact emulation. As a result, early emulators did not always achieve the intended results; later emulator versions can accurately reproduce the behavior of Amiga systems. Emulators Fellow An actively developed emulator capable of emulating all the common Amiga configurations. (A500, A600, etc...) UAE Although the name varies, this emulator exists for Windows, Macintosh, RISC OS, Linux, Unix and other systems, including the Amiga itself. It is capable of emulating a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emulator
In computing, an emulator is Computer hardware, hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run software or use peripheral devices designed for the guest system. Emulation refers to the ability of a computer program in an electronic device to emulate (or imitate) another program or device. Many Printer (computing), printers, for example, are designed to emulate Hewlett-Packard, HP LaserJet printers because so much software is written for HP printers. If a non-HP printer emulates an HP printer, any software written for a real HP printer will also run in the non-HP printer emulation and produce equivalent printing. Since at least the 1990s, many video game enthusiasts and hobbyists have used emulators to play classic arcade games from the 1980s using the games' original 1980s machine code and data, which is interpreted by a current-era s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RISC OS
RISC OS is a computer operating system originally designed by Acorn Computers Ltd in Cambridge, England. First released in 1987, it was designed to run on the ARM chipset, which Acorn had designed concurrently for use in its new line of Archimedes personal computers. RISC OS takes its name from the reduced instruction set computer (RISC) architecture it supports. Between 1987 and 1998, RISC OS was included in every ARM-based Acorn computer model, including the Acorn Archimedes line, Acorn's R line (with RISC iX as a dual-boot option), RiscPC, A7000, and prototype models such as the Acorn NewsPad and Phoebe computer. A version of the OS, named NCOS, was used in Oracle Corporation's Network Computer and compatible systems. After the break-up of Acorn in 1998, development of the OS was forked and continued separately by several companies, including , Pace Micro Technology, and Castle Technology. Since then, it has been bundled with several ARM-based desktop computers such as t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free Software
Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, not price; all users are legally free to do what they want with their copies of a free software (including profiting from them) regardless of how much is paid to obtain the program.Selling Free Software (gnu.org) Computer programs are deemed "free" if they give end-users (not just the developer) ultimate control over the software and, subsequently, over their devices. The right to study and modify a computer program entails that |
AROS Research Operating System
AROS Research Operating System (AROS, pronounced "AR-OS") is a free and open-source multi media centric implementation of the AmigaOS 3.1 application programming interface (API). Designed to be portable and flexible. , ports are available for personal computers (PCs) based on x86 and PowerPC, in native and hosted ''flavors'', with other architectures in development. In a show of full circle development, AROS has been ported to the Motorola 68000 series (m68k) based Amiga 1200, and there is also an ARM port for the Raspberry Pi series. Name and identity AROS originally stood for Amiga Replacement OS, but to avoid any trademark issues with the Amiga name, it was changed to the recursive acronym AROS Research Operating System. The mascot of AROS is an anthropomorphic cat named Kitty, created by Eric Schwartz and officially adopted by the AROS Team in December 2002. Used in the core AROS About and installer tools, it was also adopted by several AROS community sites and early di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Copyright Laws
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself. A copyright is subject to limitations based on public interest considerations, such as the fair use doctrine in the United States. Some jurisdictions require "fixing" copyrighted works in a tangible form. It is often shared among multiple authors, each of whom holds a set of rights to use or license the work, and who are commonly referred to as rights holders. These rights frequently include reproduction, control over derivative works, distribution, public performance, and moral rights such as attribution. Copyrights can be granted by public law and are in that case considered "territorial rig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kickstart ROM
Kickstart is the bootstrap firmware of the Amiga computers developed by Commodore International. Its purpose is to initialize the Amiga hardware and core components of AmigaOS and then attempt to boot from a bootable volume, such as a floppy disk. Most Amiga models were shipped with the Kickstart firmware stored on ROM chips. Versions Commodore's AmigaOS was formed of both the Kickstart firmware and a software component provided on disk (with the software portion often termed as Workbench). For most AmigaOS updates the Kickstart version number was matched to the Workbench version number. Confusingly, Commodore also used internal revision numbers for Kickstart chips. For example, there were several Kickstart revisions designated as version 2.0. Version summary The first Amiga model, the A1000, required that Kickstart 1.x be loaded from floppy disk into a 256 KB section of RAM called the writable control store (WCS). Some A1000 software titles (notably ''Dragon's L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AHI (Amiga)
AHI (AHI audio system) is a retargetable audio subsystem for AmigaOS, MorphOS and AROS. It was created by Martin Blom in the mid-1990s to allow standardized operating system support for audio hardware other than just the native Amiga sound chip, for example 16-bit sound cards. AHI offers improved functionality not available through the AmigaOS audio device driver, such as seamless audio playback from a user selected audio device (in applications which supported AHI), standardized functionality for audio recording and efficient software mixing routines for combining multiple sound channels thus overcoming the four channel hardware limit of the original Amiga chipset. It also incorporated a unique mode that produced 14-bit playback using the Amiga chipset by combining two 8-bit channels set at different volumes. The first official release of AHI was in 1996. AHI became a widely supported standard for audio hardware and audio software on Amiga Amiga is a family of personal compute ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Advanced Graphics Architecture
Amiga Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA) is the third-generation Amiga graphic chipset, first used in the Amiga 4000 in 1992. Before release AGA was codenamed Pandora by Commodore International. AGA was originally called AA for Advanced Architecture in the United States. The name was later changed to AGA for the European market to reflect that it largely improved the graphical subsystem, and to avoid trademark issues. AGA is able to display graphics modes with a depth of up to s per pixel. This allows for in indexed display modes and (18-bit) in Hold-And-Modify (HAM-8) modes. The palette for the AGA chipset has 256 entries from (24-bit), whereas previous chipsets, the Original Chip Set (OCS) and Enhanced Chip Set (ECS), only allow out of 4096 or 64 colors in Amiga Extra Half-Brite (EHB mode). Other features added to AGA over ECS are super-hi-res smooth scrolling and 32-bit fast page memory fetches to supply the graphics data bandwidth for 8 bitplane graphics modes and wide ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phantasie III Combat
''Phantasie'' is the first video game in the ''Phantasie'' series. Gameplay Based on the Isle of Gelnor, ''Phantasie'' allows a group of six characters to adventure the countryside and try to defeat the evil Black Knights and their sorcerer leader, Nikademus. Players could choose to be one of six character classes (Thief, Fighter, Ranger, Monk, Priest, and Wizard) and could also choose between the races of Human, Dwarf, Halfling, Elf, or Gnome. By selecting "Random" one could also choose from ogre, troll, pixie, gnoll, orc, lizard man, minotaur, and other races. The game was notable for taking advantage of a broad mix of styles for the game: a town window which allowed purchasing in various shops, a top-down style dungeon crawl view, a top-down world map, and a separate combat window. Each character class had unique fighting styles and options and all characters could choose their strategy for a particular round in the turn-based combat segments. After a combat, experienc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amiga
Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphics and audio compared to previous 8-bit systems. This includes the Atari ST—released earlier the same year—as well as the Macintosh and Acorn Archimedes. Based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, the Amiga differs from its contemporaries through the inclusion of custom hardware to accelerate graphics and sound, including sprite (computer graphics), sprites and a blitter, and a pre-emptive multitasking operating system called AmigaOS. The Amiga 1000 was released in July 1985, but production problems kept it from becoming widely available until early 1986. The best-selling model, the Amiga 500, was introduced in 1987 along with the more expandable Amiga 2000. The Amiga 3000 was introduced in 1990, followed by the Amiga 500 Plus, and Am ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Original Amiga Chipset
The Original Chip Set (OCS) is a chipset used in the earliest Commodore Amiga computers and defined the Amiga's graphics and sound capabilities. It was succeeded by the slightly improved Enhanced Chip Set (ECS) and greatly improved Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA). The original chipset appeared in Amiga models built between 1985 and 1990: the Amiga 1000, Amiga 2000, Amiga CDTV, and Amiga 500. Overview of chips The chipset which gave the Amiga its unique graphics features consists of three main "custom" chips; ''Agnus'', ''Denise'', and ''Paula''. Both the original chipset and the enhanced chipset were manufactured using NMOS logic technology by Commodore's chip manufacturing subsidiary, MOS Technology. According to Jay Miner, the OCS chipset was fabricated in 5 µm manufacturing process while AGA Lisa was implemented in 1.5 µm process. All three custom chips were originally packaged in 48-pin DIPs; later versions of Agnus, known as Fat Ag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minimig
Minimig (short for ''Mini Amiga'') is an open source re-implementation of an Amiga 500 using a field-programmable gate array (FPGA). Minimig started around January 2005 as a proof of concept by Dutch electrical engineer Dennis van Weeren. He intended Minimig as the answer to the ongoing discussions within the Amiga community on implementing the Amiga custom chipset using an FPGA. The project's source code and schematics were released under version 3 of the GNU General Public Licence on 25 July 2007. Original prototype The original Minimig prototype is based on the Xilinx Spartan-3 Starter Kit, the Original Amiga Chipset is synthesized in the FPGA. Two printed circuit boards are attached via the FPGA kit expansion ports. The first one holds a 3.3V Motorola 68000 type CPU. The second has a MultiMediaCard slot with a small PIC microcontroller acting as a disc controller that supports the FAT16 filesystem and does on-the-fly Amiga disk file (ADF) decoding. VGA-+-PS2 (joystic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
