Amiga emulation refers to the activity of

emulating In computing, an emulator is 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 peri ...

a Commodore

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 graphi ...

computer system using another

computer platform A computing platform or digital platform is an environment in which a piece of software is executed. It may be the hardware or the operating system (OS), even a web browser and associated application programming interfaces, or other underlying s ...

. Most emulators run on modern systems such as

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...

. 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 A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturinghence the term '' field-programmable''. The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a hardware de ...

chips (

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 inte ...

). 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 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 Archim ...

, Linux, Unix and other systems, including the Amiga itself. It is capable of emulating a 68K Amiga, including undocumented behavior, with OCS and/or

AGA Aga or AGA may refer to: Business * Architectural Glass and Aluminum (AGA), a glazing contractor, established in 1970 * AGA (automobile), ''Autogen Gasaccumulator AG'', 1920s German car company *AGA AB, ''Aktiebolaget Svenska Gasaccumulator'', a ...

chipsets and modern graphics and audio subsystems, including true colour graphic libraries and Amiga AHI 16 bit audio subsystem.

Denise

Originally designed as C64 emulator, the freeware Denise (version 2.0 and higher) can also emulate an Amiga 500 and an Amiga 1000 (for this, it needs the Kickstart versions 1.3 and 2.04 as .rom files). ( https://sourceforge.net/projects/deniseemu/ )

Legality

Amiga emulation software is legal by itself. However, a copy of a

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 ...

from a real Amiga is required for legal use, which is still protected under

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, education ...

. The Workbench software and many other programs and games are also copyrighted and illegal to download, although there are a number of recognized sites which offer free legal downloads of Amiga games. The Amiga Forever emulation package offers legal copies of Kickstart, Workbench and various games. Another legal option for Amiga emulation is the

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 p ...

, which is available as

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, no ...

. An AROS boot ROM can be used instead of Kickstart, which allows booting the m68k port of AROS from a floppy or CD image.

External links

FS-UAEWinFellowUAEe-UAEWinUAEPSPUAE-Amiga emulator for PSP
*

References

Amiga Amiga emulators {{Emulation-stub