EMULATION
When games came in proper big
boxes, with manuals....computer. Amiga needed money and Commodore needed a
new computer, so Commodore bought Amiga outright. Thus the
stage was set for the next great computer rivalry.POST MORTEM
Although the 16-bit Atari ST and Amiga put themselves in the
same category as IBM’s 286 line, they were more like the 32-bit
386 and 486 machines of the day. With software that was released
on both IBM-compatibles and the 68K machines, it was more
likely that the PC versions would be designed for a 386 or 486.
Interestingly, these computers would split largely into two
markets: the IBM-compatibles for North America, and the 68K
machines in Europe. It’s tricky to find sales figures for the ST,
but the Amiga only sold around 700,000 in the US, and around 75
percent of Atari’s sales came from Europe. Most software titles
are therefore European—France loved the ST, and the Amiga was
king in Germany and Britain.
Over the years, Atari released better machines to rival the
Amiga, and the Amiga continued to change and evolve over its life;
full 32-bit models were popular in the ’90s, and there was a failed
attempt at the console market with the CD-32.
As the ’90s progressed, IBM-compatibles were becoming
cheaper, and neither company could compete. Commodore filed
for bankruptcy in 1994. Atari made some 32-bit machines in the
early ’90s, but stopped making computers in 1993 in favor of the
Jaguar console. This failed spectacularly, and ultimately sank the
company at the time.
Believe it or not, you can still buy Amiga clones, and AmigaOS
is still going, running on PowerPC architecture. There’s also
MorphOS, and AmiKIT will run an AmigaOS simulation over your
existing desktop with a classic software collection Then there’s
AROS, an open-source AmigaOS that runs on modern hardware
(such as the x86 and Pi) and the Amiga itself, if you can find one.ATARI ST
If you just want to boot into an ST, Aranym basically
simulates an ST wholesale. It was in our repositories,
but needed a system ROM to start. Enter EmuTOS, an
open-source TOS replacement that even works on a
real Atari ST. Grab the EmuTOS tarball from http://
emutos.sourceforge.net, and then copy the contents
into Aranym’s config folder in “~/.aranym.” That
should sort it.
Hatari is like most emulators (well optioned), rather
than a straight simulation—you can find out more
at https://hatari.tuxfamily.org. It’s probably in your
repositories, but will need its own TOS image as well.
Once again, EmuTOS can provide that.AMIGA
The most popular emulator is FS-UAE, which should
be in your repository, but make sure you install the
launcher package as well. If you’re running without a
custom system ROM, make sure you set the machine to
emulate the Amiga 1200, as this will guarantee the best
compatibility. https://fs-uae.netDOSBOX
Used all over the world, DOSBox is a DOS emulator that
runs everything and is available on a zillion platforms. It
will undoubtedly be in your distro’s repositories, and you
won’t need a BIOS file for it. However, it does take a few
steps to get it going like a normal DOS machine.
We won’t show you how to use DOS, but we will show
you how to set up your C: drive. DOS used a simple file
called autoexec.bat to run its startup commands, but
DOSBox doesn’t actually have this file, nor does it start
with a C: drive. You need to edit its config file to emulate
autoexec.bat and assign a C: drive.
For this demonstration, we’ll assume you’re putting
all your files in a folder called “/dosbox” in your home
directory—this folder will be the C: drive. If you
enable hidden files in your file manager, the DOSBox
configuration is in the hidden folder “~/.dosbox.” Scroll
to the bottom of the file, and find the section [autoexec],
where you put in your lines to execute at startup. Add
these two lines, and DOSBox will now start up with your
C: drive ready to go:
mount c ~/dosbox
c:The Atari ST’s
brilliant MIDI
functions
are used by
big-name
artists, such as
Fatboy Slim.CR
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maximumpc.com JUN 2019 MAXIMUMPC 31