Tutorial
raspberrypi.org/magpi The Official Raspberry Pi Projects Book 153
TURN YOUR PI INTO AN AMIGA
PUBLISHER-APPROVED
GAME DOWNLOADS
Amigaland
amigaland.de
Ami Sector One
magpi.cc/2dDLElL
Dream17
dream17.abime.net
Games Coffer
gamescoffer.co.uk
Gremlin Graphics World
magpi.cc/2dDKZ3Son a Raspberry Pi edition, so you’ll currently have to
install Amiga Forever on a Windows PC or Wine and
copy the files onto a USB stick.
There are other ways of obtaining Kickstart ROMs,
but most are legal grey areas. You can extract them
from an Amiga using a tool such as TransRom or
find them on abandonware sites, but we strongly
recommend supporting Cloanto’s continued
development of Amiga Forever.
Classic Amiga software is even easier to find. You’ll
get 50 games with Amiga Forever Plus, while some
major publishers have made the Amiga versions of
their games available for free (see above).
Many more games are only available online as legally
dubious abandonware. They’re easily found using any
search engine, but inform yourself of the legal status of
such software in your region before you download.
One true path
As Amibian doesn’t include a window manager, it’s easiest
to download and copy everything to a USB stick using your
operating system of choice. Helpfully, UAE4ARM can read
Amiga ADF floppy images even if they’re in a zip file.
We recommend copying everything to your microSD
card. Fire up your Pi, exit UAE4ARM, and run:
mcCopy your game files from /media/usb to
/root/amiga/floppys, and your Kickstart ROMs,
including a Cloanto rom.key file if you have one, to
/root/amiga/kickstarts. Quit Midnight Commander
and reboot:
rebootIn the latest version 1.313 of Amibian, two different
versions of UAE4ARM are supplied. If you plan on using
two Xbox 360 controllers, button mapping on controller
two works best using the ‘old’ version, although the
‘new’ edition generally provides more options. To
switch between the two, at the command line type
either rpiold or rpinew. The following configuration
instructions work with both versions.
Configure UAE4ARM
First, go to the Paths tab and click Rescan ROMs
so UAE4ARM knows where to find everything.
The Configurations tab lets you select from several
preset hardware emulations, with the default being an
A1200 - just select and Load your chosen computer.
You can tweak your virtual hardware in the CPU and
FPU, Chipset, and RAM tabs.
Your configuration selection doesn’t always set the
relevant Kickstart ROM for you, so check the ROM
tab, where you can choose Kickstarts from a pull-
down menu. Note that many games require a specific
ROM or hardware configuration to work properly,
depending on which system they were originally
released for.
To run most software, you’ll need the Floppy drives
tab. Just press the ... icon next to drive DF0’s Eject
button, select the desired disk image, and click Start.
By default only drive DF0 is active, and most
titles expect this configuration. To swap disks
when prompted, press F12, eject the disk image
in DF0, select the disk image you’re asked for,
and click Resume.
F12 will always pause and return you to UAE4ARM’s
main interface, so you can create a save state – a
stored image of your progress in a game – or give up
and load something new. The Reset, Quit, and Start/
Resume buttons are always visible in UAE4ARM’s GUI.
Reset completely reboots your emulation and Resume
returns you to your current game.
UAE4ARM automatically detects Xbox controllers.
You can use two controllers for multiplayer gaming- if the second is unresponsive, you may need to
press F11 to disable your mouse and switch control
to the pad. If you’re running the ‘new’ version of the
emulator, first select your controllers from the pull-
down Port0 and Port1 menus in the Input settings.
Now you’ve got your Amiga emulator up and
running, there’s plenty of scope to build on the
project, from setting up virtual hard disks to
install Workbench and other software onto, to
creating floppy images from your own original
Amiga disks and using the Pi’s GPIO to connect
a classic 1980s joystick.