Unix Amiga Emulator
Encyclopedia
UAE is a computer
emulator
which emulates the hardware
of the Commodore Amiga range of computers. Released under the GNU General Public License
, UAE is free software
.
In its early stages, it was known as Unix
Amiga Emulator and later with other names as well. Since none of the popular expansions fit any more, the abbreviation no longer stands for anything, and the software is simply known as UAE — this occasionally gets backronym
ed as Universal Amiga Emulator or Ubiquitous Amiga Emulator.
For software, UAE may use disk image
s made from original Amiga floppy disk
s. These images have the file extension of "ADF
" (Amiga Disk File). Actual Amiga disks cannot be used, because of limitations in the floppy controllers used in other computers
Images of Amiga formatted hard drives can also be made. UAE also supports mapping host operating system's directories to Amiga hard drives.
s, including Linux
, Mac OS
, FreeBSD
, DOS
, Microsoft Windows
, RISC OS
, BeOS
, Palm OS
, the Xbox
console, the PSP
and GP2X
handhelds, the Wii
console, and even AmigaOS
, MorphOS
and AROS
, where it allows software that requires the Amiga chipset to be run on PowerPC
-based AmigaOS machines.
and other public forums where people argued about the possibility of writing an Amiga emulator. Some considered UAE to be attempting the impossible; to be demanding that a system read, process and output 100 MB/s of data when the fastest PC was a 66 MHz 486
, while keeping various emulated chips (the Amiga chipset) all in sync and appearing as they were supposed to appear to software.
For a long time, UAE was almost entirely unusable but slowly and step by step, it fleshed out its support of the Amiga chipset and by 1998 was able to more-or-less emulate an Amiga 500
at full speed.
Today, UAE is usable, thanks partly to the effort taken to develop it and partly to the big improvements in technology that brought computers many times faster than those UAE was initially expected to run on. Many Amiga games
and applications can run smoothly on a Pentium II
-era system. The realization that a useful Amiga emulator could be written contributed to an increase in enthusiasm about emulation, which started or sped-up efforts to write emulators for other and often less popular computer and electronic game architectures.
A major improvement was made in 2000 by Bernd Meyer with the use of Just-in-time compilation
, which significantly improved the emulation speed, to the extent that average PCs could now emulate some Amiga software
faster than any real Amiga could run it. UAE can use as much of the host's power in native mode
as possible, or balance it with other requirements of the host OS, or to accurately reflect the original speed, depending on a user's choice. UAE also provides an RTG
-compatible "video card
" for the Amiga side of the emulation which is tailored for display on the host hardware, so as not to be limited to the emulation of the original Amiga video hardware.
Today the most active fork is WinUAE; however, current versions of this still contain some bugs and compatibility issues. WinUAE has reasonable compatibility for most software but, just like a "real" Amiga, for some old games it requires careful configuration in order to match the originally-supported hardware. For example, 68000 code could cause an exception on an emulated 68040, just like it would perhaps do on an Amiga 4000
/040.
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
emulator
Emulator
In computing, an emulator is hardware or software or both that duplicates the functions of a first computer system in a different second computer system, so that the behavior of the second system closely resembles the behavior of the first system...
which emulates the hardware
Hardware
Hardware is a general term for equipment such as keys, locks, hinges, latches, handles, wire, chains, plumbing supplies, tools, utensils, cutlery and machine parts. Household hardware is typically sold in hardware stores....
of the Commodore Amiga range of computers. Released under the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
, UAE is free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
.
History
UAE was released in 1996 and was originally called the Unusable Amiga Emulator, due to its inability to boot.In its early stages, it was known as Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
Amiga Emulator and later with other names as well. Since none of the popular expansions fit any more, the abbreviation no longer stands for anything, and the software is simply known as UAE — this occasionally gets backronym
Backronym
A backronym or bacronym is a phrase constructed purposely, such that an acronym can be formed to a specific desired word. Backronyms may be invented with serious or humorous intent, or may be a type of false or folk etymology....
ed as Universal Amiga Emulator or Ubiquitous Amiga Emulator.
Features
UAE is almost a full featured Amiga emulator. It emulates most of its functions:- Original Chip SetOriginal Amiga chipsetThe Original Chip Set was a chipset used in the earliest Commodore Amiga computers and defined the Amiga's graphics and sound capabilities...
(OCS), Enhanced Chip SetEnhanced Chip SetThe Enhanced Chip Set is the second generation of the Amiga computer's chipset, offering minor improvements over the original chipset design. ECS was introduced in 1990 with the launch of the Amiga 3000. Amigas produced from 1990 onwards featured a mix of OCS and ECS chips, such as later versions...
(ECS) and Advanced Graphics ArchitectureAdvanced Graphics ArchitectureAdvanced Graphics Architecture is the third generation Amiga graphic chip set, first used in the Amiga 4000 in 1992. AGA was codenamed the Pandora chipset by Commodore International internally....
(AGA), although AGA emulation remained problematic - I/O devices (floppy diskFloppy diskA floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles...
driver, joystickJoystickA joystick is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. Joysticks, also known as 'control columns', are the principal control in the cockpit of many civilian and military aircraft, either as a center stick or...
, mouseMouseA mouse is a small mammal belonging to the order of rodents. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse . It is also a popular pet. In some places, certain kinds of field mice are also common. This rodent is eaten by large birds such as hawks and eagles...
and serial ports) - Processor (Motorola 68k)
For software, UAE may use disk image
Disk image
A disk image is a single file or storage device containing the complete contents and structure representing a data storage medium or device, such as a hard drive, tape drive, floppy disk, CD/DVD/BD, or USB flash drive, although an image of an optical disc may be referred to as an optical disc image...
s made from original Amiga floppy disk
Floppy disk
A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles...
s. These images have the file extension of "ADF
Amiga Disk File
Amiga Disk File aka ADF is a file format used by Amiga computers and emulators to store images of disks. It has been around almost as long as the Amiga itself, although it was not initially called by any particular name. Before it was known as ADF, it was used in commercial game production, backup...
" (Amiga Disk File). Actual Amiga disks cannot be used, because of limitations in the floppy controllers used in other computers
Images of Amiga formatted hard drives can also be made. UAE also supports mapping host operating system's directories to Amiga hard drives.
Portability
UAE has been ported to many host operating systemOperating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
s, including Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, Mac OS
Mac OS
Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
, FreeBSD
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...
, DOS
DOS
DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...
, Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, RISC OS
RISC OS
RISC OS is a computer operating system originally developed by Acorn Computers Ltd in Cambridge, England for their range of desktop computers, based on their own ARM architecture. First released in 1987, under the name Arthur, the subsequent iteration was renamed as in 1988...
, BeOS
BeOS
BeOS is an operating system for personal computers which began development by Be Inc. in 1991. It was first written to run on BeBox hardware. BeOS was optimized for digital media work and was written to take advantage of modern hardware facilities such as symmetric multiprocessing by utilizing...
, Palm OS
Palm OS
Palm OS is a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants in 1996. Palm OS is designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provided with a suite of basic applications for personal information management...
, the Xbox
Xbox
The Xbox is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Microsoft. It was released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe and is the predecessor to the Xbox 360. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console...
console, the PSP
PlayStation Portable
The is a handheld game console manufactured and marketed by Sony Corporation Development of the console was announced during E3 2003, and it was unveiled on , 2004, at a Sony press conference before E3 2004...
and GP2X
GP2X
The GP2X is an open-source, Linux-based handheld video game console and portable media player developed by South Korean company GamePark Holdings. It was released on November 10, 2005, in South Korea only....
handhelds, the Wii
Wii
The Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo on November 19, 2006. As a seventh-generation console, the Wii primarily competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. Nintendo states that its console targets a broader demographic than that of the two others...
console, and even AmigaOS
AmigaOS
AmigaOS is the default native operating system of the Amiga personal computer. It was developed first by Commodore International, and initially introduced in 1985 with the Amiga 1000...
, MorphOS
MorphOS
MorphOS is an Amiga-compatible computer operating system. It is a mixed proprietary and open source OS produced for the Pegasos PowerPC processor based computer, PowerUP accelerator equipped Amiga computers, and a series of Freescale development boards that use the Genesi firmware, including the...
and AROS
Aros
Aros may refer to:*Aros , a river in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium*AROS Research Operating System, a free software implementation of AmigaOS* Aros, the original Viking name of Aarhus, the second largest city in Denmark...
, where it allows software that requires the Amiga chipset to be run on PowerPC
PowerPC
PowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...
-based AmigaOS machines.
Emulation speed
There have been many threads in the past on UsenetUsenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
and other public forums where people argued about the possibility of writing an Amiga emulator. Some considered UAE to be attempting the impossible; to be demanding that a system read, process and output 100 MB/s of data when the fastest PC was a 66 MHz 486
486
Year 486 was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Basilius and Longinus...
, while keeping various emulated chips (the Amiga chipset) all in sync and appearing as they were supposed to appear to software.
For a long time, UAE was almost entirely unusable but slowly and step by step, it fleshed out its support of the Amiga chipset and by 1998 was able to more-or-less emulate an Amiga 500
Amiga 500
The Amiga 500 - also known as the A500 - was the first “low-end” Commodore Amiga 16/32-bit multimedia home/personal computer. It was announced at the winter Consumer Electronics Show in January 1987 - at the same time as the high-end Amiga 2000 - and competed directly against the Atari 520ST...
at full speed.
Today, UAE is usable, thanks partly to the effort taken to develop it and partly to the big improvements in technology that brought computers many times faster than those UAE was initially expected to run on. Many Amiga games
Amiga games
Amiga games are computer games compatible with the Commodore Amiga.The Amiga was an important platform for games in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Of all the 16-bit home computers, it was the one to gain the greatest success as a games machine due to its graphic and sound subsystems, which were...
and applications can run smoothly on a Pentium II
Pentium II
The Pentium II brand refers to Intel's sixth-generation microarchitecture and x86-compatible microprocessors introduced on May 7, 1997. Containing 7.5 million transistors, the Pentium II featured an improved version of the first P6-generation core of the Pentium Pro, which contained 5.5 million...
-era system. The realization that a useful Amiga emulator could be written contributed to an increase in enthusiasm about emulation, which started or sped-up efforts to write emulators for other and often less popular computer and electronic game architectures.
A major improvement was made in 2000 by Bernd Meyer with the use of Just-in-time compilation
Just-in-time compilation
In computing, just-in-time compilation , also known as dynamic translation, is a method to improve the runtime performance of computer programs. Historically, computer programs had two modes of runtime operation, either interpreted or static compilation...
, which significantly improved the emulation speed, to the extent that average PCs could now emulate some Amiga software
Amiga software
Amiga software covers a wide range of software for the Amiga computer, both productivity and games, commercial, freeware and hobbyist. The Amiga software market was particularly active in the late 1980s and early 1990s but has since the period 1996/1999 dwindled into almost only a hobbyist...
faster than any real Amiga could run it. UAE can use as much of the host's power in native mode
Native mode
The term native mode or native code is used in computing in two related senses.*to describe something running on a computer natively or in native mode meaning that it is running without any external support as contrasted to running in emulation....
as possible, or balance it with other requirements of the host OS, or to accurately reflect the original speed, depending on a user's choice. UAE also provides an RTG
RTG
RTG may refer to:* Radio Télévision Guinéenne, national broadcasting company of Guinea* Radioisotope thermoelectric generator, a nuclear electrical generator* Regular tree grammar, a formal grammar that describes a set of directed trees...
-compatible "video card
Video card
A video card, Graphics Card, or Graphics adapter is an expansion card which generates output images to a display. Most video cards offer various functions such as accelerated rendering of 3D scenes and 2D graphics, MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoding, TV output, or the ability to connect multiple monitors...
" for the Amiga side of the emulation which is tailored for display on the host hardware, so as not to be limited to the emulation of the original Amiga video hardware.
Project development
There are currently two main forks of the original program:- WinUAE, designed to run on WindowsMicrosoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
- PUAE, designed to run on *nix platforms (a fork of the inactive E-UAE)
Today the most active fork is WinUAE; however, current versions of this still contain some bugs and compatibility issues. WinUAE has reasonable compatibility for most software but, just like a "real" Amiga, for some old games it requires careful configuration in order to match the originally-supported hardware. For example, 68000 code could cause an exception on an emulated 68040, just like it would perhaps do on an Amiga 4000
Amiga 4000
The Commodore Amiga 4000, or A4000, is the successor of the A2000 and A3000 computers. There are two models, the A4000/040 released in October 1992 with a Motorola 68040 CPU, and the A4000/030 released in April 1993 with a Motorola 68EC030....
/040.
See also
- Amiga ForeverAmiga ForeverAmiga Forever is an Amiga preservation, emulation and support package produced by Cloanto, which allows Amiga software to run on non-Amiga hardware legally and without configuration. The Windows version of Amiga Forever includes two Amiga emulators, WinUAE and WinFellow, while the other supported...
- Basilisk IIBasilisk IIBasilisk II is an open source software emulator which emulates the 680x0-based Apple Macintosh computer on a variety of operating systems, including BeOS, Linux, AmigaOS, Windows NT, Mac OS X and even on the Sony PSP....
, Apple Macintosh emulator which uses UAE to emulate the 68k processor - FellowFellow (computing)Fellow is an emulator designed to run software written for the Amiga computer platform. Released under the GNU General Public License, Fellow is free software....
, another Amiga emulator which was released not too long after the first usable versions of UAE, and generated competitionCompetitionCompetition is a contest between individuals, groups, animals, etc. for territory, a niche, or a location of resources. It arises whenever two and only two strive for a goal which cannot be shared. Competition occurs naturally between living organisms which co-exist in the same environment. For...
beneficial to both projects. - POSEPOSE (Palm OS Emulator)Descended from Copilot, Palm OS Emulator is used for writing, testing, and debugging Palm OS applications. Palm OS Emulator emulates Motorola 68000-class devices and has intimate knowledge of Palm OS's inner working, allowing for the close monitoring of correct application operation...
, Palm OSPalm OSPalm OS is a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants in 1996. Palm OS is designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provided with a suite of basic applications for personal information management...
emulator that is based on Copilot, which in turn was based on UAE's m68k emulation - TiEmuTiEmuTiEmu is an emulator that works on many different operating systems like Linux/Unix, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows and so on. It emulates the Motorola 68000 series Texas Instruments graphing calculators...
, Texas InstrumentsTexas InstrumentsTexas Instruments Inc. , widely known as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, United States, which develops and commercializes semiconductor and computer technology...
calculatorCalculatorAn electronic calculator is a small, portable, usually inexpensive electronic device used to perform the basic operations of arithmetic. Modern calculators are more portable than most computers, though most PDAs are comparable in size to handheld calculators.The first solid-state electronic...
emulator, which uses UAE for the core m68k emulation
External links
- UAE Website
- WinUAE Website
- E-UAE Website
- PUAE - fork of E-UAE
- Gamebase Amiga - provides a single click rom starting interface on top of WinUAE