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1.1 root 1: This is version 0.6.4 of UAE, the Un*x Amiga Emulator.
2:
3: #include <drivel.h>
4:
5: Copyright 1995, 1996 Bernd Schmidt & contributors (see below). This program is
6: freeware. You may do whatever you want with it for personal use.
7: Permission is granted to redistribute this program free of charge, provided it
8: is distributed in the full archive with unmodified contents and no profit
9: beyond the price of the media on which it is distributed is made. Exception to
10: the last rule: It may be included on freeware/shareware collections on CD-ROM.
11: There are no warranties of any kind for this program. If you use this program,
12: you do so at your own risk. The authors are not responsible for any damages
13: that might result from using this program.
14:
15:
16: Overview
17: ========
18:
19: UAE emulates the hardware of an A500 with 2MB chip and a variable amount of
20: fast memory. Up to 11.8MB RAM are supported. It works with all Kickstart ROM
21: versions, provided they are not compiled for the 68020. It supports some (one,
22: to be precise) ECS features apart from nearly all the functionality of an OCS
23: chipset.
24:
25: UAE was developed for Unixoid systems. Meanwhile, it has been ported to the
26: Mac, DOS, the BeBox, NextStep, the XFree86/OS2 environment and AA Amigas (it
27: can't quite run itself yet). The Mac and DOS versions are distributed with
28: binaries and a seperate README file that you should read after you have
29: finished this document. The other versions must be compiled from the source
30: code.
31:
32: What UAE does not (yet) emulate is software. To use UAE, you need a Kickstart
33: ROM image as well as any other software you want to run, e.g. a Workbench
34: disk. Both are copyrighted, and I can't include them. Don't ask me to send
35: them to you.
36: Since the PC floppy controller can't read Amiga disks (yes, that's a fact),
37: floppy access has to be emulated differently: Floppies are emulated by means
38: of disk files that contain a raw image of the floppy disk you want to emulate.
39: Read the section "tools" below for information how to create ROM images and
40: disk files.
41: You can also emulate a harddisk. UAE can mount native filesystems as
42: harddrives, so once you have booted it up, you can access all your files on
43: the harddisk. It is currently impossible to boot from the emulated harddisk.
44: I don't have a clue why.
45:
46: I am developing UAE using Linux. Only if you are running Linux can you be
47: reasonably sure that all versions of UAE will work for you. On other Unix
48: systems, you may encounter problems from time to time. I can make no
49: guarantees about the NextStep and BeBox versions, these are very recent ports
50: and will probably need some more time before they compile/run reliably.
51:
52: These are the requirements for getting the Unix version to run:
53: - X11, or SVGAlib if you are using Linux.
54: - an ANSI C compiler. GCC is _strongly_ recommended.
55: - Optionally, tcl7.4/tk4.0
56:
57: Note: some Linux installations (usually Slackware) are broken. If you get
58: linker errors ("final link failed: bad value"), you need to upgrade the
59: binutils package that you can find on sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/GCC
60: Before installing anything from that directory, read the corresponding
61: release.* files.
62: You'll get better performance if you are using an ELF system.
63:
64: On Linux, 8MB are sufficient to run UAE, although startup will be much faster
65: if you have some additional memory. The DOS version also works with 8MB, but
66: startup is slow there too. I have not tried the other ports, it may well be
67: that other OS's are better at wasting memory. At least 16MB are recommended.
68:
69: This section is just what it says: an overview. Please read _all_ of this
70: file, especially if you have problems. Please read also the file "FAQ" which
71: contains some Frequently Asked Questions (and even the answers!)
72:
73:
74: Installation
75: ============
76:
77: To build UAE, first unpack it to an appropriate directory (e.g. /usr/src/uae
78: on a Linux system). After that, you will have to edit the file config.h to set
79: some configuration options. Then, you should give the command "configure".
80: This script will determine what type of system you are using. It will then
81: create an appropriate Makefile. Type "make" after that to build UAE.
82:
83: If you are running Linux, you can say "configure --without-x" as an
84: alternative. If you do this, UAE will be configured to use the SVGA library.
85: If you use SVGAlib, be warned that SVGAlib is not too stable and using it is
86: inherently a little dangerous, you might want to have a way to log in from a
87: remote terminal if things go horribly wrong. If you are very unfortunate, you
88: might lock up your machine otherwise.
89: Note that you must be root to run SVGAlib programs. Making UAE suid root is
90: _not_ a particularly good idea if you care about the security of your system.
91: If you have a BeBox, you should not run configure. Instead, compile UAE by
92: doing "make bebox".
93:
94: If you configure UAE for building the X11 version (which is the default if you
95: simply say "configure"), the configure script will try to find the program
96: "wish4.0" in the path. You can disable the UAE user-interface by passing the
97: "--disable-gui" option to configure. By default, the X11 version of UAE
98: tries to use a GUI written in Tcl. This requires Tk version 4.0. The SVGAlib
99: version uses a ncurses-based user interface.
100:
101: The compilation may take a while, especially for the cpu*.c files. There might
102: be some warnings, ignore these. It may also take a lot of memory. You should
103: have at least 8MB physical RAM to compile this, plus maybe 10MB swap and 9MB
104: filesystem space.
105:
106: After compilation, you'll need to install the ROM image. This must have a size
107: of exactly 512K (if you only have a 256K image of a 1.x Kickstart, that should
108: work, too) and should be an image of the addresses 0xF80000-0xFFFFFF on
109: your Amiga system. The file must be called kick.rom to be recognized. Please
110: read the next section on how to transfer files from your Amiga to your PC.
111:
112: You also need to install a disk image file. This must be called df0.adf (adf =
113: Amiga Disk File), and should be a raw image of the data on the floppy disk:
114: 11x2x80 sectors == 901120 bytes.
115: Please try running UAE without a diskfile first. If everything went O.K., the
116: emulator should show the Kickstart logo (don't be too impatient, this will
117: take a while on slow machines).
118:
119: If you don't have a Kickstart file, you may still be able to boot some games
120: and demos. The emulator includes some primitive bootstrap code that will try
121: to read and execute the bootblock of the diskfile you are using, and if that
122: bootblock only uses the one or two Kickstart functions that are supported by
123: the "replacement Kickstart", your program will boot. Don't expect too much,
124: though.
125:
126: If you are a daring person, you can edit custom.c before compiling and enable
127: the "EMULATE_AGA" define. UAE will then try to emulate some AGA features. I'd
128: like to hear feedback as to how well it works (expect it not to work at all
129: for a start).
130:
131:
132: Invoking UAE
133: ============
134:
135: After building the program, you should have an executable called "uae". You
136: can simply execute it, but you can also optionally give it one of the following
137: parameters:
138:
139: General options:
140: -h : Give help on the options.
141: -f n : Sets the frame rate to 1/n. Only every nth screen will be drawn.
142: -a : Add no expansion devices. This will disable fastmem and harddisk
143: emulation, but some extremely badly-written games may need this.
144: -l lang : Set the keyboard language. Currently, the following values can be
145: used for lang: "us" for U.S. keyboard (default), "se" for swedish,
146: "fr" for french, "it" for italian or "de" for german keyboard.
147: -0 file : Try to use file as diskfile for drive 0 instead of df0.adf.
148: -1 file, -2 file and -3 also exist for the other drives.
149: -r file : Use file instead of kick.rom as Kickstart image.
150: -J : Use the numeric pad for joystick emulation (with 5 and 0 as fire
151: buttons). This will turn off real joystick support. It's no good
152: for action games, but may be useful for other games.
153: -x : General-purpose option. For the X version, it makes the X cursor
154: visible (recommended). For the SVGAlib version, it turns off
155: linear framebuffer support (sometimes, with -d 4, SVGAlib is
156: faster without linear framebuffer).
157: -o : Allow UAE to overwrite ~/.uaerc with the selected options. This is
158: only used by the text-based GUI in the SVGAlib and DOS versions.
159: -G : Disable the user interface (if present).
160:
161: Emulating external devices (harddisk, printer, serial port):
162: -M VOLUME:path
163: -m VOLUME:path
164: mount the unix file system at path as an Amiga filesystem with
165: volume name "VOLUME:". For example, "-M sound:/usr/amiga/modules"
166: If you use -M instead of -m, the volume will be read only.
167: See below.
168: -p cmd : Enable printing. See below.
169: -I dev : Use "dev" as serial device (e.g. /dev/ttyS1 on Linux). Doesn't
170: really work yet, at least not for me.
171:
172: Sound options:
173: -S n : If your version of UAE supports sound, set the sound support level
174: with this option.
175: n = 0: No proper sound emulation at all. May be incompatible
176: (unlikely). This is the default.
177: n = 1: Emulate the sound hardware, but don't output sound. May be
178: needed for compatibility, but can be much slower
179: n = 2: Emulate the sound hardware and output sound. Recommended.
180: n = 3: Emulate the sound hardware _exactly_. I don't think you'll
181: hear a difference. SIDmon modules will be emulated
182: correctly, but painfully slow with this setting.
183: -b n : Use n bits for sound output (8 or 16)
184: -R n : Use n Hz to output sound. Common values are 22050 Hz or 44100 Hz.
185: -B n : Use a sound buffer of n bytes (use small values on fast machines)
186: Default is 8192.
187:
188: Memory options:
189: -s n : Emulate n*256K slow memory at 0xC00000. Some demos/games need this.
190: -F n : Emulate n megabytes of fast memory as an expansion board.
191: -c n : Emulate n*512K chip memory. The default is 2MB chipram. Some very
192: broken programs need "-c 1" to work properly.
193:
194: Debugging options:
195: -D : Don't start the emulator at once, use the built-in debugger.
196: -i : Print illegal memory accesses
197: -g : Emulate parts of the OS. This isn't very stable and not
198: recommended.
199:
200: Display options:
201: -d mode : Select a graphical resolution for UAE to run in.
202: -H mode : Select a color mode to use.
203: -C : Correct the aspect. Normally, graphics will be only half as high
204: as they should be, this option draws every line twice to correct
205: this. It makes the emulation slower, though.
206: Proper emulation of interlace mode is impossible without this
207: option.
208:
209: Resolutions: 0 (320x200); 1 (320x240); 2 (320x400); 3 (640x480);
210: 4 (800x600).
211: Color modes: 0 (256 colors, default); 1 (32768 colors); 2 (65536 colors)
212: 3 (256 colors, with dithering to improve color quality)
213: 4 (16 colors, dithered); 5 (16 million colors)
214:
215: UAE may choose to ignore and/or refuse some combinations of these two
216: parameters. Some of these modes may also fail to work on your system.
217:
218: You can also put these options into a configuration file in your home
219: directory. Simply create ~/.uaerc and put some of these options in it. On
220: non-Unix systems, the file is called uae.rc and should be located in the
221: current directory.
222:
223: If you use SVGAlib, the only way to leave the program is pressing F12.
224:
225:
226: Choosing color and screen modes
227: ===============================
228:
229: As described in the previous paragraph, UAE can run in many different
230: resolutions and color modes. However, few of the color mode options are
231: available if you use the X11 version of UAE, since the X server determines
232: how many colors are available. If you are running a 256 color X server, you
233: can use "-H3" to tell UAE to dither the colors for better results.
234:
235: You will have to experiment which mode gives the best results for you at a
236: satisfying speed. Note that the dithering process consumes time, so even if
237: 256 colors with dithering look better than 256 colors without, remember that
238: UAE will be slower in that mode.
239:
240: The low-resolution (320x???) modes should help some of the proud owners of new
241: P6 systems with a broken chipset and an exciting PCI performance of 4MB/s :-)
242:
243: The recommended resolution is 800x600. In the lower resolution modes, some
244: overscan pictures the Amiga tries to display may not fit entirely on the
245: screen, others may be off-center and some graphical effects may look weird.
246: For best results, use 800x600 with at least 32768 colors.
247:
248:
249: Harddisk emulation
250: ==================
251:
252: !! Careful: All of this has been rewritten for this version. There may be
253: bugs, please report any strange events.
254:
255: Using diskfiles is awkward. There are two ways how you can use larger amounts
256: of data with UAE. UAE can emulate more than one harddisk at one time, the
257: volumes will be named UAE0:, UAE1:, etc. UAE will boot from UAE0: if no
258: diskfile is found for floppy drive 0.
259:
260: a) Harddisk files.
261: You can create a (unformatted) harddisk file with
262:
263: dd if=/dev/zero of=hardfile bs=512 count=16384
264:
265: Currently, the size is fixed (8MB).
266:
267: The harddisk file is accessed by a resident ROM module that is built into the
268: emulator, called "hardfile.device". If it is present, this is always the first
269: harddisk device the emulator finds and will be named UAE0:
270:
271: If you are using Kickstart 1.3 or earlier, this can't currently be mounted at
272: boot time, and therefore you can't boot from it either. You will have to boot
273: either from a floppy disk image or from a filesystem (see below), and mount
274: the hardfile.device later. To do this, add the following to "DEVS:mountlist":
275:
276: UAE0: Device = hardfile.device
277: Unit = 0
278: Flags = 0
279: Surfaces = 1
280: BlocksPerTrack = 32
281: Reserved = 1
282: Interleave = 0
283: LowCyl = 0 ; HighCyl = 511
284: Buffers = 5
285: DosType = 0x444F5300
286: BufMemType = 1
287: #
288:
289: Then, type "mount UAE0:" (or put that command in your startup-sequence), and
290: you should be able to access it. Don't forget to format it with the AmigaDOS
291: format command:
292:
293: format drive uae0: name Mister_Willwink
294:
295: b) Access native filesystems from the emulator.
296:
297: This has some major advantages:
298: - It has no problems with Kickstart 1.3
299: - It is more convenient.
300: - It is much faster. In fact, it can be dramatically faster even than a real
301: Amiga when reading directories.
302:
303: However, it currently does not work on some ports.
304:
305: If you specify the -M or -m command line arguments, you can use files on your
306: Unix filesystem from the emulator. If you start UAE with
307:
308: uae -m sound:/usr/amiga/modules
309:
310: you can access all the files in /usr/amiga/modules by reading from the
311: AmigaDOS volume "SOUND:".
312: (DOS users: try "uae -m dh0:C:\" to mount your drive C:\ as DH0:)
313:
314: If you want to execute files, they need to have the x permission bit set.
315: That can be done in Unix by "chmod +x file" or in AmigaDOS with
316: "protect file rwed".
317: You can mount up to 20 devices by giving this option multiple times.
318:
319:
320: Tools / Transferring files
321: ==========================
322:
323: To transfer any software between an Amiga and another computer, you'll need
324: either a tool like CrossDOS or MessyFS on the Amiga that lets you read and
325: write PC formatted disks, or a serial null-modem cable. CrossDOS is part of
326: the newer Amiga operating systems; MessyFS is free software and can probably
327: be found on some old Fish disk. To transfer data over a null-modem cable it is
328: useful to use some sort of terminal software on both ends. I can't explain
329: here in every detail how to use terminal programs or CrossDOS. Please read the
330: appropriate documentation. Note: If you use a tool to read/write PC-formatted
331: disks on the Amiga, remember that most Amiga drives handle only DD disks, so
332: don't try to use HD floppies.
333:
334: In the "amiga" subdirectory you'll find two small Amiga programs that you can
335: use to transfer software from the Amiga to the PC. These are called transrom
336: and transdisk. Copy them to your Amiga and make them executable (by typing
337: "protect transrom rwed" and "protect transdisk rwed" in the Amiga shell
338: window).
339: transrom will dump the contents of your Kickstart ROM, and transdisk will
340: dump an image of a floppy in one of the drives. Both programs write to the
341: standard output, so you'll want to redirect that. Do
342:
343: transrom >ram:kick.rom
344:
345: to create a file called "kick.rom" in the RAM disk, and
346:
347: transdisk >ram:df0.adf
348:
349: to create a file called "df0.adf" in the RAM disk. These files are pretty
350: big, 524288 bytes for the ROM image and 901120 bytes for a disk image.
351: transdisk understands the following arguments:
352:
353: -d device unit: Use this device instead of DF0:
354: -s n: Begin transfer at track n (default: 0)
355: -e n: End transfer at track n (default: 79)
356:
357: So, to transfer the disk in drive DF1:, you'd give the command:
358:
359: transdisk >ram:df1.adf -d trackdisk 1
360:
361: If you don't have much RAM and can't fit all of a disk image in the RAM disk,
362: you can split up the transfer into multiple parts with the "-s" and "-e"
363: parameters. To transfer the disk in four parts, you'd use the following
364: commands:
365:
366: transdisk >ram:df0_1.adf -s 0 -e 19
367: transdisk >ram:df0_2.adf -s 20 -e 39
368: transdisk >ram:df0_3.adf -s 40 -e 59
369: transdisk >ram:df0_4.adf -s 60 -e 79
370:
371: Of course, you should save each of the four files to another place before
372: transferring the next one with transdisk to make space in your RAM disk.
373: If you have all the files on your PC, you can do the following under Unix:
374: cat df0_1.adf df0_2.adf df0_3.adf df0_4.adf >df0.adf
375: or, under DOS:
376: COPY /B df0_1.adf df0_2.adf df0_3.adf df0_4.adf df0.adf
377: I've been told there are the following tools for the Mac to join binaries:
378: "ChunkJoiner 2.1.2" found under Info-Mac's <disk> directory or
379: "JoinFiles 1.0.1" under Info-Mac's <text>.
380:
381: The current transdisk can only read the standard AmigaDOS format. This means
382: that most games that rely on some form of copy-protection cannot be
383: transferred. However, there are disks that are formatted in the normal 880K
384: format that transdisk can read, but don't have a filesystem ("NDOS" disks
385: in the Workbench). These will be transferred correctly.
386:
387: There's an easy way to use a null-modem cable without terminal software if
388: you use Linux. You can do
389:
390: transdisk >SER: <options>
391:
392: on the Amiga to copy the data directly to the serial port. Before that, do
393:
394: cat /dev/ttyS1 >df0.adf
395:
396: on your Linux box to receive the data (it may be ttyS0 on your system, or
397: another number, depending on which serial port you are using). When the Amiga
398: is done transferring, hit ^C on the PC to interrupt the cat program. To make
399: this work, you need to use the same settings for the serial port on both
400: sides. This is done with the Preferences program on the Amiga (this is split
401: into several programs from Kickstart 2.0 upwards, you'll find a program called
402: "serial" in the Prefs directory of your Workbench disk). On the Linux side,
403: use the stty program. "man stty" will give you the manpage describing how to
404: use it.
405: To be on the safe side, set the speed to a low value (2400 baud). Turn off
406: Xon/Xoff, but enable RTS/CTS.
407: I use the following command myself:
408:
409: stty 19200 parenb -cstopb cread clocal crtscts -istrip -inlcr -icrnl -opost
410: -onlcr -parodd -isig -icanon -iexten raw cs8 </dev/ttyS1
411:
412: which is probably overkill, but you never know :)
413: This maps to 19200 baud, 8 bits, even parity, one stop bit, which you have to
414: set in the Amiga preferences.
415:
416: If you transfer commercial software, you must not distribute the resulting
417: image files, since that would be a violation of copyright law. The Kickstart
418: ROM has to be considered commercial software. You may only use the Kickstart
419: from your own Amiga, and you may not distribute Kickstart ROM files.
420: Please read the license that came with your software for details.
421:
422: If you have a disk image file, and you want to retrieve the files from it, you
423: can use the "readdisk" tool. It is automatically built by "make". If you have
424: a disk image of a disk called "Workbench1.3D" as df0.adf, and you do
425: readdisk df0.adf
426: the whole directory structure of the disk image will be stored in a newly
427: created subdirectory called "Workbench1.3D". You can optionally give a second
428: parameter to specify a directory where to create the output other than the
429: current directory.
430: readdisk only understands about the OFS right now. FFS disks will cheerfully
431: be regarded as being unreadable. Use the unixfs.device from within the
432: emulator if you want to transfer files from FFS disks. If you use Linux with
433: a kernel version >= 2.0.7 and version 2.5k of the mount program, you can do
434: mount df0.adf /mnt -t affs -o loop
435: You'll need to enable support for the Amiga filesystem and the loop device
436: when configuring and compiling the kernel.
437:
438:
439:
440: The UAE_CONTROL program
441: =======================
442:
443: In the "amiga" subdirectory, you will find two programs, uae_control and
444: uaectrl that provide the same functionality as the X11 GUI. uaectrl is
445: shell-based and works with any Kickstart, while uae_control needs the
446: gadtools.library and a recent version of reqtools.library, so it only works
447: with Kick 2.0 and upwards. Copy these two programs to the directory that you
448: use for harddisk emulation. They should be self-explanatory.
449:
450:
451: Printing
452: ========
453:
454: With the "-p cmd" option, you can specify a command that will be run when the
455: emulator detects that the Amiga accesses the parallel port. Usually, you will
456: want to say "-p lpr" to pass the output over to lpd. It's unclear how this
457: will work on non-Unix systems, DOS users can try "-p LPT1:" or something like
458: this.
459: For best results, select the PostScript driver in the Amiga Preferences. This
460: is only available in newer Kickstarts. Printing is not going to work with
461: another printer driver.
462: None of this is guaranteed to work yet, and I have not tried any of this yet.
463:
464:
465: Quick overview of the debugger commands
466: =======================================
467:
468: If you use the X11 version, you can press ^C at any time to enter the built-in
469: MC68000 debugger.
470: Each debugger command consists of a single letter and occasionally some
471: parameters.
472:
473: g: Start execution at the current address.
474: c: Dump state of the CIA and custom chips.
475: r: Dump state of the CPU
476: m <address> <lines>: Memory dump starting at <address>
477: d <address> <lines>: Disassembly starting at <address>
478: t: Step one instruction
479: z: Step through one instruction - useful for JSR, DBRA etc.
480: f <address>: Step forward until PC == <address>
481: q: Quit the emulator. You don't want to use this command.
482:
483: (^C has no effect if UAE is compiled for SVGAlib - use F12 to exit)
484:
485:
486: Input devices
487: =============
488:
489: Mouse, keyboard and joystick can be used in a straightforward way. A couple of
490: keyboard languages are supported with the "-l" commandline option. If you have
491: a different keyboard, patches to make UAE work with it are appreciated.
492: The X version of the emulator will try to keep the Amiga mouse pointer at the
493: same location as the X mouse pointer. You can turn off this mode if it does
494: not work with your program by pressing F12. This is needed (for example) for
495: Lemmings and the Magnetic Scrolls adventures, which don't use sprite 0 as a
496: mouse pointer. Other versions (SVGAlib, DOS, possibly others) do not have this
497: problem.
498: If you use Linux and have the joystick driver kernel module, "configure"
499: should automatically enable support for it. UAE calibrates the joystick
500: automatically. Turn it a few times on startup to get the calibration done.
501:
502:
503: Sound
504: =====
505:
506: If you define LINUX_SOUND in config.h, the emulator will use /dev/dsp to
507: output sound. You can pass parameters like frequency or number of bits to use
508: on the commandline; if you don't specify any, sane defaults will be used. If
509: graphics output is enabled while sound is output, the emulator will be much
510: too slow on most systems. The sound will not be continuous. Therefore, a hack
511: to turn off screen updates is provided: Press ScrollLock to disable graphics,
512: press it again to enable them (note: for X, you'll have to press it twice each
513: time).
514: The LINUX_SOUND_SLOW_MACHINE option will steal cycles from the CPU emulator.
515: The relative CPU speed will be reduced somewhat if this option is set. This may
516: lead to incompatibilities.
517:
518: The quality of the emulation depends on the setting of the "-S" commandline
519: option. With "-S 3", all of the sound hardware is emulated; and some programs
520: (e.g. AIBB) won't run with other settings. "-S 2" should sound just as good as
521: "-S 3" and will be much faster for some programs. "-S 1" tries to emulate most
522: of the sound hardware, but doesn't actually output sound. "-S 0" completely
523: turns off sound.
524:
525: On other Unix systems, the AF sound system may be available. You can configure
526: UAE to use this, too, by changing some paths in the Makefile (I can't answer
527: any questions about this, I never saw/used it).
528:
529:
530: Speed
531: =====
532:
533: The Most Frequently Asked Question is: "Just how fast is it?", and this is
534: also the most difficult one to answer. The easy way to answer is "It depends",
535: but I'll try to do better. All timings I give here were measured on my
536: machine, a P90 (using SVGAlib, with all the x86 assembly options turned on).
537: The MC68000 emulation is more than twice as fast as a real A500. I measured
538: this by letting PowerPacker try to compress itself (it already was compressed).
539: It took UAE about 6 minutes, my A500 took about 15. If you set the frame rate
540: to a high value (i.e. leaving out many frames), the graphics speed does not
541: matter and you get about twice the speed of an A500. If you enable the smart
542: update method in config.h, and if it works for your program (it works for
543: almost all programs using the Workbench) you also get about the same speed at
544: full frame rate.
545: For games and demos, the CPU speed does not matter, but the average frame time
546: is important. UAE can calculate this automatically. The SVGAlib version gives
547: the number when you exit the emulator, to obtain the value with the X version
548: you need to interrupt it and type "c" in the debugger. A real A500 has a
549: constant frame time of 20ms (50 Hz).
550: If you have a game/demo that has lots of blitter activity, many copper/sprite
551: effects, dual playfields and scrolling, no one can help you. Fortunately, this
552: case is extremely rare. Normal games that have a number of blitter objects,
553: scrolling and maybe some sprites run at 1/3-1/4 the speed of an A500 in the
554: worst case, some run at 1/2 the speed. Lowering the frame rate helps
555: enormously here, and at 1/5 frame rate, about everything runs somewhere
556: between 50% and 100% the speed of an A500.
557: This still isn't the full story (I bet you start to see why the question is
558: hard to answer). A real A500 without fast memory gets slowed down to about
559: half its speed in Hires 16 color mode. More bitplanes also slow UAE down, but
560: not quite as much, so it can be several times faster than an A500 in that
561: mode.
562:
563:
564: Bugs / Unimplemented features
565: =============================
566:
567: The sprite emulation is incomplete and buggy. Sprite collisions are not
568: implemented yet. The serial port emulation doesn't seem to be useful yet.
569: Apart from that, UAE can do everything a real A500 can do (and more), but
570: there may still be one or two buglets that make some programs fail.
571:
572:
573: Thanks & Acknowledgements
574: =========================
575:
576: Thanks to all who have written me so far with bugreports and success/failure
577: reports when trying to run the emulator on various hardware with different
578: Kickstart versions. A list of everyone who has contributed to the source code
579: can be found in the CREDITS file (this was getting too big to keep it here).
580:
581: Special thanks to:
582: - Jay Miner, Dale Luck, R.J. Mical and all the others who built the Amiga.
583: - Felix Bardos, whose HRM I "borrowed".
584: - Hetz Ben Hamo mailed Peter Kittel from Commodore asking for permission to
585: give Kick 1.3 away. Unfortunately, the response was negative :-(
586: - Bruno Coste, Ed Hanway, Alessandro Soldo and Marko Nippula provided
587: documentation
588: - Fabio Ciucci gets the "Best bug reports" award for his help with the
589: blitter line emulation and other problem areas.
590:
591:
592: Ports
593: =====
594:
595: Apart from the "main" Unix version, several ports of UAE are ready/being
596: developed.
597:
598: Gustavo Goedert <[email protected]> has ported UAE to DOS using the
599: DJGPP port of GCC. The binary is available on several ftp sites as well as on
600: my Web site.
601:
602: Ernesto Corvi <[email protected]> has ported UAE to the Apple
603: Macintosh. He tells me it is available on Info-Mac, and that every Mac user
604: should know where that is. A link to the archive containing both PPC and 68k
605: binaries is on my Web page. (info-mac is mirrored by
606: sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de)
607:
608: Christian Bauer <[email protected]> has ported UAE to the
609: BeBox.
610:
611: Ian Stephenson <[email protected]> has ported UAE to NextStep.
612:
613: Olaf 'Olsen' Barthel <[email protected]> has ported UAE to the Amiga. This
614: port requires the AA chipset as well as Kickstart 3.0 or higher. CyberGraphX
615: is supported. Please read the file "amiga.c" for information. To compile it,
616: you need SAS/C and the 3.0 includes (they probably come with the compiler).
617:
618: Krister Bergman <[email protected]> has ported UAE to the XFree86/OS2
619: environment. This port can be obtained from Krister's WWW page:
620: <http://www.kuai.se/~bellman/html/xfreeapps.html>
621:
622: Since I generally don't have the possibility to test or improve these ports,
623: it is a good idea to contact their respective authors if you have questions.
624:
625:
626: Pointers
627: ========
628:
629: There are a few sites in the Internet that contain helpful information about
630: UAE.
631:
632: I have set up a WEB page for UAE. You will find interim versions, Linux
633: binaries, diskfiles with Amiga software and other interesting stuff there.
634: The address is
635:
636: http://www-users.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/~crux/uae.html
637:
638: There, you will find links to other UAE pages. I'll add these links to this
639: document in the next version, but I don't have them here right now.
640:
641: I post announcements of new versions of UAE to the newsgroup
642: comp.emulators.misc. From time to time, I also upload new versions to the ftp
643: server sunsite.unc.edu. You will find them either in pub/Linux/Incoming or in
644: pub/Linux/system/Emulators. There are many sunsite mirrors throughout the
645: world, you should be able to find one near you.
646:
647:
648: The author's address
649: ====================
650:
651: Before you contact me with a problem that you have, make sure you have read
652: _all_ of the above. Please read also the file "FAQ", which conains a lot of
653: helpful information. In the future, I will probably no longer respond to
654: questions that are already answered by any of these files.
655:
656: [email protected]
657:
658: or, via snailmail
659:
660: Bernd Schmidt
661: Schlossweiherstrasse 14
662: 52072 Aachen
663: Germany
664:
665: Email is more likely to be answered, and will definitely be answered much
666: faster. Please avoid phonecalls if you can.
667: I can't answer _every_ question. If you have trouble understanding this
668: README, either because you don't speak English very well or because you have
669: no clue at all about computers, please try to find someone near you who does
670: understand this file and who can translate/explain it for you. I simply can't
671: explain (for example) how to use terminal programs or CrossDOS because I don't
672: use either, and it would be much too time-consuming anyway. This file and the
673: file FAQ contains about every piece of information I can give you. I try to
674: help people who have questions, but sometimes it takes too much time.
675:
676: Please don't ask for Kickstart ROM files.
677:
678: Oh, and another thing: If I promise to do things (like implement new
679: features), and forget about them, pester me. That happens occasionally, it's
680: a known bug in my brain. I'll have it replaced.
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