My good old friend Michele Console Battilana, CEO of Cloanto, recently sent me the latest edition of Amiga Forever 2006 Premium Edition.
While OpenFirmware can't boot off a plain CD-ROM designed for the legacy 16-bit PC BIOS, I managed to run the UAE binary directly from the Terminal activity:
- Plug in a USB CD-ROM unit
- Open the Terminal activity and type:
sudo mount /dev/scd0 /mnt cd /mnt/Emulation/UAE ./uae -f af_boot.uaerc
You may want to configure the system for the unusually high resolution of the XO display:
- Open the System disk
- Open to Prefs drawer
- Use the Screen preferences editor to set a higher screenmode (uaegfx:1152x864x16 is close to full-screen and neat)
- Use the Font preferences editor to enlarge the Workbench and Screen fonts (Topaz-11 is a good choice)
- Use the ToolManager preferences editor to enlarge the font of the Dock
- TODO: The mouse pointer could use a larger sprite, but for now you'll have to design one yourself
By default, the emulation feels fast and smooth. I didn't have much success with the demos, mostly because I was unable to reach an adequate emulation speed on the Geode while emulating legacy 680x0 processors, which disables JIT.
The future and "The Future Ahead of its Time" next to each other
A nice Workbench environment for your XO
