Chapter 1

Setting up WinUAE

Thirty-two properties clicks. The core keeps the machine settings and drops the rest.

Why any of this

The Amiga 1200 was the last great Amiga Commodore made, and the desktop people built on it is the one worth having back: Kickstart 3.1, AGA, a hard disk, a graphics card for a screen bigger than the chipset could draw, MUI for modern windows, color icons, and WHDLoad so every game lives on the disk instead of in a box of floppies. An emulator or a MiSTer puts that machine back on your desk. Getting to that finished desktop is the work.

You cannot download it ready-made. Workbench and Kickstart still belong to someone, so the disks and the ROM have to be yours, and Commodore’s own installer has to copy them. Everything after that is a recipe of Proceed buttons, the Green Amiga Alien guide, which people have followed by hand for twenty years. These notes turn that recipe into scripts, so someone new to Amiga emulation gets the upgraded A1200 in an afternoon, from disks they own.

The end of the road is a build nobody babysits. AmiPilot can sit inside the running Amiga, click what is left of the installers, and take a picture of the screen, so an AI agent can check that the desktop came up, that the icons are in color, that a game launches, and fix the script when they are not. Every page here is one step toward that.

Chapter 1 is where a newcomer to WinUAE loses the first hour: thirty-two settings in a properties window, and no way to tell which ones matter. On the core, the rows that describe the Amiga survive as OSD settings, saved once. The rows that describe Windows do not exist.

Eliminated
1–2
Download WinUAE and run its installer.
Eliminated. Load the Amiga core.
Once
3
Copy the Kickstart file into the WinUAE directory, or into a Roms folder.
The Program Files copy is gone. Set it in the OSD (F12) and save the configuration. Point the ROM slot at the 3.1 A1200 image.
Eliminated
4
Create a Hard Disks directory.
Eliminated. Hardfiles sit in games/Amiga/ on the card. They are files the core mounts, not a folder Windows keeps for you.
Automated
5
Create Programs and copy every downloaded archive into it.
The directory mount is gone. pack_directory_hdf.sh turns that folder into a slave hardfile, which is what the core mounts.
Eliminated
6–7
Close Explorer, launch WinUAE, and accept the 16-bit pixel-format prompt.
Eliminated. Both are host dialogs.
Once
8–9
Open ROM properties and pick the Kickstart file. Then open Hard Drives.
The file dialog is eliminated. Set it in the OSD (F12) and save the configuration.
Automated
10–12
Add a hardfile, type a size (22 MB in the guide), and save it as Workbench3.1.
create_system_hdf.sh writes that file: an empty Fast File System volume and a rigid disk block the core will mount. The size is --megs. In WinUAE the same disk is a hardfile2= line, which is how the named pipe starts the install.
Automated
13–15
Add a directory, label it Programs, and name the device DH1.
There is no directory device. pack_directory_hdf.sh turns that folder into a slave hardfile, which is what the core mounts. Mount that hardfile as primary slave.
Once
16–18
CPU type 68020 with an FPU, speed “fastest possible”, idle slider past halfway.
68020 is an OSD choice. The speed slider and the idle slider are emulator timing. Both are eliminated. Set it in the OSD (F12) and save the configuration.
Eliminated
19
Turn on JIT and set the cache to 5 MB or more.
Eliminated. The FPGA does not JIT-compile 68000 code. The later page that turns JIT off has nothing to turn off.
Once
20–21
Chip RAM 2 MB, Fast RAM around 8 MB, RTG memory 8–32 MB.
Chip and Fast are OSD values. Use at least 2 MB chip. The RTG megabyte slider is eliminated. The core’s framebuffer is not a WinUAE RAM setting. Set it in the OSD (F12) and save the configuration.
Once
22
Chipset AGA, and the Faster RTG tick from newer WinUAE.
AGA is an OSD choice. Faster RTG is a WinUAE shortcut and is eliminated. Set it in the OSD (F12) and save the configuration.
Eliminated
23–27
Display size, centring, full-screen, aspect, line mode.
Eliminated. The core uses the video mode the MiSTer is already set to. There is no WinUAE display page.
Eliminated
28–29
Sound emulation, buffer, 44100 Hz, stereo, interpolation.
Eliminated as a properties page. The core’s audio is the MiSTer audio path.
Eliminated
30
Optional ticks: uaescsi.device, bsdsocket.library, synchronise clock.
The two device ticks are eliminated with the chapters that needed them. The clock tick is a host emulation option and is eliminated with them.
Once
31–32
Name the configuration and save it.
Eliminated as a WinUAE config list. Set it in the OSD (F12) and save the configuration. The core keeps that as its saved configuration.

Step numbers follow Chapter 1 in the Green Amiga Alien guide. The words are ours.