[sf-lug] Meeting Sunday May 1st 2011

[Ken Shaffer]

Hi Bobbie,
Here's some detail on how I got the Knoppix Amiga stick set up. After going
through the process, I was happy to learn that the existing Ubuntu package
manager offers the e-uae emulator, and it works just fine with the
AmigaForever rom images.

Cloanto has sold the AmigaForever product for awhile (I first got
the 2005 version) but it was just for Windows.  Recently, I sent in my $15
for the 2011 version which claimed to run under Linux.  The upgrade did
provide many more games and demos, but they were in a new compressed format
which seems to be set up for running the Windows installation.  The Linux
emulation
was just the e-uae emulator (version E-UAE 0.8.29-WIP4) which is the same
one available from
the Ubuntu Synaptic package manager.   The basis of
AmigaForever is the encrypted roms, which work with all the
emulations like e-uae, a migration program to copy the
Amiga filesystems onto the PC, and a series of demos and games.
The actual emulation programs are open source, and the Ubuntu
package manager offers two (uae, and e-uae).  With the e-uae package, all
you
need Amiga emulation are the rom images, the System and Work directories,
and the e-uae config file.  Setting up the kxlight usb stick is just an
option.
  The AF installer will write to a 4G usb stick, creating a Knoppix system
with the
e-uae emulator, and the roms, as well as the base system files,
(but not the games or demos, which I didn't care about anyway). The
problem was, the Knoppix system didn't run (only a background image).  Even
the AF installer
would only pop up a pretty non-functional terminal window (because of
ownership
of the System and Work directories).
  Looking at the Knoppix disk, it was obvious what some of the
problems were -- lots of wrong paths in script files, and wrong
ownership of files, and duplicates of almost everything!  The top level /
looked like:
Amiga   Amiga Files    Private   Shared    ...
(Yes that's a space in the filename of "Amiga Files", very
Windowsy, but a pain to work with, since extra quoting is
needed in commands).  Private contained some docs, a copy of the emulator,
but nothing critical
to running the stick.  Shared was duplicated pretty much under Amiga
Files/Shared.

  The changes I made to the Knoppix stick are listed below:
1)Rename the "Amiga Files" to just AmigaFiles.  Optional,
but hey, this is Linux, and if you let in spaces, whose
to stop the asterisks, question marks, double dashes and
parentheses from working their way into your files? CAUTION:
be really careful if you pull in the Games and Demos, they
do have nasties like parentheses in their names. (Parentheses
indicate to the shell to execute the contents in a subshell so...)

2)The e-uae emulator appears in multiple places on the stick,
I used /Amiga/e-uae/e-uae for script invocation.  If room
is a problem, you can delete extra copies of things like the two
sets of rom files and two emulators, but really, all my Amiga files
on multiple disks fit easily onto the 4G stick -- I didn't bother.

3)There are several e-uae configuration files -- all have wrong paths.
Copy one and make your edits, that way, you always have the original.
I used the one in /Amiga/af_boot.uaerc and made af.uaerc
I decided to use the rom images in /AmigaFiles/Shared/roms instead of the
ones in /Shared/roms (they are identical).  Fix the backslashes in the
paths, and put in
the correct directories for the roms. Either the full path, or just
a relative path from the current directory (/Amiga) will do. e.g.:
unix.rom_path=../AmigaFiles/Shared/rom

4)This config file is used by the emulation startup script (again in several
places).
I used the one in /Amiga/kxlight-start.sh and made a mykxlight-start.sh.
Copy and edit the
/Amiga/kxlight-start.sh file to mykxlight-start.sh to
run the /Amiga/e-uae/e-uae -f af.uaerc

5)  Next fix the System and Work filesystem paths.  I tried both the ones in
/AmigaFiles/Shared and in /Shared and liked the ones in /Shared better.
Of course, if you have copied real Amiga file systems, you would use your
own here, but use the ones supplied to get the emulation running.e.g.:
filesystem2=rw,DH0:System:../Shared/dir/System,1
filesystem2=rw,DH1:Work:../Shared/dir/Work,0

6) Change the ownership of the System and Work directories from root to the
first user (knoppix on the stick, but user 1000 if you are editing the stick
on an Ubuntu system.  I forget if I changed permissions too, probably not.
sudo chown -R knoppix:knoppic /Shared/System
sudo chown -R knoppix:knoppic /Shared/Work

Feel free to add other directories.  I tried the Demos and Games, but their
rp9 format was
unknown to the emulation.  You could unzip them if you really wanted to
run them in the emulation.  I have used up to at least DH5 with no problems.
5) Fix the invocation of the emulation in the /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc file.
Edit
the correct paths into the script to run the /Amiga/mykxlight-start.sh

I made the mykxlight-start.sh a little fancier to allow running while the
stick was mounted on another Ubuntu system.  I needed a different config
file for each case (for the different paths).  Here's what I use:

#!/bin/sh
# mykxlight-start.sh

# We can set other options here, like sound levels...
# Example: micro input set to zero, PCM and Volume set to 67 - default in
most OSS drivers
#( exec aumix -m 0 -w 67 -v 67 >/dev/null 2>&1 & )


if [ -d /Amiga ]; then
  # Running from a booted Amiga stick
  echo "Running from /Amiga"
  cd /Amiga
  e-uae/e-uae -f af_boot.uaerc
elif [ -d /media/af2010 ]; then
  # Running from a stick mounted at /media/af2010
  echo "Running mounted"
  cd /media/af2010/Amiga
  e-uae/e-uae -f af_boot.uaerc-mounted
elif [ -d $HOME/work/amiga/Amiga ]; then
  # Running from home directory
  echo "Running from $HOME/work/amiga/Amiga"
  cd $HOME/work/amiga/Amiga
  e-uae -f af.uaerc
else
  echo "Amiga directory not found, quitting"
fi


Here's the af.uaerc I use:
# E-UAE configuration file

# General options
unix.rom_path=../AmigaFiles/Shared/rom
unix.floppy_path=
use_gui=false
use_debugger=false

# Host CPU-specific options
x86.use_tsc=true

# CPU emulation options
cpu_type=68020/68881
cpu_speed=max
cpu_compatible=false
cpu_cycle_exact=false

# JIT compiler options
cachesize=16384
compfpu=true

# Chipset options
chipset=ecs_agnus
ntsc=false
immediate_blits=true
collision_level=none

# ROM options
kickstart_rom_file=$(FILE_PATH)/amiga-os-3x0.rom
kickstart_key_file=$(FILE_PATH)/rom.key
kickshifter=false

# RAM options
chipmem_size=4
bogomem_size=0
fastmem_size=8
z3mem_size=0
gfxcard_size=8

# Floppy drive options
floppy0=
floppy0type=0
floppy1=
floppy1type=0
floppy2=
floppy2type=0
floppy3=
floppy3type=0
nr_floppies=4
floppy_speed=100

# Hard disk options
filesystem2=rw,DH0:System:../Shared/dir/System,1
filesystem2=rw,DH1:Work:../Shared/dir/Work,0
#filesystem2=rw,DH2:Games:../AmigaFiles/Games,0
#filesystem2=rw,DH3:Demos:../AmigaFiles/Demos,0
#filesystem2=rw,DH4:Apps:../AmigaFiles/Applications,0
#filesystem2=rw,DH5:Shared:../AmigaFiles/Shared,0

# Display options
gfx_framerate=1
gfx_width_windowed=1024
gfx_height_windowed=768
gfx_width_fullscreen=1024
gfx_height_fullscreen=768
gfx_fullscreen_amiga=true
gfx_lores=false
gfx_linemode=double
gfx_correct_aspect=false
gfx_center_horizontal=none
gfx_center_vertical=none
show_leds=false

# Sound options
sound_output=normal
sound_bits=16
sound_frequency=44100
sound_channels=stereo
sound_interpol=none

# Input device options
joyport0=mouse
joyport1=kbd1

# SCSI emulation options
scsi=true
scsi_device=/dev/cdrom

# Network emulation
bsdsocket_emu=true

# X11-specific options
x11.map_raw_keys=false
x11.low_bandwidth=false
x11.use_mitshm=true


Best of all, you can run the e-uae right in Ubuntu if you don't want a
separate usb boot stick.  Just have your config file paths right, and
install the e-uae package.  A word of warning, the emulation makes my amd
laptop run pretty hot, but the intel N450 netbook stays cool.  As long as
you have any version of the AmigaForever rom images, you should try out the
e-uae emulator.  I was happy to find one less reason to have a Windows OS.
Ken
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