Made some HDF files with WinUAE and used pfs3aio to format but Minimig does not recognize any of it. Tips on preparing the correct HDF's, someone?

An old friend is looking for backers for his book, I have part 1 that was mainly Atari ST based, part 2 will include more of what we love, if you can please back it.

Quote:

"The Data Storm will look at the transformation of the illegal scene in the 90s. Between the U.S., Europe and Hong Kong, crackers strove for global deals through huge data lines. Bigger and better umbrella organizations emerged. From then on, cracking and hacking games developed into an international business – even with sophisticated hardware copying tools at hand. The narrative of CRACKERS II reveals the story of some outstanding crackers and hackers on C64, SNES, Megadrive (Genesis), Amiga and especially on the Atari ST.

Relive the best computer times and experience the exceptional methods of famous code breakers, disk dealers, software pirates and law makers in the 1990s."

Haven’t fired it up in 15 years.

Should I?

So I'd like to know about Amiga and Amiga Emulation, as I know very little about Amiga, but I've seen some games on youtube and twitch that seem really cool.

I'm not entirely sure where to start with the questions, but I do know that I'd like to play some really cool RPGs that are easy to get into, and have aged well. No idea where to start.

I wanna know how complicated it is to set up games. Is it easier than DOSBox for example?

What are the best emulators, and what makes them great?

Are there features like with PCSX2 that makes the games actually look and run, and sound better than the original hardware?

Any other information and maybe some resources you can recommend to me, I'd really appreciate it. Not just for emulation to be clear, but info on amiga games in general.

Turrican II has always been special to me. It ranks as my all time favorite action game from my Amiga computering days. So, recently I got it running under fs-uae, and it's absolutely fantastic to see running at full speed now on my main desktop PC with the big monitor, great speakers, etc. I even have a retro joystick adapter and my old Wico Bat Handle joystick. However. . .

The second joystick button doesn't work. Even when I switch to a modern game controller with a bazillion buttons, it reads them all as Button 0, never as Button 1.

Now someone is probably saying, "Dude, Amiga joysticks only have one button!" Yeah, that is the conventional wisdom, but I know it's not that simple. I very clearly remember playing Turrican II on my Amiga 2000 and using both buttons on the Wico. The button that was selected on the BASE/STICK switch was the main fire button, and the other became the secondary button that fired off the blast wave—same as hitting the spacebar.

The first time I experienced this, I was using a Wico Bat Handle stick that I had rewired to use with a ColecoVision, which always supported two buttons. I was surprised to find that both buttons worked on the Amiga with Turrican II. I was even more surprised when I later got my hands on another un-modified Wico Bat Handle stick that came from the factory wired this way. (I believe that may be the joystick that I still have here.) Did Wico at some point begin wiring their sticks for ColecoVision? If so, whoever coded Turrican II seems to have been aware of that, and the Amiga hardware was capable of reading that extra signal.

So, here's a mystery. Was Turrican II the only Amiga (not CD³²) game that ever supported a second action button? Was Wico the only company that ever made joysticks with the second button wired up to function this way? Turrican II wasn't programmed for the CD³², was it? I think it was published before the CD³² was even released.

And most importantly. . . Is there any possible way to get fs-uae emulation to support this functionality? It definitely made the game better to play, I must say. It's the only thing I'm missing now to recreate the Turrican II experience that I remember from the Good Old Days.

This is another demo that was got me into the Amiga back when but I always wondered...

"Are you there? Speech in the Amiga"

Is that what it actually says? and What does it sample? Always sounded kinda Pink Floyd-ish

https://youtu.be/-GMxbfksaHs?t=91

So this might just be one of those mad ideas I have from time to time, but from doing some reading of comments and articles lately around where the Amiga is going, it seems that with regard to issues of financing development, a community funding approach might be appropriate. The Amiga scene seems mostly to be the sort of tight-knit community where such a thing could work.

Obviously there are tons of complex logistical and financial factors to consider, so this is very high level in theory of an idea: just looking for feedback from other Amigoids as to whether it sounds feasible. I am not an expert on current developments and issues with the platform - I was a kid when I had my 1200 and I've just started seriously getting back into it with basic stuff like cosmetic refurbishment and acquiring "standard" hardware mods (nothing complex yet).

So, with regard to preservation of the Amiga, things are pretty well covered I think. Existing catch-all hardware preservation groups exist, and there are a few software preservation groups as well (Amiga Source Code Preservation, Amiga Music DB and SPS), so to focus on that we'd just be reinventing the wheel.

What seems more like a viable option to me is further developing AmigaOS (and again, I know there are loads of legal issues here, so that's something that would need to be carefully mapped out) either on a) OG hardware, b) "pseudo-classic hardware" like the Vampire and Warp or c) a more modern hardware platform (something Pi based I guess - that whole area isn't my speciality).

As a high level process, I would envision it as something like this:

1. A fundraiser is held between dates X and Y. Ideally not on a platform like Kickstarter, unless there is no viable alternative, to maximise the return for funding projects.
2. While the fundraiser is running, developers and any other Amiga related projects are invited to submit proposals for funding. This could be to acquire resources for development, labour costs, or acquiring other valuable materials for community preservation. Really, anything Amiga-related can be considered. (Where this gets complex is if the funding is for a product to then be sold - again a problem for tomorrow, not today).
3. Once the fundraiser is complete and all projects have been registered, the community votes on which projects are to be funded. I would envision that, to avoid any spamming (which I suspect is unlikely for such a niche project, but there may be a bad apple or two who might abuse it - we don't want a Steam Greenlight situation), you would have been required to have donated to the fundraiser to receive a vote (with a very low donation threshold, so we're not gatekeeping our less affluent comrades).

What do we think? Is this something that could be useful to the community? While we can't really hope to raise really vast sums, some modest contribution is certainly doable: if even 10% of this subreddit's membership donated a few quid each, that's potentially a few grand to put into something valuable and keep our little UV-stained friends alive.

Thinking of grabbing a PiMiga 400 or similar “Amiga on a chip” solution to craft some 90s era Drum & Bass, like I used to in high school.

Are emulated solutions going to both “sound ok” (compared to hardware output) and run with acceptable latency? Or am I barking up the wrong tree?