A: When the emulation runs on a sufficiently powerful system, it can easily outperform even the fastest "real" Amiga based on a 68K CPU. However, applications like games and other programs that use high frame rates and/or sound, may not run smoothly on low-end PCs (under about 750 MHz). In general, productivity applications are usable even on old Pentium systems using 90-133 MHz CPUs (i.e. systems released in the 1990s), and most games with various combinations of sound and refresh settings run well on 200-300 MHz systems. In some cases, manually adjusting some emulation settings (e.g. CPU vs. chip set performance priority) is required to smoothly run certain more performance-demanding games. This type of "tuning" is in general not necessary for productivity software, or with high end PCs (regardless of the type of software being run).
The main perceived limitation of the Amiga emulation is that Amiga floppy disks cannot be read by standard PC hardware. This is a hardware limitation of PC floppy disk controllers which cannot be solved by any type of emulation software. It is not a software issue. Fortunately, numerous preservation and software publisher sites make available original Amiga games and demos for download, making it unnecessary to read the same from their old disks. Also, Amiga Forever contains different software solutions to transfer data, including "images" of Amiga floppy disks (unless they are "copy protected", as used by some games), from an Amiga to the PC, either with an inexpensive and standard cable, or using PC-formatted floppy disks. This makes it possible to transfer and use Amiga floppy disks from within the emulation (disk "images" are used instead of "real" floppy disks). Hardware solutions which make it possible to read Amiga floppy disks on the PC also exist (e.g. the Catweasel floppy controller). Amiga CD-ROMs can already be read by the PC, and therefore also by the emulation. Cloanto also provides a data conversion service.
A software emulation is what the name implies: even if the emulation is perfect, it is not possible to connect custom Amiga hardware (designed to be electrically and/or mechanically connected with an Amiga) to a PC (which has different electrical and mechanical specifications). This means that Amiga "Video Toaster" hardware, for example, cannot be installed inside a PC (NewTek does however offer a specific PC version of the Video Toaster). For the same reason, Amiga copy protection "dongles" also do not work on the PC.
The technical skills required to use Amiga Forever are in general the same that would be expected when purchasing a new Amiga and installing new software, or transferring software from one Amiga to another, with the main difference being that the Amiga Forever emulation environment already has the operating system and some application software conveniently preinstalled.
Amiga emulation programs like UAE and Fellow, which Amiga Forever was designed to support, are open source projects which are constantly being improved. New versions of the software can be downloaded following the links listed in the Home Pages section (on the navigation bar on this page) as they become available. This requires an internet connection and some very basic understanding of what a program file is, i.e. how to replace an older version of a program file with a newer one, which in most cases means a drag-and-drop of the new program file into the directory where the emulation software is installed. Amiga Forever includes the Software Director tool, which can be used to very easily check for new versions of emulation components such as UAE and Fellow, and install them if so desired.
The documentation of Amiga Forever is in HTML format. It is all in English, with small parts, specific to certain implementations of the emulation software, additionally included in other languages.
All the issues mentioned here and many other interesting topics are explained in more detail in other sections of this site, in the documentation included with Amiga Forever, and in the documentation which accompanies the different versions of the emulation programs.
Also see:
- 3-118 - Reading Amiga Floppy Disks on PC
- 3-166 - Software Compatible with Amiga Emulation
- 3-119 - Speed of Amiga Emulation
- 3-114 - ROM and Operating System Files in Amiga Forever
- 3-145 - Use of ROM and Operating System Files Provided in Amiga Forever
- 3-170 - Limitations of Amiga Explorer
- Amiga Emulation
