Amiga Operating Systems

[English Invader]

Following my recent thread about the Raspberry Pi and Amibian, I need to make some enquiries about the operating systems used to run WHDLoad games.  The two main candidates appear to be Workbench 3.1 and Amiga OS 3.9.  My instincts tell me that WB will be more suitable for running games because it hasn't got the extra bells and whistles that Amiga OS has like MP3 and MPEG support which seems more for folk who want to turn their Amiga into a Windows 95/98 PC.  I'm also wondering if there are any open source alternatives to WB or Amiga OS and, if so, how compatible are they with the game library?

 

I have no problem with buying the Amiga Forever package if it will provide the WB files I need but if the WB 3.1 is tied to a DRM-protected front-end, AF won't be any good to me because I won't be able to access the files to get them on my Pi.  The comments around the internet seem to imply that the files can be moved around to other set-ups but can someone please confirm that this is the case?

 

 

[English Invader]

Solved.  Person on another forum confirmed that files are DRM-free and both Amiga and C64 Forever Plus Editions purchased in very generous special offer.

[Daedalus2097]

Yeah, Amiga Forever is a good source of licenced OS files. I'll add a little more detail however:

 

OS 3.9 isn't necessarily any worse for games than 3.1. The hardware requirements are higher, true, but if you're considering hard drive installations then you might already have the necessary grunt (68020 with 6MB RAM). It was (and still is) more about providing more features and improving the quality of life for users who actually use Workbench for more than just launching games, and it did include some things that need a more powerful machine to run such as MP3 and video players, but extras like that and the TCP stack, email client, browser etc. do not interfere with anything or drag anything down unless you actually use them. The more significant improvements were all actually more deeply tied into the OS itself. Things like palette-mapped 256-colour icons, a Find utility for files, keyboard shortcuts for showing/hiding files, ability to sort icons based on name, date etc., a Workbench ARexx port, support for LBA addressing (>4GB hard drives), VGA support for the early startup menu, additional file actions in file requesters, and dozens of other improvements. OS 3.9's features make it difficult to go back to 3.1 on the occasion that I need to. I've been using 3.9 for 20 years now, and never once thought of it as trying to be like Windows 98. It's still very Amiga, and still carries nice features that set the Amiga apart - some of which are still lacking from Windows to this day.

 

There's also OS 3.1.4 to think about. This basically takes OS 3.9 without the additional parts like TCP stack and media players, and uses that to update the basic 3.1 environment. This too includes many of the core improvements mentioned above, and is also intended to be used as a ROM chip, so the core OS updates don't have to be loaded from hard drive as they are with 3.9. But it also lacks some of the nice additions that make 3.9 so nice to use, so the ultimate OS would really be a hybrid of 3.1.4 and 3.9.

 

Neither 3.9 nor 3.1.4 are included with Amiga Forever.

 

Some old games have issues with newer versions of the OS, but these will also show up when you try to run them on 2.x or 3.x. If you're installing games on a hard drive however, the WHDLoad patch system will sort out all the incompatibilities, including OS, CPU and chipset. If all you're looking for is to launch games, basically any version from 2.0 up will do the job when kitted out with WHDLoad.