Amiga CD vs. Amiga CD32 vs. Amiga CDTV

[SiriusVI]

Hey everyone,

I 'm currentyl trying to setp up some amiga systems with retroatch (PUAE core) and I'm a litle confused about launching games in bin/cue format apparently from a system called "Amiga CD". Now, I know what regular amiga is and I can run the games just fine. I also know about Amiga CD32 & Amiga CDTV, both run no problem. But then there seems to be "Amiga CD" as well.

So my first question is, what even IS "Amiga CD"? I cannot find any information on it. is it like a CD addon for Amiga computers? For example I have a version of Quake for this system. Google has this info on it and calls it a PPC game, but I don't know what that is: https://quake.fandom.com/wiki/Quake_(Amiga_version)

Second question: How would I have to set up PUAE to get them up and running. All I get is a black screen when trying to run these games.

Hope someone can help me out.
Thanks!

Edited January 25, 2023 by SiriusVI

[kurzih]

Amiga CD is quite simply just an Amiga with a CD-ROM drive - it's not a separate Amiga computer. I bought an external CD Drive back in the days for my Amiga 4000/030.
So, some of the software is CD based, like many of the later Amiga games. Amiga CD32 was the "console" Amiga, but even then we could play CD32 games on our CD-ROM capable Amiga computers with a few fixes.

PowerPC accelerated version is just a different (PPC+68k) CPU for the Amiga and still used/required with AmigaOS 4 and some GFX boards. Here's a list of PPC compatible games: https://www.lemonamiga.com/games/list.php?list_hardware=PPC and CD-based games: https://www.lemonamiga.com/games/list.php?list_hardware=CD-ROM

All of these can be emulated with WinUAE for example. I don't know much about the RA core. I prefer using FS-UAE & WinUAE.

But this is just as simple put as possible, not very accurate


EDIT: Many CD games require to be at least partially installed on HDD via Workbench/AmigaOS and will not start automatically when inserted. What I've done in WinUAE is used a WB3.1 HD and created a HDD file for installing the game and the ISO CD to get things running "semi-automatically" from Launchbox and saved that as a configuration setting. It's actually quite simple to setup with WinUAE's GUI.

For Quake in Launchbox I have the ROM path to the .cue file and custom command line is: -config=AmigaCDQUAKE.uae -G -s use_gui=no -s -cdimage=

And when I launch it in Launchbox it goes automatically to this result (I had already installed it to the QUAKEHD partition) - this is a Amiga 4000/ AGA OS3.1 setup, no PPC:

 

 

And this is a screenshot I just took from the gameplay, smooth GFX But I realized that I didn't have enough mem, so I changed my config a bit. Thank you for having me re-visit this game!

 

Bonus EDIT: Here's a screenshot of AmigaOS 4.1 Final (which I bought last year) running on a PPC configuration and Picasso IV GFX board emulated on WinUAE - This is a bit more complicated to get up and running:

 

Edited January 26, 2023 by kurzih

[SiriusVI]

@kurzih

Thank you for your detailled reply! Seems like I have alooooong way ahead of me. As I said, Amiga floppy files, Amiga CD32 and Amiga CDTV all run perfectly with the retroarch core. It's just the CD games for the regular Amiga System, like Quake, that don't work at all. I've tried enabling teh Global HD setting in PUAE but I wasn't able to getinto the workbench screen that your screenshot shows, so I don't know how to install any games.

For now I'm stuck =. If you know what I should do next, please tell me. I'm away over the weekend. Need to get back to it when I return.

Thanks again! 😃

[DeadVoivod]

I just wanted to mention that I completely share kurzih's approach when it comes to Amiga emulation, using FS-UAE and WinUAE, I would steer away from the RA core, you just have so much more configuration options to play with.