Speaking of Amiga, Mark Round has written a great blog post about running old AmigaOS 3.x software on AmigaOS 4, and the best ways to do so.
While I’ve been having a lot of fun with the new software written specifically for AmigaOS 4, the bulk of my software is still ^aEURoeclassic^aEUR titles that used to run on my A1200. One of the first things I did when I set up my X5000 was to transfer my old Amiga’s hard drive over so I could continue running this library of software. I also wanted to set up an emulation of my A1200 so I can quickly launch a classic Workbench 3.9 session and pick up all my old projects and bits of code I’d written over the years.
Fortunately, the X5000 and AmigaOS 4 offers a variety of ways of running all your old software.
In addition to updating WHDload in
“System:Emulation/AmigaDisks/Workbench3.1/C”
you can also update it in
“System:Emulation/RunInUAE/WB31/C”
This will make the annoying registration notice go away when you play one of the built in CinemawareGames!
I do appreciate others’ love for niche computer desktops/environments etc, it is a sign of peoples’ life work not being forgotten.
I wish HP-UX VUE would get a reboot; I love CDE and VUE was pre CDE and had some really nice bits I miss.
Edited 2018-11-10 00:00 UTC
E-UAE for virtually everything, and a 680×0 JIT compiler for that tiny fraction that only uses OS calls.
Depending on what you want from the machine, the tiny fraction might be more important than all the old games put together. If your aim is to simply play thousands of non-system-friendly games (and thus eliminate the OS from the situation anyway), WinUAE and any PC will give you a far better and cheaper experience. I’ve personally found that I hardly ever use E-UAE, and that most of the 68k stuff I use is completely system friendly. For the occasional time I want to play an old game (usually SWOS with some friends and beers), I’ll pull the A1200 out and use that instead for a fully authentic experience.
Definitely. There’s some really good productivity apps on the Amiga that all use the OS. Those will run under OS4 with the JIT compiler. But probably most people will be running old games, and those will mostly be run under E-UAE.