Just like the inexhaustible Commodore 64, the Amiga family needs no introduction. Ahead of their time (especially when it comes to multimedia editing), these computers fostered a large number of mods for the original hardware, huge user communities, and of course, emulators. One of them is WinFellow, which just received a new update after four years.
I admit I wasn't a child of the Amiga generation. My transition took me directly from a Commodore 64 to a 286 (with a Hercules monitor, quite a shock after losing colors), following the advice of a salesman to "avoid the dinosaur". I guess time proved him right: Commodore International threw in the towel in May 1994, and the Amiga 4000T tower was the last of that family, but the "what if..." in the background never completely disappeared.
Logically, getting a Commodore Amiga in good condition is quite a challenge, and the number one alternative to rolling the dice with strange hardware is emulation. The first example that comes to mind is UAE (better known as WinUAE today), with almost three decades of development. The second is WinFellow, which reached version 0.5.9 after a four-year pause.
How to emulate an Amiga computer with WinFellow
One of the first details to grasp about Amiga emulation is that it doesn't have a direct path, so to speak. The most important step is to find a copy of Kickstart, the official firmware that initializes the computer's components and advances the boot process. In other words, without Kickstart there is no Amiga, and since it's proprietary code, you'll have to rely on your creativity to obtain it. One thing is certain: Almost all recommendations point to Kickstart 1.3 as a starting point, as it guarantees the best compatibility with games.
Once the Kickstart firmware and hardware parameters are configured, we need to make sure that the mouse and keyboard occupy both ports in the "Gameport" section, and finally, load the disk images we want to run. The F12 key focuses the keyboard and mouse commands on the emulator, while F11 sends us back to the settings menu. Changing virtual disks is easier than it seems: The DF1, DF2, and DF3 options serve for secondary images (for example, disks 2, 3, and 4 of a game), but with a click on the "Into DF0" button, they are sent to the main drive DF0.
In short, WinFellow may not be the most intuitive Amiga emulator, but once you manage to sort out certain configuration details, its performance is excellent. Give it a try!
Official site and download: Click here
