FS-UAE question

[DavidC]

I don't know if I should post this here or in the Emulation section..but anyway..

 

I am trying to figure out the FS-UAE emulator on my old MacBook Pro. (OS X 10.9) The emulator itself comes with a generic kickstart rom, and I have been

able to get a few games to work, but they don't have sound.  The emulator itself has sound, because I can hear the disk drive sounds when it is loading games.

The games run fine, no lag at all, just no sound.

 

But, when I load a Workbench disk, it takes like 5 minutes to load, and the emulator is super laggy, like it won't do anything when I click on the virtual desktop to get into BASIC and stuff..

 

My question is, if I spend the $$ for the KS Roms from Amiga Forever, will that help the Emulator run at it's full potential? Is it slow because of the generic KS ROM?

And, if I did spend the cash for the KS Roms, and workbench disks and stuff, from Amiga Forever, how would I install them to FS-UAE?  What file/folder to put them in?   

 

I do have VICE running the Commodore 64 with no problems at all on my MacBook, I also have Retroarch that runs perfect on that machine playing SNES games and crap like

that with zero issues.   Also, using WINE, Classic99 runs at full speed, zero issues...so I think the MacBook itself can do it...will the KS ROMS make the difference?

 

Advise, please?  And as always, Thank you for any and all advise..

[WhataKowinkydink]

I found MangoJelly over on Youtube to be really helpful in getting FS-UAE set up.  Also, for the lag front, as Mac is Unix-like this may apply: be sure to check that the CPU is set to "performance"
 

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor
echo performance | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor

 

[DavidC]

8 hours ago, WhataKowinkydink said:

I found MangoJelly over on Youtube to be really helpful in getting FS-UAE set up.  Also, for the lag front, as Mac is Unix-like this may apply: be sure to check that the CPU is set to "performance"
 

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor
echo performance | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor

 

Thank you for the Youtube link! I figured out the FS-UAE Loader, so that helps alot with setting things up, can't believe I didn't see that earlier.  I will try your other tip when I get home from work. Thank you! I will take a chance and buy Amiga Forever this weekend. I am intrigued by the Amiga and I want to dig into it a little. 

[WhataKowinkydink]

7 hours ago, DavidC said:

 I will take a chance and buy Amiga Forever this weekend. I am intrigued by the Amiga and I want to dig into it a little. 

I've thought about getting Amiga Forever too - if I recall the guy is based out of Europe and I've had trouble trying to buy things from there, hence haven't gotten it -- yet.  Amiga intrigues me too.  My exposure to their computers during their time was limited but years on and looking back --- such a forward-thinking design!!

[zzip]

On 10/18/2022 at 1:29 AM, WhataKowinkydink said:

I found MangoJelly over on Youtube to be really helpful in getting FS-UAE set up.  Also, for the lag front, as Mac is Unix-like this may apply: be sure to check that the CPU is set to "performance"
 

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor
echo performance | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor

 

Yeah Mac is BSD at its core, but I think the /sys/devices/*  structure might be Linux-specific and may not work on a Mac

[WhataKowinkydink]

8 hours ago, zzip said:

I think the /sys/devices/*  structure might be Linux-specific and may not work on a Mac

I thought that might be the case.  Still, worthwhile checking out if it is a thing on MacOS, because the performance is noticeably better.

[DavidC]

1 hour ago, WhataKowinkydink said:

I thought that might be the case.  Still, worthwhile checking out if it is a thing on MacOS, because the performance is noticeably better.

I opened terminal on my Mac and typed this:

 

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor

 

and got: No such file or directory

 

Do I need to be in a specific directory for that to work? 

 

 

EDIT because I forgot to reply to this:  I've thought about getting Amiga Forever too - if I recall the guy is based out of Europe and I've had trouble trying to buy things from there, hence haven't gotten it -- yet.  Amiga intrigues me too.  My exposure to their computers during their time was limited but years on and looking back --- such a forward-thinking design!!

 

 Isn't it a download from the Amiga Forever website?  Just enter CC info and get the download link for the files? 

Edited October 20, 2022 by DavidC
because I am a idiot

[WhataKowinkydink]

2 hours ago, DavidC said:

 Isn't it a download from the Amiga Forever website?  Just enter CC info and get the download link for the files?

We use prepaid CCs that aren't connected to a bank - same reason why I was unable to buy a DRM-free version of Simcity 4 from GoG

[WhataKowinkydink]

2 hours ago, DavidC said:

I opened terminal on my Mac and typed this:

 

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor

 

and got: No such file or directory

Having done cursory search of 'scaling governor' for mac OS I suspect there isn't one being used as @zzip suggested.

[DavidC]

41 minutes ago, WhataKowinkydink said:

Having done cursory search of 'scaling governor' for mac OS I suspect there isn't one being used as @zzip suggested.

Cool, it was worth a try.   And, I will buy the roms from AF and see what happens.. hopefully it will work, and if not I still will have access to them for a different computer. Somehow, some way I will get the Amiga to work just so I can see what all the fuss is about.   I need to know!!  LOL.  

[WhataKowinkydink]

5 hours ago, DavidC said:

Somehow, some way I will get the Amiga to work just so I can see what all the fuss is about.

Oh I'm sure you'll get it working nicely.  B)

[zzip]

10 hours ago, WhataKowinkydink said:

Having done cursory search of 'scaling governor' for mac OS I suspect there isn't one being used as @zzip suggested.

Mac likely has something similar under it's power management features.   But I don't know if that can be accessed from command line, UI or both.

[Daedalus2097]

Hmmm, just a couple of things to note, in case you haven't already tried them. First off, the Amiga is a complex beast to emulate, and can be surprisingly heavy going on even quite powerful hardware. To help with this, the various emulators typically take shortcuts to improve performance. It might be worth checking that certain options aren't enabled or disabled that require a lot of resources. The first and most obvious one is to make sure JIT is enabled and is given the maximum RAM. This uses a JIT CPU emulation, which is less accurate but *vastly* quicker, and good enough for 90% of uses. Enabling this option will disable cycle-exact for the chipset, which is also a feature that takes a lot of grunt to implement. And yes, using the generic ROM that WinUAE comes with will be slower than an original Amiga ROM due to its nature so it's definitely worth trying an original ROM. The older versions of these can be *cough*found easily enough on the internet for testing purposes; if you find that it makes a large improvement, you can always shell out for a licence then.

 

Anyway, enjoy the journey. The Amiga's an impressive machine, and with emulation you have access to all sorts of hardware expansions that were quite expensive back in the day. It's nice to have a couple of different systems emulated - maybe a basic one for floppy-based games like a standard A500 so many people had back then, and another setup with fast CPU, the latest OS, graphics cards and the whole lot to see what a powerhouse it really was or could have been.