UAE is a

computer A computer is a machine that can be Computer programming, programmed to automatically Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic set ...

emulator In computing, an emulator is Computer hardware, hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run sof ...

which emulates the hardware of

Commodore International Commodore International Corporation was a home computer and electronics manufacturer with its head office in The Bahamas and its executive office in the United States founded in 1976 by Jack Tramiel and Irving Gould. It was the successor compan ...

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...

range of computers. Released under the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

, UAE is

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

History

Bernd Schmidt conceived of an emulator that can run Amiga software when he found that such a task was widely believed to be impossible. Schmidt had written previous programs for Amiga, and was further motivated by the desire to not lose games, demos, and sound modules to switching operating systems. UAE was released in 1995 and was originally called the ''Unusable Amiga Emulator'', due to its inability to boot. In its early stages, it was known as ''Unix Amiga Emulator'' and later with other names as well. Today the name stands for ''Universal Amiga Emulator''.

Features

UAE is almost a full-featured Amiga emulator. It emulates most of its functions: * Original Chip Set (OCS),

Enhanced Chip Set The Enhanced Chip Set (ECS) is the second generation of the Amiga computer's chipset, offering minor improvements over the original chipset (OCS) design. ECS was introduced in 1990 with the launch of the Amiga 3000. Another version was developed ...

(ECS) and

Advanced Graphics Architecture Amiga Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA) is the third-generation Amiga graphic chipset, first used in the Amiga 4000 in 1992. Before release AGA was codenamed Pandora by Commodore International. AGA was originally called AA for Advanced Archi ...

(AGA) * I/O devices: (

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, a diskette, or a disk) is a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined with a ...

drives,

joystick A joystick, sometimes called a flight stick, is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. Also known as the control column, it is the principal control devic ...

mouse A mouse (: mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (''Mus musculus'' ...

and

serial ports Serial may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media The presentation of works in sequential segments * Serial (literature), serialised literature in print * Serial (publishing), periodical publications and newspapers * Serial (radio and televisi ...

) * Processor:

Motorola 68000 The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector ...

/ 010/ 020/ 040 CPU, optionally a 68881 FPU, and as of WinUAE 3.0.0 beta 15, an enhanced

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

JIT core using the

QEMU The Quick Emulator (QEMU) is a free and open-source emulator that uses dynamic binary translation to emulate a computer's processor; that is, it translates the emulated binary codes to an equivalent binary format which is executed by the mach ...

CPU libraries. * Memory: 2 MB Chip RAM and 8 MB Fast RAM, or 8 MB Chip RAM without Fast RAM. 64 MB Zorro III Fast RAM, independent of Chip RAM setting (68020+ only). 1 MB Slow RAM, for compatibility. * Picasso 96 graphics with 8 MB of memory * Serial port, and Simple parallel port is only sufficient for printing. * Networking via bsdsocket.library emulation For software, UAE may use

disk image A disk image is a snapshot of a storage device's content typically stored in a file on another storage device. Traditionally, a disk image was relatively large because it was a bit-by-bit copy of every storage location of a device (i.e. every ...

s made from original Amiga

s. These images have the file extension of " ADF" (Amiga Disk File). Actual Amiga disks cannot be used, because of limitations in the floppy controllers used in other computers. Images of Amiga formatted

hard drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...

s can also be made. UAE also supports mapping host operating system's directories to Amiga hard drives, and finally, physical Amiga formatted hard drives can be mounted. UAE does not include the original Amiga operating system ROM and files, which are required for running an Amiga system. These are included under license in packages like Amiga Forever. Original Kickstart 3.1 ROM images are also included with AmigaOS4 for

since version 4.1 Update 4. UAE also supports alternative system ROMs, such as those derived from the AROS project, however these do not provide the same degree of software compatibility as the original ROMs.

Portability

UAE has been ported to many host

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s, including

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

RISC OS RISC OS () is an operating system designed to run on ARM architecture, ARM computers. Originally designed in 1987 by Acorn Computers of England, it was made for use in its new line of ARM-based Acorn Archimedes, Archimedes personal computers an ...

BeOS BeOS is a discontinued operating system for personal computers that was developed by Be Inc. It was conceived for the company's BeBox personal computer which was released in 1995. BeOS was designed for multitasking, multithreading, and a graph ...

Palm OS Palm OS (also known as Garnet OS) is a discontinued mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants (PDAs) in 1996. Palm OS was designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. ...

, Android, the

Xbox Xbox is a video gaming brand that consists of four main home video game console lines, as well as application software, applications (games), the streaming media, streaming service Xbox Cloud Gaming, and online services such as the Xbox networ ...

console, the PSP, PSVita and GP2X handhelds,

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

, the

Wii The Wii ( ) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006, in North America, and in December 2006 for most other regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major home game console, f ...

and

Dreamcast The is the final home video game console manufactured by Sega. It was released in Japan on November 27, 1998, in North America on September 9, 1999 and in Europe on October 14, 1999. It was the first sixth-generation video game console, prec ...

consoles, and even to

AmigaOS AmigaOS is a family of proprietary native operating systems of the Amiga and AmigaOne personal computers. It was developed first by Commodore International and introduced with the launch of the first Amiga, the Amiga 1000, in 1985. Early versions ...

MorphOS MorphOS is an AmigaOS-like operating system designed for Power and PowerPC based computers. The core, based on the Quark microkernel, is proprietary, although several libraries and other parts are open source, such as the Ambient desktop. The p ...

and AROS.

Emulation speed

There have been many threads in the past on

Usenet Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...

and other public forums where people argued about the possibility of writing an Amiga emulator. Some considered UAE to be attempting the impossible; to be demanding that a system read, process and output 100 MB/s of data when the fastest PC was a 66 MHz 486, while keeping various emulated chips (the Amiga

chipset In a computer system, a chipset is a set of electronic components on one or more integrated circuits that manages the data flow between the processor, memory and peripherals. The chipset is usually found on the motherboard of computers. Chips ...

) all in sync and appearing as they were supposed to appear to software. UAE was almost entirely unusable in its first releases, but slowly and step by step, it fleshed out its support of the Amiga chipset and by the end of 1997 was able to emulate an

Amiga 500 The Amiga 500, also known as the A500, was the first popular version of the Amiga home computer, "redefining the home computer market and making so-called luxury features such as multitasking and colour a standard long before Microsoft or Apple ...

at a quality and speed that were sufficient for productivity use and for many games. Since then, UAE has been usable, thanks partly to the effort taken to develop it and partly to the big improvements in technology that brought computers many times faster than those UAE was initially running on. Many

Amiga games __NOTOC__ This is a list of games for the Amiga line of personal computers organised alphabetically by name. See Lists of video games for related lists. This list has been split into multiple pages. It contains 2,235 games. Please use the Table of ...

and applications can run smoothly on a

Pentium II The Pentium II is a brand of sixth-generation Intel x86 microprocessors based on the P6 (microarchitecture), P6 microarchitecture, introduced on May 7, 1997. It combined the ''P6'' microarchitecture seen on the Pentium Pro with the MMX (instruc ...

-era system. The realization that a useful Amiga emulator could be written contributed to an increase in enthusiasm about emulation, which started or sped-up efforts to write emulators for other and often less popular computer and electronic game architectures. A major improvement was made in 2000 by Bernd Meyer with the use of

Just-in-time compilation In computing, just-in-time (JIT) compilation (also dynamic translation or run-time compilations) is compilation (of computer code) during execution of a program (at run time) rather than before execution. This may consist of source code transl ...

, which significantly improved the emulation speed, to the extent that average PCs could now emulate some

Amiga software Amiga software is computer software engineered to run on the Amiga personal computer. Amiga software covers many applications, including productivity, digital art, Video game, games, commercial, freeware and hobbyist products. The market was act ...

faster than any real Amiga could run it. UAE can use as much of the host's power in

native mode Native describes a computing system as operating directly with an underlying technology; with no intervening communication or translation layers. Native software Native software is built to be executed directly by processors that implement ...

as possible, or balance it with other requirements of the host OS, or to accurately reflect the original speed, depending on a user's choice. UAE also provides an RTG-compatible "

video card A graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics accelerator, graphics adapter, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, display adapter, or colloquially GPU) is a computer expansion card that generates a feed of graphics output to a displa ...

" for the Amiga side of the emulation which is tailored for display on the host hardware, so as not to be limited to the emulation of the original Amiga video hardware.

Project development

There are six main

fork In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods either to h ...

s of the original program: * WinUAE, designed to run on

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

, ported by Mathias Ortmann and currently developed by Toni Wilen * PUAE, designed to run on

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

platforms (continuation of the abandoned E-UAE and also a port of WinUAE) * FS-UAE, designed to run on

and

(a port of WinUAE with a focus on emulating games, featuring a new on-screen GUI and cross-platform online play) * UAE4all, a stripped and optimized version, designed to emulate an OCS Amiga on low-end devices. UAE4all2 add AGA and hard disk support. * Scripted Amiga Emulator (SAE), designed to run in a modern browser using

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

and

HTML5 HTML5 (Hypertext Markup Language 5) is a markup language used for structuring and presenting hypertext documents on the World Wide Web. It was the fifth and final major HTML version that is now a retired World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommend ...

. It is also based on WinUAE and was released on 1. September 2012 by Rupert Hausberger. SAE needs a very fast computer to run on. *UAE4ARM, designed to run on ARM devices including the

Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi ( ) is a series of small single-board computers (SBCs) developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in collaboration with Broadcom Inc., Broadcom. To commercialize the product and support its growing demand, the ...

. It's the only fork supporting Just-In-Time on ARM devices. Others supported platforms are Pandora, Android and libretro. The most active fork is WinUAE; current versions of this still contain bugs and compatibility issues. Specific versions:

References

* Announcement by Bernd Schmidt on Usenet, Message-ID:
421jqo$91h@news.rwth-aachen.de
. * Announcement by Bernd Meyer of the Just In Time compiler on Usenet, Message-ID:
8nbkst$ta9$1@wombat.cs.monash.edu.au
.

External links

UAE Website

WinUAE Website

PUAE - fork of E-UAE

FS-UAE - A fork of WinUAE and E-UAE

Scripted Amiga Emulator

Gamebase Amiga
- provides a single click ROM starting interface on top of WinUAE {{DEFAULTSORT:Uae (Emulator) 1995 software Amiga emulators AmigaOS 4 software Amiga emulation software Proprietary video game console emulators GP2X emulation software MacOS emulation software MorphOS emulation software Linux emulation software Unix emulation software Windows emulation software 68k emulators Cross-platform software