This page contains some hints which might help you to get happier with WinUAE.

 

Adjust the CPU Idle slider to save Money

Modern CPUs save much power when they have nothing to do, for example you write a text or work with your workbench hear MP3 music. A AMD64 CPU in IDLE mode consumes 10 Watts. In full load mode, it uses 83 Watt. A P4 Prescott with E0 Stepping also has the ability to save a lot of power. A Athlon XP must disconnect the system bus. In most BIOS settings, this option is disabled, because old CPUs have bugs in this feature. You may try and activate it, if your system works stable.
Using the CPU IDLE feature saves you money, allows for lower opterating temperatures, and (if your fans are temperature controlled) less noise.

In the CPU tab you can choose the optimal value for power saving. The CPU must be set to fastest possible in A500 mode. You must set the slider so far right, so that the Windows Task Manager shows about 10-15% CPU load. If you set it more right, you save more CPU load, but WinUAE will generally run slower. But if you are on the road with a notebook it may be a good choice to sacrifice speed for more runtime. You can avoid the clock being incorrect using the timehack program.

 

Printing with WinUAE

Currently, there are 3 ways to print with WinUAE:

• For the same way as classic a Amiga, you can set a parallel printer in the WinUAE settings tab Game & I/O Ports. Make sure Postscript detection and Post Script Printer Emulation are not checked. If you use Windows 2000 or above, set the autoflush timeout to 2. Now you can save your config and can start WinUAE and do the rest on the Amiga. If you use turboprint, do not use the turboprint spooler and chose parallel port or turbopar for the print device. If you print something you should see an entry in the Windows printer spooler.
• If you have a printer that the Amiga does not support, you can choose the Postscript output. For this you need to install GhostScript for Windows. In WinUAE, select the printer and check on Postscript detection and Post Script Printer Emulation. Note: You can not change these settings on the fly (when you press F12 during emulation).
  Boot your emulated Amiga. There is a large probability that turboprint does not work with these printer settings, and prints out an empty page instead.
  Remove turbostart if you have it and chose the Workbench Postscript Printer. Please note that the OS3.5 and OS3.9 drivers crash when you use greyscale or black and white. Choose color instead. Set it on all printer prefs pages. You can chose the real output format with the windows printer preferences.
  Note: Most of the time it is enough to use the Workbench printer with 300 dpi. Higher resolutions may not produce an visible advantage, but definitely cost time and space.
  The printer must dither colors, so it is important here to chose 600 or 1200 dpi on the Windows side.
  If you really want greyscale and black&white from the Amiga side, use the driver from OS3.1 which works. The OS3.5 and OS3.9 driver seem to have a compiler Bug, and this function also does not work on real Amigas.
• TurboPrint, GhostScript etc. are no longer required, or at least the EpsonQ emulator is the easiest way to print

 

The uae_german keymap does not support µ or € Symbols

Recommend is the use of german_keymap_new.zip and set input other then compatibility Mode. This map is perfect compatible. For Euro you need of course a character set that support Euro Symbol, but work not in compatibility mode.See also the readme of it. Works only on 0.9.90 and above.

 

Using a Mousewheel

This work same as real amiga. Use the tool Freewheel from AmiNet.

 

WinUAE does not accept my hardfiles or show only CLI with my always used config

This happens if a second instance of WinUAE is running. It is not allowed to use the same hardfile with multiple WinUAE sessions at the same time. In very rare situations a very bad Amiga program crash could happen and prevent WinUAE from releasing the hardfile. So you can not load it in when you quit and start WinUAE. In this case, free the handle to the file manually or reboot Windows. If WinUAE takes long to boot you can switch on drive LEDs in the GUI. If the harddrive LED is on you know the hardfile is valid.

 

After resuming from hybernate state, the Amiga Clock shows the wrong time

Use the amiga program timehack. This is maybe also useful if you throttled CPU idle too much because time can then run 3-10% slower.

 

How to make custom screen resolutions for WinUAE

Powerstrip works OK now since Version 3.3 and nVidia drivers version 40 or later, so please make sure you are using the latest version of Powerstrip and nVidia drivers.

Create the modes:

• Change into the menu displayprofile -> configure
• Click advanced timing options -> custom resolutions -> user defined
• Set desired values and reboot windows if necessary

It is also possible to create interlaced doublescan resolutions in this menu.

 

Using a real Amiga formatted Harddrive in WinUAE

This can be done in the harddrive page in the GUI. If there is no drive listed, it is possible that this drive has no Amiga/Amithlon Partition.

 

I have several damaged Amigas - can i use the Kickstart from them?

Follow the instructions on the Transrom page.

 

Using other filesystems on Hardfiles (SFS tested)

Create a Hardfile. For use with HDToolbox you must set the Sector Surface and Reserved numbers to 0. The volume name should show N/A. Make a hdtoolsbox Icon with device=uaehf.device. Now do all steps like with a real Amiga with HDToolsBox..

 

The mouse pointer freezes sometimes and I have to reboot

Make sure you have the serial port enabled and correctly configured. Also, make sure the "Shared" checkbox is checked to loose no speed.

 

Differences of CD drivers

AsimCDFS:

• Fails if you mount more than 1 CD drive (all devices show the same CD content)
• Seems to be a bug in AsimCDFS, because it happens on real Amigas as well

cacheCDFS:

• Set the MaxTransfer size to 0x10000 (65 kb) in the mountfile
• This make cacheCDFS working and not display the read/write error Requesters

 

Get UAE working in every dir/drive without changing configs

Make use of relative pathes to realize this.

Example:
WinUAE is in C:\Amiga\WinUAE, and Kickstart ROMs are in C:\Amiga\Kickstart.
For the kickstart path, enter ..\Kickstart.

 

UAE doesn't boot due to Picasso96 failure (Picasso96 is extremely slow)

Start UAE and immediately press both Mousebuttons when the main window is shown. In the Amiga Early Startup select "Boot without Startup-Sequence". Now remove or move the uaegfx file in devs:monitors. Start UAE, now the Workbench shows up. Just select a AmigaMode Save and copy uaegfx to devs/monitors again. If this should fail, reinstall Picasso96.

Don't forget to copy the rtg.library file, which can be found in the AmigaPrograms directory, to libs:picasso96.This is important for full speed of WinUAE.

 

A chipset Mode that UAE does not display makes UAE fail

OS 3.1:

• Boot without aStartup-Sequence (from Amiga Early Startup menu), type loadwb in the CLI, and press "Cancel" on the "ENV:" warnings
• Start the screenmode selector
• Select a standard PAL mode. Save it, reboot and select your preferred mode

OS 3.5/3.9:

• Copy an old Screenmode prefs program from 3.1 to your HD, because the new one will not work this way.

 

UAE shows a green screen on boot

Go to the CPU page and select JIT -> Force Settings and Indirect Mode or disable JIT completely.

 

The folder "displaydrivers"

These are the picasso96 UAE drivers. Just ignore the drawer. The latest Picasso96 installer has correctly working display drivers included.

 

Tips for Tuning or random crashes

• If you have an old HD, install a pure Windows for testing purposes. Does the program work?
• Overclock your PC by 10% by using the bus clock. If it works correctly your PC seems to be stable. If it works for 4 minutes, it seems to be stable, too. If it doesn't work, try downclock it. Less crashes?
• A problem on non UDMA HD is that PIO4 or SCSI have no transfer error detection. So try to let your PC run on PIO3 (DMA still works) a month or so. The speed loss is not measurable in daily use, because Windows normally transfers small blocks. Less crashes?
• You can install Sysmon by using the Windows installer. With this tool you can see how many kB/s are transferred and how much memory a program uses. So you see if the the program is slow is related to the memory. Normally the allocated memory should not exceed your physical memory by more than 30 MB. If so, you can increase speed by using more memory.
• Time has shown that large drives are better than drives with high RPM. A 9 GB 10000 RPM SCSI drive is slower than a 40GB 7200 RPM IDE drive, if you use the same partition size.