Task: Install the Amiga Game Selector as a Custom System for Booting Games and Software on Your Amiga A1200 NG Emulator
Needed: A1200 NG from AmigaKit, Compact Flash card, AGS 3.0 or later
Time: 15-30 minutes. Longer if you need to download AGS
Introduction
I have previously posted about the Amiga Game Selector (AGS) that provides a clean and easy to use interface for selecting and booting more than 8000 games, demos, etc. You can also use it to boot into Workbench 3.1 where there lots of applications to choose from such as AMOS BASIC.
I recently set up AGS 3.0 on an SD card for booting on my Amiga 1200 through compact flash IDE adapter. You can also boot AGS on an AmigaKit A1200 NG hardware emulator that I also posted about. This is a nice modern hardware solution. My A1200 NG system is shown below with a new case and keyboard.
It is straightforward to install AGS on the A1200 NG as a Custom System.
Instructions
This project assumes that you have already downloaded AGS 3.0 or later for the Amiga 1200 classic hardware. Note that the file is close to 20GB and will take some time. Make sure you have imaged an SD or compact flash card. You will need the compact flash card or a compact flash SD card adapter to boot on the a1200 NG.
Once you have the compact flash card prepared, the first step is to insert it into the compact flash slot on the left side of the A1200 NG. Take care not to bend the pins that are delicate.
Next, boot the A1200 NG and select the ADD button from the bottom left of the screen. This will bring up a menu (see below) where you can provide the details needed to boot AGS. Provide the title. I used AGS30. You can also provide a thumbnail. I grabbed a low-res image of the AGS splash screen. For model choose A1200 or whatever system you want.
Next, I chose to add 8MB of Fast RAM with 2MB of chip RAM. Just below that selection choose Mount as RDB Hard Disk (full drive as AGS has multiple drives) under the A1200NG CF Card box. You can choose other CPUs and accelerators if you want. If not, be sure and SAVE CHANGES and make sure your custom system with AGS shows up in the menu to the right with your thumbnail. If it isn’t listed, save it again. I noticed sometimes these additions don’t take.
Finally, you should be able to click on the AGS disk icon on the right and launch the software by pressing the START button. Note that the A1200 NG is booting the drives off the compact flash card. You can get to Workbench by pressing ESC. To exit AGS simply press the select button on the provided USB gamepad. This will trigger the A1200 NG menu where you can choose to quit and return the main menu.
Comments
This was relatively painless and quick and really fun to have all those gaming options running on modern hardware.
You could set up any Workbench install and make it available here.