This was done just by starting completely from scratch with a fresh install on my own PC, as I can't really remember how I got my original WinUAE install to the state it is now in.
This assumes 64-bit windows 7 or similar. Substitute whatever you need to.
This is REALLY quick and dirty. I've literally run through doing it this evening in a spare couple of hours. There will be typos, bad spelling, general mistakes and nasty not-uniform formatting and terminology. Sorry for this, please bear with it. One day maybe it will make it into the wiki with screenshots and everything but definitely don't hold your breath. YMMV!
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GETTING THE BASICS UP AND RUNNING
- Download WinUAE from http://www.winuae.net/ I downloaded the 64-bit zip archive
- create a folder on your desktop called prevueUAE
- unzip the archive (only 1 file) into that folder.
- create a folder called configurations inside the prevueUAE folder
- create a folder called roms inside the prevueUAE folder
- create a folder called disks inside the prevueUAE folder
- get a 37.175 version 2.04 ROM from somewhere (or buy Amiga forever from https://www.amigaforever.com/) stash it in the roms folder
- get the prevue disk image PREVUE.ADF from this forum or wherever and stick it in the disks folder
- run winuae64.exe, go into paths tab, select "WinUAE default (EXE directory)" in the dropdown next to the "reset to defaults" button, and then click the "reset to defaults button".
- click rescan roms and it should show that A500+ is available. if not, check your ROMs and the ROM path in the gui.
- go into quickstart tab, select model A500+, select configuration 4MB Fast RAM expanded configuration, ensure NTSC is ON
- click the top of the two "select image file" buttons (for DF0:), find your prevue.adf. untick DF1:
- go into configurations tab, name it prevue guide 2000, give it a description and press save
You now should have a working emulation of the original disk that AriX obtained. Press Start and the machine should load and run.
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ENHANCEMENT 1: make the basic floppy-based system faster
- go back into the winUAE dialog, configurations tab, select your configuration, click Load.
- go to the CPU tab, select "CPU emulation speed" -> "fastest possible".
- go to the floppy drives tab, change "floppy drive emulation speed" to "turbo".
- go back to the configurations tab and press save
Now you won't wait 5 hours for the thing to load!
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ENHANCEMENT 2: create a decent working Amiga environment to help work on your Prevue Guide Amiga.
- find a 40.68 version 3.1 ROM from somewhere (or now go buy Amiga forever
) and slap that in the roms folder.- find the 40.42 version 3.1 workbench disk images from somewhere and slap in the disks folder (actually you only need disk 2, the main workbench disk)
- create a harddrives folder in your prevueUAE folder
- go to http://aiab.ultimateamiga.co.uk/ and download the AIAB-r10.6.zip
- extract the zip to your desktop
- open the AIAB [Installer] folder, open the WinUAE folder, open the harddrives folder, copy the WHOLE workbench folder to your harddrives folder you just created.
- go back a level (to the WinUAE folder), open the configurations folder, copy the default.uae file to your configurations folder. rename that file to poweramiga.uae
- ensure WinUAE has been completely exited.
- run WinUAE again, paths tab, click rescan ROMs, should now show A500+, A4000 at least (A4000 in the list is what we're looking for)
- configurations tab, should now see poweramiga - select this and press load. There are some presumed settings in here we need to change.....
- CPU tab, select 68060 and ensure fasted possible is still on
- ROM tab, drop down and select your 40.68 3.1 ROM
- Floppy drive tab eject both DF0: and DF1:
- ensure floppy drive emulation speed is back on turbo.
- CD & Hard drive tab, select and remove both DH1 and DH2
- go back to configurations tab and press save
- press start.
- the AIAB startup script will ask you to ensure the workbench disk is in DF0:
- insert the workbench (disk 2) disk image into DFO: by pressing F12, going into the floppy tab, pressing the small button on the far right with [...] on it and locating the workbench disk file you just put into the disks folder. Remember it's disk 2 (also called workbench) if you downloaded the full set. Press OK.
- the AIAB script will now copy stuff from the workbench disk and ask you a load of questions, just answer the obvious choice, or the first one if it's not obvious
and then restart the emulated Amiga. You should now have a modern (err 2000s) looking Amiga desktop to work on!- close the winUAE application (to quit the emulation).
- re-run winUAE, configurations tab, again select your poweramiga config, click load.
- If you want to make some changes like I did to how the display works in WinUAE (mine insisted on going fullscreen and I didn't want it to) go to the Display tab, and change Settings->RTG to windowed.
- go back to the configurations tab and press save
now you will have a super turbo Amiga to work on your emulated Prevue Guide. So what I hear you ask? well because....
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ENHANCEMENT 3: run Prevue Guide from an emulated Amiga with a hard drive for maximum flexibility and speed!
- create a new folder in your harddrives directory called prevue-hd
- download powerdata from http://aminet.net/util/pack/PowerData210.lha, put the file in the prevueUAE/harddrives/workbench/tools/ folder
- go into WinUAE main configuration GUI, and select your poweramiga, and click load.
- go into the harddrives tab and click add directory or archive, device name DH1:, Volume label Prevue-HD, click select directory, find your prevue-hd folder inside your harddrives folder, click OK
- go back to configurations tab and click save, then click start.
- once inside your Amiga environment, double click the Workbench icon, doubleclick the tools drawer, then make the resulting window a bit bigger, right click inside and select show-> all files from the menu. you should see the powerdata210.lha that you just downloaded (if not, check you stuck it in the right folder).
- doubleclick the powerdata210.lha file, the MiraWizARC window should come up. Select Extract all, doubleclick DH0: on the right, then doubleclick tools on the left, then TYPE powerdata on the end of the "drawer" box at the bottom.
- this will create a new powerdata drawer in the tools drawer, which you should now see. Doubleclick that, you should not need to install it, just doubleclick powerdata.020, acknowledge the message that comes up, and the preferences window should appear.
- IMPORTANT: DESELECT the tickbox "Crunch" on the right hand side, and click Save. Powerdata is now running in the background and will uncompress anything that's compressed but NOT recompress it
- close the 100 windows you opened doing all that.
we now need to insert the PREVUE.ADF disk.
- if you are now running winUAE in windowed mode, escape the mouse (alt-tab] and click the drive indicator for DF0: (the first 00 next to Power HD CD in the very bottom right of the window), doubleclick the PREVUE.ADF
- if you are running it in fullscreen mode, I'm not sure but something like press f12, click the floppy drive tab, click the [...] button on the right for DFO:, select the PREVUE.ADF, and click OK
- a new disk Icon will appear on the desktop ESQ8205
- doubleclick the prevue-HD icon (yeah it looks like a disk.. no idea)
- doubleclick the ESQ8205 icon. position the two windows that you get out of the way of each other.
- right click inside each of the windows and select show->all files. The prevue-hd will be empty of course, and the ESQ8205 will take some time to display.
- right click inside the ESQ8205 window, select "select all" then drag and drop any of the icons from the ESQ8205 window to the Prevue-HD window. all the files should copy across from the ESQ8205 floppy disk to the Prevue-HD hard drive, any that are compressed will uncompress and stay uncompressed on the way.
- if you now right click inside each window and select view by -> text, you should see that some of the files are noticeably bigger, like curday.dat etc.
- close the ESQ8205 window by clicking the small square in the top left.
- in the Prevue-HD window, double click the "S" drawer, right click uv-ver and click open with->goldED. This will open the main startup script in a text editor.
- delete the 4 lines between "if exists C:PD" and "endif", right click in the window, and select project -> save text
- still in the "S" drawer, right click "startup-sequence" and open with->goldED.
- change the line "assign ENV: df0:" to read "assign ENV: dh1:"
- then underneath the line "assign T: ram:T", add the following lines....
assign c: dh1:c
assign s: dh1:s
assign df0: dismount
assign df0: dh1:
- again, right click in the window, select project -> save text.
- quit WinUAE, run it again, or just back to the main dialog, configurations tab, Select the prevue guide 2000 configuration and load.
- floppy drives tab and click eject for DF0:, and untick DF0:
- CD & hard drives tab, add directory or archive, device name DH1: volume label Prevue-HD and click select directory, and find your prevue-hd folder inside the harddrives folder.
- back to configurations tab, add "with hard drive" to both the Name and Description boxes, then click save, this saves a new separate configuration.
- click start
you should have a prevue guide running completely from an emulated hard drive without any powerpacked files!
NOW you can work on curday.dat etc from your PC by directly editing the file from windows. You can modify the file and restart the Amiga to see the effect without having to write ADF disk images and waiting ages for the Amiga to boot. NB I'd recommend gVim and xvi32 as tools to edit files with on the windows side, there's a lot of non-printable characters in the files that you need to preserve!
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ENHANCEMENT 4: understand (a bit of) what the Amiga is doing in the background!
Last one. It’s possible to get the Amiga to log all file access while ESQ is running, to get some inside knowledge when things aren’t working or it’s doing random things. I’ve found this quite useful. For instance, the ESQ executable is coded to load some things off whatever disk it booted from (so they are fine when the program and data files are moved to a hard drive) but stupidly is hardcoded to load a lot of files only from the first floppy drive (DF0:) and so it fails. Hence the lines added to startup-sequence in the above to basically remove the first floppy drive and map it to the prevue-hd hard drive.
- download ftp://nic.funet.fi/pub/amiga/utilities/ ... os-1.7.lha and as before place the file in the tools folder of the workbench hard drive via your normal OS.
- go back into your emulated poweramiga, open the workbench icon, the tools drawer, make the window a little bigger, and then right click, show -> all files,
- doubleclick the snoopdos-1.7.lha file. MiraWizARC should open. Select only the snoopdos file in the list, and click “extract select”
- select Prevue-HD on the right, then the C drawer on the left, and click OK.
- close all the open windows
- doubleclick the Prevue-HD icon, the S drawer, then right click startup-sequence and choose open with->goldED again.
- add the following line underneath “assign DF0: dh1:” that you added before
snoopdos -n -z snoopdos.log
- right click, project->save text and again close all the open windows.
- quit your poweramiga and run the prevue guide 2000 with hard drive setup.
If you now go into the prevue-hd folder in Windows, in there will be a snoopdos.log file which shows all of the files that the system and the ESQ executable have opened (or tried to open). You will see for instance that esq calls something called iff_task that opens TVGBANNR.UV over and over again.
Find the 40.42 version 3.1 workbench disk images from somewhere and slap in the disks folder (actually you only need disk 2, the main workbench disk)? I'm not sure what that supposes to mean. Anyway, enhancements 2-4 are really confusing me, not enhancement 1. That's what I'm trying to say. Believe me.
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