Installation¶

The collection is split into five packs: Base, Systems, ROMs, Games, and Demos.

You can download the packs from archive.org:

The total size of the packs is 16 GB for v1.0, and you’ll need about 18 GB for the installed collection. So about 36 GB of free disk space is needed to install RML Amiga.

If you’re short on free space but have multiple drives or partitions, you can download the packs to one drive, then install to another. The installer script allows you to install RML Amiga to a different drive or partition.

You can delete the packs after the installation if you want to reclaim disk space.

Automatic installation¶

The easiest way to set up RML Amiga is to use the automatic installation method via the installer script.

Pick a destination folder for your RML Amiga installation. This must be outside of any system folders such as C:\Program Files. For example, D:\Emulation\RML-Amiga is a good location.
Download all five packs into this folder.
Download the installation script install-full-v1.0.bat and the 7-zip archiver (7za.exe) from the Base pack archive.org item into this folder as well. The contents of the folder should now look like this:
Double-click on install-full-v1.0.bat to start the installation and follow the instructions in the appearing window. Read the instructions carefully; you’ll be able to specify an alternative installation location if you want to install RML Amiga to a different drive.

The installation will take about 15-20 minutes. It’s a good idea to read the Why play Amiga games? and CRT emulation sections while waiting.

Once the installation has been completed, you can delete the RML-Amiga-*.zip packs to reclaim disk space. Moving them to a different folder for safekeeping is an even better idea, though.

You can skip the rest of this section if you’re eager to play some Amiga games. Onward to the Getting started section!

RML Amiga is fully portable

RML Amiga uses relative paths and won’t create or modify any files outside its designated folder. You can move your RML Amiga folder between different drives or even different computers without any problems.

About the packs¶

Here is a detailed description of the packs:

Base — Contains 64-bit versions of WinUAE, the CAPS IPF disk image plugin, a custom-compiled version of ReShade (with auto-updates and the nag screen disabled), and the CRT shader setup.
Systems — Minimal Workbench 1.3 and 3.1 hard drive setups as directory hard drives. Just the bare minimum required to run games (these files are included on many AmigaDOS floppy games as well). The Workbench 3.1 installation contains WHDLoad too.
ROMs — Amiga Kickstart ROM images necessary to emulate the various Amiga models and the Roland MT-32 ROMs. (Note: The Amiga is not a console! Games are not called “ROMs” on the Amiga!)
Games — Nested ZIP archive with each game having its own self-contained ZIP file. Each game lives in its own dedicated subfolder which contains the disk images or directory hard drives, manuals, extras, save disks, save states, and the original source media.
Demos — Demoscene productions from the Amiga’s glorious past (and present!). It’s a nested ZIP archive, similar to the Games pack.

The folder structure in all packs is relative to the $RML_BASE folder. If you expand all packages into $RML_BASE (double-expand in the case of the Games and Demos packs), you’ll get the correct folder structure.

The practical reality we live in

The main reason for separating out the Kickstart ROMs and the minimal hard drive-based systems is to be able to share the collection on channels that don’t want to risk harassment from the current rightsholders of the Amiga Kickstart ROMs.

In a practical sense, no one gives a damn about these 30+ years old ROMs anymore, so whether you purchase them “legally” from the “current rightsholders” (who are far removed from Commodore and the original creators of the Amiga) or just download them from somewhere makes very little difference in the grand scheme of things. Up to you, really. If you decide to pay for them, make sure to purchase the full ROM set, not just the “value edition”.

Versioning & updates¶

“Point zero” package versions (e.g., v1.0, v2.0, etc.) always contain a snapshot of all the files in the collection.

“Point release” packages (e.g., v1.1, v1.2. etc.) are updates; they need to be applied in order. So, for example, if you’re currently on Games v1.2 and you want to upgrade to the latest v1.5 release, you’ll need to apply the v1.3, v1.4, and v1.5 update packages in order.

The Games and Demos packages will get the most frequent updates, the rest only rarely.

Manual installation¶

This is for people who want complete control over their installation (e.g., if you don’t want to download all games, just a few), and for those who have problems with using certain parts of the collection for whatever reasons (e.g., the Kickstart ROMs).

Start by downloading the Base and Systems packs—these are mandatory. The ROMs pack is not necessary if you have acquired the ROM files from elsewhere (see Supplying your own ROM files).

Once you’ve downloaded these packs, extract them into a folder you have full write access to (e.g., D:\Emulation\RML-Amiga). We will refer to this folder as $RML_BASE from now on. If you already have WinUAE installed, no problem. The collection uses its own copy of WinUAE in portable mode, so it won’t interfere with existing installations. The included WinUAE will never save any data outside of the $RML_BASE folder.

Now download the Games pack and install-games-v1.0.bat, then Demos and install-demos-v1.0.bat if you’re interested in watching glorious Amiga demoscene productions. The scripts are not shown on the main page of the archive.org items; you need to click on the “Show All” link in the “Downloads options” box on the right side to see the full file list.

Move the packs and the scripts into $RML_BASE, then run install-games-v1.0.bat and install-demos-v1.0.bat (the installation will take about 15 minutes for the Games pack).

You can optionally pass the destination folder to the installer scripts as a command line argument. This is handy if you’re short on disk space, so you can download the archives to one drive or partition and then install them to a different one.

The stock configurations are set up for 1080p resolution. You’ll need to use the Configuration tool to update all your configs to your monitor’s resolution if you’re running RML Amiga on a better than 1080p screen (the automated installer does this step for you). Make sure to check out the instructions in the 4K and better monitors section as well.

Note

The Games and Demos packs are nested archives; each game and demo resides in its own ZIP archive inside the big ZIP archive. You’d need three times the disk space if you wanted to expand these manually. That’s why using the installer scripts is recommended because the scripts will expand the nested ZIP files one by one, so you’ll only need a bit more than twice the disk space.

Installing only a few games

Alternatively, you can grab only the games you’re interested in. Each game resides in its own ZIP archive inside the big Games ZIP file. You can view the list of nested ZIP files on archive.org by clicking on the “Show All” link in the “Downloads options” box on the right side, then on the “View Contents” link next to the ZIP file’s name in the file listing. That will take you to the list of nested ZIP archives which you can download individually by simply clicking on their names. Then you just simply need to unpack these ZIP files into $RML_BASE.

This voids your warranty, pal!

The games are only guaranteed to work with the bundled WinUAE version. Switching to any other version is asking for trouble—don’t do it.

Supplying your own ROM files¶

If you’ve acquired the ROM files from alternative sources, this is how to install them.

Kickstart ROMs¶

The easiest way is to copy all your Amiga Kickstart ROM files into $RML_BASE/ROMs, then force a re-scan by pressing the Rescan ROMs button in the Paths WinUAE configuration tab. WinUAE will identify the ROM files by their CRC32 checksums, so the file names don’t matter.
To get WHDLoad working (required by a handful of games), copy the Amiga 500 (Kickstart 1.3 rev 34.50) and Amiga 1200 (Kickstart 3.1 rev 40.60) ROMs into the $RML_BASE/System-3.1/Devs/Kickstarts folder, then rename them to kick34005.A500.RTB and kick40068.A1200.RTB, respectively (the below table shows their typical file names in Kickstart ROM collections).

These are all the ROM files used by setup with their CRC32 checksums:

Filename	CRC32
Kickstart-v1.1-rev31.34-1985-Commodore-A1000.NTSC.rom	`D060572A`
Kickstart-v1.2-rev33.166-1986-Commodore-A1000.rom	`9ED783D0`
Kickstart-v1.3-rev34.50-1987-Commodore-A500-A1000-A2000-CDTV.rom	`C4F0F55F`
Kickstart-v3.1-rev40.68-1993-Commodore-A1200.rom	`1483A091`
Kickstart-v3.1-rev40.60-1993-Commodore-CD32.rom	`1E62D4A5`
CDTV Extended-ROM v2.7 (1992)(Commodore)(CDTV).rom	`CEAE68D2`
CD32 Extended-ROM rev 40.60 (1993)(Commodore)(CD32).rom	`87746BE2`

Roland MT-32 ROMs¶

These are only required by a handful of games that support Roland MT-32 sound. You must copy these into $RML_BASE\ROMs\mt32-roms\ and the file names must match:

Filename	CRC32	SHA-1
ctrl_cm32l_1_02.rom	`B998047E`	`a439fbb390da38cada95a7cbb1d6ca199cd66ef8`
ctrl_mt32_1_07.rom	`A7C1531B`	`b083518fffb7f66b03c23b7eb4f868e62dc5a987`
pcm_cm32l.rom	`4B961EBA`	`289cc298ad532b702461bfc738009d9ebe8025ea`
pcm_mt32.rom	`573E31CC`	`f6b1eebc4b2d200ec6d3d21d51325d5b48c60252`