Amiga emulation refers to the activity of emulating a Commodore Amiga computer system using another computer platform. Most commonly, a user will emulate the Amiga using modern platforms such as Wintel or Macintosh. This allows Amiga users to use their existing software, and in some cases hardware, on modern computers.
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Attempts have also been made to create a hardware Amiga emulator on FPGA chips (Minimig).
One of the most challenging aspects of emulating the Amiga architecture is the custom chipset, which is extremely complex (even though today's graphics processors and digital signal processors outperform it easily) and relies on critical cycle-exact emulation, particularly for some game titles. As a result, early emulators did not always achieve the intended results; however, later emulator versions can now accurately reproduce the behavior of Amiga systems.
Fellow
An actively developed emulator capable of emulating all the common Amiga configurations. (A500, A600, etc...)
UAE
Although the name varies, this emulator exists for Windows, Macintosh, RISC OS, Linux, Unix and other systems, including the Amiga itself. It is capable of emulating an 68K Amiga, including undocumented behavior, with OCS and/or AGA chipsets and modern graphics and audio subsystems, including true colour graphic libraries and Amiga AHI 16 bit audio subsystem.
Legality
Amiga emulation software is legal by itself. However, a copy of a Kickstart ROM from a real Amiga is required for legal use, which is still protected under copyright laws. The Workbench software and many other programs and games are also copyrighted and illegal to download, although there are a number of recognized sites which offer free legal downloads of Amiga games. The Amiga Forever emulation package offers legal copies of Kickstart, Workbench and various games.
Another legal option for Amiga emulation is the AROS Research Operating System, which is available as free software. An AROS boot ROM can be used instead of Kickstart, which allows booting the m68k port of AROS from a floppy or CD image.