darkcactus1957 / amiberry

Optimized Amiga emulator for the Raspberry Pi and other ARM boards

Amiga emulator for ARM boards

Amiberry is an optimized Amiga emulator, for ARM-based boards (like the Raspberry Pi, ASUS Tinkerboard, Odroid XU4, etc). The core emulation comes from WinUAE, but stripped down somewhat in order to achieve good performance in underpowered boards. It includes JIT CPU and FPU support, to get high-performance results on CPU-intensive emulated environments. On top of that, we have some unique features developed specifically for Amiberry, such as the WHDLoad booter and support for RetroArch controller mapping.

Amiberry requires the SDL2 framework for graphics display, input handling and audio output. On the RPI platform specifically, we offer a special alternative version which uses Dispmanx directly for the emulation screen, for maximum performance. This version requires that you use the fkms driver, and runs in full-window mode always, while it also makes some features non-practical (such as launching Linux apps in the background with host-run).

Requirements

Amiberry has been tested on Debian/Raspbian Buster and Bullseye (32-bit and 64-bit), Manjaro 64-bit, DietPi and other distros. Some even include it in their app ecosystem (e.g. DietPi and RetroPie).

Amiberry requires the following packages to run on Debian/Raspbian derived distros:

  sudo apt install libsdl2-2.0-0 libsdl2-ttf-2.0-0 libsdl2-image-2.0-0 flac mpg123 libmpeg2-4

If you want to compile Amiberry from source, you'll need the -dev version of the same packages instead:

  sudo apt install libsdl2-dev libsdl2-ttf-dev libsdl2-image-dev libflac-dev libmpg123-dev libpng-dev libmpeg2-4-dev

On the Raspberry Pi, if you're not running Raspbian you'll also need this:

  sudo apt install libraspberrypi-dev

Or if you're using an Arch-based distro (e.g. Manjaro), the relevant package names are these (these include the dev versions by default):

  sudo pacman -S base-devel sdl2 sdl2_ttf sdl2_image flac mpg123 libmpeg2

Getting Amiberry

The latest stable releases come with binaries, that you can download from the Releases area. Several popular distros (like RetroPie, DietPi, Amibian, Pimiga and others) already include Amiberry either pre-installed, or through their package management systems. Please follow the methods provided in those distros for a smoother experience, and refer to their owners for support during this process.

Alternatively, you can compile the latest version of Amiberry from source yourself. To do that, follow these steps:

Clone this repo:

  cd ~
  git clone https://github.com/midwan/amiberry
  cd amiberry

Choosing a target

Amiberry's Makefile includes several targets, to cover various platforms. For the Raspberry Pi platform specifically, we offer a special Dispmanx version for maximum performance, but it requires the fkms driver to be used. Dispmanx is disabled when using the newer kms driver (now the default from Bullseye onwards):

• SDL2 with DispmanX back-end for graphics - RPI platforms only. Needs the fkms driver enabled.
• SDL2 with whatever back-end it was configured with (e.g. KMS, OpenGL, X11, etc.) - all platforms.

Compiling a target

You must specify the Platform you want to build as a parameter to the make command. The process will abort if you use an incorrect platform or no platform at all.

Please consult the relevant Wiki page for the full list of available platforms. You can also check the Makefile for a full list of supported platforms.

For more documentation subjects, please check the Wiki page

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