Overview
All versions of Amiga Forever use a common directory structure
for the Amiga emulation, operating system and application storage subsystem,
which originally took into account discussions with the
developers of UAE and Fellow. The result
is a unified directory structure for items like ROMs, ADFs, hardfiles (which
we agreed to name "HDF" when using three-letter abbreviations), so
that Amiga configurations can be used by different emulators at
the same time, or when booting from partitions which launch
different operating systems and which would use different
emulators. To make this possible, platform-specific emulation
software files and shared Amiga files have been separated into
parallel structures: Amiga (ROM, ADF, HDF, system and
application) files cannot be inside a specific emulator's
directory, but must be parallel to it. All emulators support
"../", "..\" or whatever the system standard is to get up one
directory in their settings paths.
In order to be compatible with all platforms, and to avoid
ambiguities with case-sensitive file systems, the unified
directory names are limited to 8 characters and are capitalized
exactly as indicated in this document (files are generally lower
case if platform-neutral, i.e. not for display in the Amiga or
Windows environment).
In Practice
The following are some of the directories and files
(including example-only items) which are distributed
with Amiga Forever and which contain either Amiga files, or
emulation-specific configuration files:
Amiga Files/Demoscene/
Amiga Files/Demoscene/Introvert Demo (Inspired Group, 1987, Amiga).rp2
Amiga Files/Games/
Amiga Files/Games/Asteroid Invader (Acme Games, 1986, Amiga).rp2
Amiga Files/Other/
Amiga Files/System/
Amiga Files/System/adf/
Amiga Files/System/adf/amiga-os-134-workbench.adf
Amiga Files/System/adf/amiga-os-204-workbench.adf
Amiga Files/System/adf/amiga-os-310-workbench.adf
Amiga Files/System/dir/
Amiga Files/System/dir/System/
Amiga Files/System/dir/System/C/
Amiga Files/System/dir/System/libs/
Amiga Files/System/dir/Work/
Amiga Files/System/hdf/
Amiga Files/System/rom/
Amiga Files/System/rom/amiga-os-310.rom
Amiga Files/System/rom/rom.key
Amiga Files/WinFellow/
Amiga Files/WinFellow/Configurations/
Amiga Files/WinUAE/
Amiga Files/WinUAE/Configurations/
The above "Amiga Files" directory
refers to the system folder installed by Amiga Forever on
Windows. This folder contains no Windows executables (e.g.
WinUAE.exe is not stored here). On non-Windows systems, and/or
when still installed on CD or DVD (prior to Amiga Forever 2008), the above files are in the
"Emulation" directory, relative to the root of the medium or
installation.
Beginning with Amiga Forever 2008, "Amiga Files" is also
present on the CD or DVD root. Windows-specific application
files are on a separate "Windows" directory:
Windows/WinFellow/
Windows/WinFellow/WinFellow.exe
Windows/WinUAE/
Windows/WinUAE/WinUAE.exe
On Windows systems the content of "Windows" is installed inside "C:\Program
Files\Cloanto\Amiga Forever".
Windows Systems
In Amiga Forever 2005 the "Amiga Files" folder was introduced for enhanced long-term
compatibility and security in the Windows versions of the
software. This means that under Windows the common directory
structure is stored in two physical directories, reflecting
different access and execution privileges.
After installation of Amiga Forever under Windows,
emulation-related data files, including Amiga operating system and application
files (Amiga executables) can be accessed
under:
%AMIGAFOREVERDATA%
Windows executables, including the emulation binary files for
Windows, can be accessed under:
%AMIGAFOREVERROOT%\Emulation
The two paths
will generally point to different physical directories,
referencing different parts (Windows binaries vs. other files)
of the same overall structure outlined in this document.
For additional access instructions, please see:
Non-Windows Systems and Run-from-CD
In Amiga Forever 2008 "Amiga Files" was also applied to the CD
and DVD directory structure. Prior to that, the "Emulation" directory, stored at the root of the Amiga Forever medium, contained all files (software and data) which are related
to the Amiga and its emulation.
Other directories at the root level, like "Windows",
and other platform-specific directories, contain
unrelated items which are not relevant to this document.
All Systems (Windows and Non-Windows)
The directory containing the Amiga data files contains a "System" directory, where all Amiga
system files are grouped, and one or more emulator-specific directories. The level
immediately inside "System" also contains unified names, which include
"adf" (Amiga floppy disk image files, with .adf or
.adz suffix), "dir"
(directories mounted as Amiga volumes, e.g. "System" and
"Work"), "hdf" (Amiga hardfiles, with .hdf
or .hdz suffix), "rom" (Amiga
ROM files with optional .key file) and "amiga_utilities"
(emulation utilities in Amiga binary format, as they are
distributed before installation).
The Amiga "Games" and "Demos" directories are respectively
dedicated to games and demoscene productions. They are application-centric,
containing one subdirectory per game or demo. Each application
directory contains that application's files (e.g. disk images in
any format, etc.)
Amiga Forever operating system ADF files use the amiga-os-version-diskname.adf format for file
names, where "amiga" denotes the Amiga hardware, "os" stands for "operating
system", version is 100, 130, 204, 300, 310, etc. for
version 1.0, 1.3, 2.04, 3.0,
3.1, etc., and diskname indicates the specific floppy disk. For example, the image file for the
disk labelled "Workbench" of operating system version 2.04 is named "amiga-os-204-workbench.adf".
Amiga Forever Amiga ROM files follow the amiga-romtype-version-machinetype.rom
naming format, where romtype uses "os" to refer to
standard operating system ROMs, "ext" indicates additional (extended) ROMs (e.g. CDTV and CD³²), "boot" indicates a boot ROM and machinetype
is a model-specific
label for certain Amiga computers, e.g. "cdtv", "cd32", "a1000",
"a1200", etc., or is missing for machine-neutral versions. As a
rule of thumb, machine-specific versions are included where this
is important for application compatibility. The Amiga 1000 boot ROM, which contains the code used to load
the version-specific ROM from a Kickstart floppy disk, is
version-neutral, and has no version number (it is named
"amiga-boot-a1000.rom").
Directories inside "System/dir" are named after the volume name with
which they are mounted. In Amiga Forever, the "System/dir" directory
contains "System" and "Work". The System partition is prepared in such a way
as to boot and function properly even if the Work partition is not mounted.
The System partition can be upgraded as new versions of the operating system are released.
Amiga Forever includes older operating system versions, such as Workbench 1.3, only in ADF format.
It is strongly recommended to use suffixes for file names wherever
possible, and in particular for documentation files. The internet has made suffixes
a standard to recognize different file types, and several operating systems,
not just DOS and Windows, make it possible to recognize file types and associate
them to the correct viewer, based on the suffix. Under Windows, if a
"readme" file ends with .txt, .htm or .html, then it can easily be opened
with one or two mouse clicks. Otherwise the only party that wins is user
frustration. Other suffixes used in Amiga Forever are .hdf, .adf and .rom.
Ideally, each distribution which has one or more documentation files
would also contain an index.html or index.htm file which links all the files
together, whether they are text or HTML files. Complex projects, like UAE,
could have an index file for each component maintained by a different
person, whether that be the base UAE documentation, the Polish translation,
or the Windows port. Once a standard is agreed on for the directory
containing each index file, nobody would have to worry any more about broken
links, and the same files could be used both in the regular distribution,
and for online reading.
The rom.key file, which is the Amiga Forever ROM encoding key
(required by some of Cloanto's licensors), should be
placed in "System/rom".
It is recommended not to embed version names in the names of executable
files. If the file name for the emulation software executable remains
constant, the user's scripts and links will continue to work properly even
after upgrades to the software.
Relative Paths
Emulation settings files which are redistributed should not contain paths
which are absolute to a certain drive on the machine on which they were
created. For example, on a Windows computer, the "Work" volume should be
mounted as "%AMIGAFOREVERDATA%\System\dir\Work", and not as "C:\MyPrograms\Emulation\System\dir\Work".
This makes it possible for settings files to be used on different computers
and configurations. Similarly, on a run-from-CD compilation the "Work"
volume should be mounted as "..\System\dir\Work", rather than as
"D:\Emulation\System\dir\Work".
Read-Only Media
Emulation code, add-ons and configurations should work properly even on a
read-only medium. This makes it possible to publish a configuration on a
CD, and use it without installing it. Many work and school environments
have security policies about installing software which make running
applications from CD a rare but very appreciated feature. Cover CDs are also
a case where users might prefer to run applications directly from CD.
The Amiga Forever player supports "virtual writing", i.e. for
games and other applications that require write access to a disk
in order to start or otherwise properly, it provides virtual
read/write images (feature supported for ADF, ADZ, HDF and HDZ -
if running from read-only media, change are lost at the end of
the emulation session).
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