If you’re only concern is some retro gaming goodness, Amiga 500 and Amiga 1200 ROMs will have you covered for the vast majority of games and applications.

In addition to these items, you’ll also need a decompression program like WinRAR to extract any files that you download and Amiga ROMs to emulate the particular type of Amiga you desire. Amibian is also completely free, as are the tools you’ll need to set it up properly. Amibian uses UAE4ARM, an Amiga emulator built for ARM-based processors, and is very easy to setup and use. There are a few options in terms of software, like RetroPie and Amiberry to name a couple, but I went with a standalone emulation package called Amibian. For me, it was absolutely worth it for the aesthetic appeal alone, but not everyone is as emotionally attached to the Amiga as I am. If you don’t mind splurging a bit, a 3D printed Retro Amiga case for the Raspberry Pi 3 will set you back another $40. 32GB is complete overkill for this project, because it’ll hold virtually every application ever created for the Amiga, but it happened to be one of the cheapest, high-speed cards available when I looked, so I grabbed it. And then there was the 32GB Samsung micro-SD card. There are numerous USB gamepads that’ll work with the Pi 3 (including Xbox controllers), so I grabbed a SNES gamepad replica that was super cheap. Any standard USB keyboard and mouse will do, but I wanted something compact that could be easily moved from machine to machine, so I grabbed a cheap, compact wireless combo from Rii. That Pi3 starter kit includes a power adapter, HDMI cable, heatsinks, and a clear case. The grand total for all of the essentials is only $91. Samsung EVO Select Micro-SD Card (32GB) - $13.All you need to build a killer, small form factor Retro Amiga is: And almost all of the software is completely free. The entire parts list is surprisingly affordable – especially if you have input devices laying around and aren’t dead-set on acquiring a Retro Amiga case. I had so much fun, and the endeavor was so affordable, I thought some of you might want to get in on the action. So, I snagged a Retro Amiga case and got to tinkering. Although I still own a couple of actual Amigas, they are in storage and have probably succumbed to battery and capacitor leakage at this point. When these 3D printed, Retro Amiga cases for the RPi 3 hit Etsy, I had to have one. If you’re crazy – like me – you can even overclock the Raspberry Pi 3 to squeeze even more performance from the platform. The Raspberry Pi 3, however, represents a flexible, affordable option that’s tiny, easy to configure, and can actually be many times faster than any of the original Amigas. Thankfully, there are a myriad of ways to emulate the Amiga on virtually any platform from Android smartphones to powerful PCs. Messing around with old Amiga hardware can be fun, but it can also be costly, especially in the U.S. So loyal, that new hardware and software continue to be developed for the Amiga to this day. But one thing is certain – the Amiga still has loyal fans that can’t get enough of the platform. The rest of the Amiga’s story is a convoluted mess that’s been told ad nauseam and continues to spur heated debate to this day. It offered multimedia features that were unmatched for many years, it was affordably priced (relatively speaking), and was the first personal computer with true multi-tasking capabilities, among numerous other things.ĭespite the Amiga’s superiority, Commodore eventually imploded some 23+ years ago and took the Amiga down with it. At the time of its launch, the Amiga was the most advanced personal computer money could buy – bar none. Those of us that were around when the Amiga initially debuted knew Commodore had something special on its hands. Dave Haynie, one of the chief engineers that worked on the Amiga back in its heyday, put it best when he said, “Amiga users make Macintosh users look like PC users”, in the Viva Amiga documentary that was released early this year.

Raspberry pi emu