Not only is the Amiga a powerful computer, but it can also pretend to be other things, too, as Wally Dug finds out

This month's Build-It! feature enables the home user complete emulation of several systems for very little cost. A word of warning though - the following alterations may possibly invalidate your warranty, so only attempt them if you meet with one of the following conditions:

(a) Your machine is out of warranty; or
(b) You are completely drunk and have half an hour to kill before Take The High Road.

IBM PC

The IBM PC and it's many clones is, according to legions of office managers, the only computer choice for serious use in the workplace. With a little bit of imagination, even the most basic Amiga can become PC compatible at no extra cost.

First of all, boot the machine (using a copy of your Workbench disk) and enter Preferences. Then, change colour 0 (blue) to black and colour 3 (orange) to white and "Save". Next, enter the CLI and delete your s:startup-sequence and replace it with the following:

Echo ""
Echo "Enter a system disk in drive A:"
Prompt "A:"

After this, enter the c: directory and delete all the files except dir, info and makedir. Finally, rename the disk "MS-DOS 34.5".

Now come the tricky hardware modifications. First of all, discard the mouse - it is, after all, a novelty which will never catch on. Secondly, everyone knows that a PC only has 640Kb, so open up the Amiga's trapdoor, remove the memory card, take out every chip except one and replace it inside the computer.

The next limitation is in the disk drive. This requires opening up the Amiga and removing one of the heads (these are the two round hairy objects on the end of the long sticks) to decrease the drive capacity from 880Kb to 440Kb. The next step is to place a magnet the size of a 10 pence piece onto your system disk, thus reducing the capacity to 360Kb.

Whilst the Amiga's internals are exposed, whip out the four custom chips as they will never be needed again.

After reassembling, your machine should be 100% IBM PC compatible.

Acorn Archimedes

Of course, due to the versatility of the Amiga, several other emulation modes are available, including Acorn's Archimedes.

Despite being technologically superior to the Amiga, it is actually very simple to emulate the Archimedes, due to the main processors. As the Archimedes is a 32-bit machine and the Amiga is 16-bit, by doubling the bits of the Amiga (simply by using a junior hacksaw to cut it in two) we achieve perfect emulation.

Sinclair ZX81

The much-forgotten Sinclair ZX81 can also be emulated by the Amiga.

Firstly, open up the Amiga and remove every silicon chip except one (it doesn't matter in the slightest which one is left) and reassemble, painting everything, except the keyboard, black.

Secondly, stick an old mono cassette recorder by the left hand side of the Amiga. To complete the transformation, adjust the vertical hold of your television or monitor to maximum to recreate the (in)famous Sinclair Loading Sequence.

There you have it - complete ZX81 emulation. Nothing actually loads from the cassette recorder, and this is what makes this emulation most accurate.

MSX

How many of you owned an MSX? No-one? Doesn't surprise me. However, now you can!

Open up the Amiga and remove every transistor, wire and chip and reassemble the computer. Write the letters "MSX" in a fancy style on a piece of paper and fix over the "Amiga" impression on the case. You now have a completely useless, er, sorry, an MSX machine.

Apple Macintosh

There is one computer, however, that the Amiga will never be able to imitate, due to the power of the machine, namely the Apple Macintosh. The simple reason is that the basic Amiga can sustain a Guru whilst formatting two disks at once. The Mac cannot.

Finding the right computer for your needs can be very difficult. However, as I have shown, only one computer is actually required in order to get the rest. Only the Amiga makes this possible. And remember, if at first you don't succeed, in with the boot and then the heid.

Copyright © Wally Dug Multimedia 1998