Old School Game Blog

Hi guys,

I’ve finally installed AROS on my old Toshiba laptop! Hurrah! I’m happy that I got it working without any serious problems and I’m now in the process of exploring this new (for me) OS.

The installation went well. Here’s what I did to get it running:

1. First I downloaded a distribution of AspireOS which can be found here. There are other distributions available, but I chose this one due to the file size and the eye-candy.
2. Unpacked the .ZIP archive to my hard drive and then burned the ISO to a CD.
3. Since I wanted to have the option of running Windows XP as well (my laptop has that OS installed), I had to make some space for AROS. I therefore used a program to shrink the size of my D: partition. The result was that I got some unallocated space, while preserving both my C: and D: partition.
4. I put the AROS CD into the CD-ROM drive and rebooted the computer.
5. During startup, I pressed F12 and chose to boot with the CD-ROM drive.
6. AROS loaded as it should and I double-clicked on the install-icon. There I got the option to select “use empty space” and did exactly that. The beauty of it is that the installer automatically installs AROS to the unallocated space on the hard drive. When the script finished, I had to reboot the computer and run AROS from the CD. I then continued with the install and after a few minutes the process was complete.
7. Turned off the computer and switched it on again, removing the CD from the drive. A multiboot menu appeared on-screen and I selected AROS. It didn’t take long before the OS filled the screen in all its glory.
8. Rebooted again and chose Windows XP this time, just to make sure that I hadn’t damaged it after installing AROS. Fortunately, everything worked like it used to.

AROS running on my Toshiba laptop (photo by Old School Game Blog)

I must say that AROS feels kind of familiar to me already, since it resembles the old AmigaOS that I’m running on my Amiga 1200. I don’t think it will take too long to get to grips with.   I’m now looking forward to explore it during the weekend and if I like it enough, I might invest in some dedicated hardware for it. It so happens that I’ve got a mini-ITX case here with a hard-drive, CD/DVD-drive and a RAM-chip, but no motherboard. I know that the old Intel ATOM ones should be more or less fully compatible with AROS (I’m then thinking of the one used by ClusterUK in his Imica build – check it out here), so I could probably score one cheaply off e-Bay. Time will show what I’ll do. I’m hungry for a next-generation Amiga system and AROS seems like the best choice right now, since I can’t afford any of the AmigaOS 4.x options.

AROS in action! (photo by Old School Game Blog)

The AspireOS distribution comes bundled with everything from emulators like ZSNES and DosBox to games like Giana’s Return, Quake and Rise of the Triad. It also includes a setup that lets you run classic Amiga software with ease. When configured, you can simply double-click on an .ADF file and the game will run directly. I haven’t tried it yet, but I guess it would feel the way running a WHD-Load game on an Amiga 1200 would do (I know you can’t beat the real thing though.. Hehe.. ).

I’ll keep you posted on my journey through the world of AROS.

Anyone else going to try AROS in the near future or maybe you’re using it already? Would love to hear from you. I’m especially interested in your hardware configurations, as it might help me out later if I decide to buy a motherboard.

Have a good weekend everyone!