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Hello All,
After my VICE adventures over the years, I figured Amiberry on Linux for a proper Amiga 4000 emulation would be relatively simple and doable. Big mistake. This afternoon has been nothing but pain and frustration. This post is a bit of a semi-rant.
All I get is a black screen when trying to boot an emulated A4000 from a hard drive image. Kickstart screen nope, nothing — just blackness in a window that freezes the emulator and forces a reboot of Linux. No Workbench, no startup, no error, just dead.
I've tried:
- Latest Amiberry build for Linux
- Various Kickstart 3.1 ROMs (standard, A4000 variants, whatever I can find and purchased Amiga Forever ROMs)
- Multiple HDFs
- RDB mode enabled, IDE controller for A4000, manual geometry tweaks in the config
- No floppies in DF0:, different CPU/chipset combos, messing with boot priority
- Hand-editing configs, different paths/permissions on Linux, disabling JIT, etc.
Nothing works. It hangs at black screen.
Don't even get me started on the ROM/Kickstart confusion. Which companies had/have which versions? Where do you legally get the right ones for A4000? And then where exactly do you drop the files so Amiberry actually finds them? The paths, folder structures, rescan buttons — it's a total nightmare every single time.
Emulation of an Amiga at this point in the technical timeline should be straightforward and self-explanatory, but it's not.
Truth is, emulation appears to be a horrible solution for these old machines. It promises nostalgia and accessibility but delivers endless config hell, black screens, mismatched hardware behavior, and nothing that actually feels like the real thing. Why bother when the spirit of the platform gets lost in all the troubleshooting?
Emulation here is essentially built-in gatekeeping.
And all this is before you can even think about running a software program or a game — haven't even got to the future magic of those challenges.
The whole process feels unnecessarily complicated compared to real hardware or even other emulators. Creating/prepping the HDF is a tedious chicken-and-egg nightmare of floppy boots + HDToolBox + installs that never quite transfer cleanly. Linux paths, builds, and quirks just make it worse. Zero of this feels easy or user-friendly.
How can nostalgic support for the Amiga system be encouraged when basic functionality like booting from a hard drive image isn't easily achievable?
What config magic finally kills the black screen? Or is this just a known lost cause on desktop Linux and I should stick to something else? Is real hardware the real solution?
Frustrated.
-Sutehk
Topic starter
Posted : 26/06/2026 2:15 pm
Feeling frustrated? Lost? Confused? Self doubting? Just remember it's a hobby half the fun is in figuring it out. Then take out your most recent issue of your favorite Amiga magazine and flip to the back where the User Groups listing is and find your local user group to attend for support. 😉 😆 😆
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Posted : 26/06/2026 3:06 pm
Thanks for the pep talk! I feel so much better now. 😎
Nothing says “half the fun” like spending three evenings in config hell just to stare at a black screen while the machine that should have been “straightforward in 2026” laughs at me.
As for the local user group, my “most recent issue” of an Amiga magazine is as old as the members still showing up. Pretty sure the only thing I’d get there is directions to a guy who knows a guy with a real A4000 that still works. Chris Edwards perhaps.
Appreciate the spirit though. Back to the black screen I go — clearly this is character building.
-Sutehk
Topic starter
Posted : 26/06/2026 3:17 pm