ROM (also known as "Kickstart"
on the Amiga) are stored in the "Shared/rom"
subdirectory of the emulation-specific directory of the Amiga Forever
and C64 Forever distribution or installation.
In the case of Amiga Forever, the same "Shared" directory also contains
other Amiga operating system files, such as boot floppy disk images (which are
in "Shared/adf"), which among others are referenced as shared components by RP9
titles.
On a current (Amiga Forever 2005 and higher) Windows installation, "Shared/rom" is in "Amiga Files".
Similarly, 8-bit system ROMs are
installed by C64 Forever in "Shared/rom",
inside "CBM Files". Internally in
C64 Forever the "CBM" tag is used for the
directory name (instead of "C64") to better
reflect supports for a variety of 8-bit
systems by
Commodore Business Machines (CBM).
Amiga Forever and C64 Forever
respectively have an Open Folder/Amiga Files and
Open Folder/CBM Files command in the File menu,
and a Restore System Files option to reset
the files in case they were damaged.
Access by Amiga Forever Users
In general, it should be considered that within the emulation
environment as it comes preconfigured in Amiga Forever on
Windows it is normally not necessary to manually locate system ROM and other files,
as these are automatically referenced from the Amiga Forever configuration
editor (right-click a title and select Edit). If an emulation site mentions that ROM and
operating system files can be found in Amiga Forever, then this is
certainly true, however it is also true that the emulation
itself has been preconfigured so that no additional adjustments
or copying of files are required. Emulation applications such as
WinUAE and WinFellow can automatically detect
these Amiga Forever files too. If there is a problem involving this detection, or
with the installation, then that specific issue (e.g. two
instances of WinUAE installed on the same system) should
probably be addressed first.
Technical Reference
The exact location of the emulation directory depends on
whether the files have been installed or not:
- After installation of Amiga Forever 2005 (or newer) on a
Windows system, the directory (inside the "Amiga Files" folder) is referenced by the %AMIGAFOREVERDATA%
environment variable
- Even when not installed, in Amiga Forever 2008 (or newer), the "Amiga
Files" directory is located at the root of the Amiga Forever CD or DVD.
- C64 Forever is similar, except that the environment variable is named
%C64FOREVERDATA%
For example, the full path (starting with an environment
variable) of a 1.3 ROM of a
current Amiga Forever installation on a Windows system is "%AMIGAFOREVERDATA%\Shared\rom\amiga-os-130.rom".
Expanded to an absolute path, on a Windows Vista or Windows 7 system this would be something
like "C:\Users\Public\Documents\Amiga Files\Shared\rom\amiga-os-130.rom".
In a C64 Forever installation the path to the C64 Kernal ROM would be
"%C64FOREVERDATA%\Shared\rom\c-64-kernal.rom", or (expanded)
"C:\Users\Public\Documents\CBM Files\Shared\rom\c-64-kernal.rom".
Older Versions of Amiga Forever
Amiga Forever versions 1.0 to 6.0 differed from newer (2005 and higher) versions
in that there was no "Amiga Files"
architecture. The
"Emulation" data directory was installed in "Program Files"
(e.g. inside "C:\Program
Files\Cloanto\Amiga Forever").
Amiga Forever CDs before Amiga Forever 2008
had the "Shared" content inside directory
named "Emulation" instead of "Amiga Files".
Additional Information
Within "Amiga Files", WHDLoad ROMs are under
"Shared/dir/System/Devs/kickstarts". This article provides more specific information about ROMs in
relation to the WHDLoad package:
The following article explains where other files, including
floppy disk image files, are located:
The following article explains how to programmatically find
the "Amiga Files" directory on Windows, independently of an
Amiga Forever installation:
The following article explains how to programmatically find
the Amiga Forever installation directories on Windows:
And on Android:
This article contains additional information about the ROM
and operating system versions included in Amiga Forever: