WHDLoad

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WHDLoad is an Amiga emulator for the Amiga itself.

The reason for this emulator is the large number of computer games for the Amiga that don't properly interact with the AmigaOS operating system, but instead run directly on the Amiga hardware, making assumptions about specific control registers, memory locations, etc. The hardware of newer Amiga models has been greatly revised, causing these assumptions to break when trying to run the same games on newer hardware.

WHDLoad is designed to emulate the older Amiga hardware in a system-legal way, allowing older games to run on newer hardware. When a game runs under WHDLoad, it takes over the entire operating system, but quitting the game restores the system back into its normal working state.

WHDLoad games are stored on the AmigaOS file system as disk images, relying on driver files known as "WHDLoad slaves" to work. These slave files are freely available from the Internet, but the games themselves have to be acquired separately, to prevent software piracy.