RGB2RTG: Giving Your Amiga 1200 One Screen to Call Home
Native games, demos and an RTG desktop on the same HDMI display, a little less cable juggling, and another reason to keep the Amiga on your desk.
There is a particular kind of organisation that only makes sense to an Amiga owner. The computer has its place, the favourite joystick is within reach, and somewhere behind the desk is a collection of cables whose purpose you could explain individually, if anyone had the patience to listen. You sit down to play something and find yourself negotiating with the monitor first.
An upgraded Amiga should make the evening easier. Ideally, moving from the desktop to a game should involve choosing what to play, rather than remembering which button changes the display input. The appealing part is being able to forget about the arrangement behind the desk altogether.
RGB2RTG, by Astair86, tackles that problem: native Amiga screens and optional Paula audio reach the same HDMI display as the RTG desktop. It is an experimental, unofficial Emu68 fork.
The Amiga keeps doing its part
The real A1200 chipset remains active. The Raspberry Pi follows chip memory and register activity to reconstruct its picture for HDMI; it does not capture the analogue RGB signal.
There is something pleasing about that division of labour. For many enthusiasts, the physical machine is part of the reason to bother. The keyboard, the case and the familiar ritual of switching it on matter just as much as getting a game running. A useful upgrade fits around that experience and removes an irritation you had almost stopped noticing.
Give it the right starting point
The requirements are an Amiga 1200 with PiStorm32-lite, a Pi 4, Pi 3 or Pi Zero 2 W, and CaffeineOS or AmigaOS 3.x configured with Picasso96 and a VideoCore monitor. The display needs 1080p at 50 Hz.
For someone already using that hardware, the attraction is easy to understand. There is considerable satisfaction in finding another useful job for an upgrade you already own. The temptation, naturally, is to turn a quick experiment into an entire evening of trying old favourites.
A quicker picture, with room to improve
Version 0.75 introduces a dedicated Pi 3 kernel, cropping and audio controls. Astair86 reports approximately 8 ms delay with optional low-lag mode, versus 26 ms normally, on Pi 3. Pi 4 measurements remain pending.
Those figures are developer measurements, rather than results from our own testing. How convincing the experience feels is something to judge with the games you know well—the ones where your hands remember the timing before your brain remembers the controls.
Leave room for experimentation
Some games and demos have incorrect colours or fail. Back up the Emu68 SD card before installation, and follow the required power cycle.
Treat the first session as an opportunity to explore. Start with something familiar, see how it behaves, and resist the urge to declare the entire collection sorted after one successful loading screen. Half the fun of an Amiga project is discovering what it can do; the other half is remembering where you put the backup.
RGB2RTG is available on itch.io, free with optional donations. For a suitably equipped A1200, it offers an appealing prospect: an evening in which the monitor stays put and the Amiga gets all the attention.
More information: https://astair86.itch.io/rgb2rtg-amiga1200