Amiga File Formats — The Guide

You've downloaded a .dms file and don't know what to do? An .ipf won't play? Here's the complete overview of all important Amiga file formats — with profile and tools for opening.

The standard format. 880 KB = 1:1 image of a DD floppy. Uncompressed, unencrypted. Every emulator can read this.

Open with: WinUAE, FS-UAE, Amiberry, vAmiga — mount directly as a disk.

Compressed ADF (approx. 400-700 KB). Was a standard for BBS uploads around 1990-1995. Must be converted to ADF before mounting.

Open with: xDMS (Aminet), amitools (Python, cross-platform), or directly in older WinUAE versions.

Cycle-accurate floppy disk images with original copy protection. For original games that only run from real floppy media. Maintained by the Software Preservation Society.

Open with: WinUAE + capsimg.dll from SPS download. Only then will IPF work.

Simply a .adf.gz file with a different extension. To extract: 7-Zip or gunzip.

Container of a virtual Amiga hard disk. Sizes typically 32 MB, 100 MB, 1 GB. Mount in the emulator as a "hardfile".

Open with: WinUAE mount, or for FS access via amitools xdftool.

Not a file format, but a system for installing floppy disk games to hard disk. A WHDLoad slave contains the necessary patches, loads the game from the HD/emulator directory. Almost every commercial Amiga game has a slave.

Find slaves: whdload.de or the iGame/XBench GUI.

99% of all Aminet downloads. On Amiga: lha x file.lha. On PC: 7-Zip.

Better compression than LHA. On Amiga: lzx -x file.lzx.

The Amiga's native image format. Supports HAM/HAM8, EHB, all Amiga colour depths.

Open on PC: XnView, GIMP with plugin, IrfanView.

Anim-5/Anim-7: Delta-compressed moving image sequences. Classics: Eric Schwartz anims.

The Amiga invented the format. ProTracker on the Amiga itself, on PC OpenMPT or VLC.

8-bit mono audio, 8000-22000 Hz. Standard for Paula samples.