Welcome to my page of Atari 8-bit software, links and stuff. The Atari was the BEST 8-bit home computer released during the eighties, I don't care what anyone has to say on the subject. Rather expensive in the UK at the time, but if you (or your parents) couldn't afford one then, get clued in now! You can pick them up for around £20 at car boots and flea-markets, and all the games you will ever need are (kinda) freely available on the net! So what the hell are you waiting for? Stick that C=64 under a table leg, throw it at next-door's cat, whatever, just get you some Atari action! If you live in a bijou des-res, and space is at a premium, I might let you get away with just downloading an emulator. Maybe.

Any comments, suggestions, or anything you would like me to add to the page? Mail me using the link at the bottom.

The first thing you need to emulate any old 8-bit machine
is an image of whatever operating system firmware they
put in it. Hit this link to get the OS + BASIC roms for the
Atari 800 + 800XL.
Now includes system rom for 5200 console.

My favourite Atari emulator on the PC is XL-it!, it needs fast hardware to run well, but it's the closest to a real Atari that anyone has got so far, IMO. Click here to go to the XL-it! homepage.
BTW, XL-it! runs a WHOLE lot faster under Win95 if you boot into MS/DOS mode rather than running it in a DOS box. It more than doubles the speed on my 486DX2-66. Turning the sound off with the -nosound option also speeds it up.

There is another emulator for DOS, Xformer, which is written entirely in assembly. The disadvantages are that it is rather picky about what it will run, and it's not free :). There are a couple of demo versions available for download.

If you have a Mac, there's one for you in the form of Rainbow.
Win95 preview version has now been released. It looks very promising!

A more complete list including emulators for *nix systems can be found here.

I have a few 8 and 16 Kb cartridge images. Click on this pic
to get them. If you have any not listed, feel free to email
them to me. :)

• Alternate Reality : The City 331Kb Note: there may be a problem with disk 2 side 1 of this set. To be updated soon. You'll probably find a working copy at one of the Cyberspy archives (see below).
• Mercenary 81Kb
• The Atari Planetarium 81Kb
• Chessmaster 2000 36Kb
• Boulder Dash construction kit 56Kb

Transdisk 17Kb

• Cyberspy - several Atari archives.
• University of Michigan Atari archive:
• FTP
• WWW
• Gopher
• clark.net Atari archive.
• Demos page.

• Instructions for building the 1489 SIO2PC cable.
• Another 1489 SIO2PC doc.
• Connecting Atari joysticks to PC game port.
• Info on putting an Atari into a PC case.
• List of 8-bit cartridges.
• Description of the 1090XL expansion unit.
• Info on the Atari 5200 console.
• Operations and bugs of the 6502.

Various Atari Links

comp.sys.atari.8bit