Virtual 2600 README
===================

$Id$

Virtual 2600 is BETA software, please report any bugs.

Introduction
------------
Welcome to V2600, an Atari 2600 Emulator for UN*X/X, Linux/SVGAlib 
and, thanks to Dan Boris, DOS systems. 

The DOS port is currently distributed separately, this document applies
to the X11 and SVGAlib versions.

You can now experience all the fun of old 2600 games on your high powered 
workstation. Thrill to the blocky graphics! Get headaches from the flicker! 
Wallow in nostalgia!

Using the Emulator
------------------
See the man page.

Why?
----
V2600 is the the result on my 3rd year university project. I aimed to preserve
old computer games that would otherwise be lost to the world. 

Platforms
---------
I have tested V2600 on my home Linux system and on a Sparc 2 running 
SunOS 4.3. If you manage to compile it on another platform please send me an
e-mail.

Performance
-----------
The 2600 is notoriously difficult to emulate, especially in C. So I would 
recommend at least a Pentium level processor. The frame buffer speed also 
matters.

On my Pentium 100 it is just nice with frame skipping set to 2.

Note that enabling sound support slows down the emulation.
Better performance will probably come in later releases.
It also produces quite a bit of debugging output. Redirecting this to
/dev/null speeds things up.

Known Bugs/Limitations
----------------------
SVGAlib version can lock up your machine. (In common with a lot of SVGAlib 
stuff!)

Not all games work. (Spy hunter looks nice though:)

Beware of the file selector, it doesn't always work.

Copyright
---------
Virtual 2600 is free software distributed under the terms of the GNU General 
Public License. See the file COPYING for details.

Credits
-------
A full list of contributors can be found in the file CREDITS. 

Alex Hornby 28.8.96