Atari800Win An Atari 800/800XL/130XL/5200 emulator for Win32 Original Atari800 code by David Firth (david@signus.demon.co.uk) Win32 version by Richard Lawrence (rich@kesmai.com) http://www.cris.com/~Twist/atari800win/ ***YOU MUST READ THIS ENTIRE DOCUMENT BEFORE MAILING ME WITH QUESTIONS*** DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES E-MAIL ME ASKING FOR EITHER SYSTEM ROMS OR DISK IMAGES. I WILL IMMEDIATELY DELETE ANY SUCH E-MAIL. START FROM THE WEB PAGE ABOVE AND YOU WILL BE ABLE TO FIND WHAT YOU NEED. Contents: REQUIREMENTS INTRODUCTION GETTING STARTED KEYBOARD LAYOUT RUNNING UNDER WIN NT RUNNING UNDER WIN 9X SOME COMMON PROBLEMS/FAQ <--Don't miss this, it's important REQUIREMENTS: P75+, Win95 with DirectX or Win NT 4.0, 4MB RAM available, a sound card supported by DirectSound (optional) and a joystick supported by DirectInput (optional). PLEASE SEE THE OS-SPECIFIC SECTION OF THIS DOCUMENT FOR WIN95 OR NT PARTICULARS. THEY ARE IMPORTANT. INTRODUCTION: Atari800Win will allow you to emulate an Atari 8-bit computer system on your Win32 based PC. It emulates all hardware aspects of the original Atari 8-bit (video, audio, and I/O devices), and can be configured to behave like of any of several Atari models (the 800, 800XL, 130XE, 320 (modified 130) XE, or 5200 game console). It features a familiar Windows user interface for configurable options and takes full advantage of whatever available video/audio hardware is on your machine. Although the code it emulates is 8-bit, everything here is pure 32bit Windows. The underlying emulator code was written by David Firth, who did an excellent job, along with contributions by Ron Fries for the sound code (which is also quite cool). The Win32 specific code is all my own, so blame me. Several additions have been made by other members of a loose team that is now working to improve the emulator. The current up-to-date source and home base of the team is at http://cas3.zlin.vutbr.cz/~stehlik/a800.htm. This product is free, but copyrighted (actually copylefted, in the GNU General Public License sense). I will be releasing the source code at a later date when I have it fairly hammered out. David's source is already available. I do not want money for this emulator, I consider it payment enough that many, like I do, will be able to enjoy their classic 8-bit stuff again without having to pay money for it. If you feel motivated, you can drop me an e-mail just telling me you're getting a kick out of your 8-bit again. Also, I am always on the lookout for original Infocom games (as in the boxes with the stuff in them) and would appreciate donations of those, or of Atari 8-bit/ST software on CD-ROM. This port is dedicated to the Nybbler Maniacs. Mike, Galen, Steve and I are all still around and hopefully will get some use out of this. In the _old school_ tradition of hacks when just doing it for yourself was the point, here's a salute to them and to Glen, who hopefully hung on to some of that ultra-rare 5200 stuff that "never made it out of Atari" :-). Anybody remember BLOC and Arcadium? Mike and Galen between them did some of the best AMS tunes made, too. Also check out http://www.cris.com/~Twist/WinFrotz/ if you are interested in playing the Infocom or other interactive fiction adventures on a modern Win32 interpreter. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GETTING STARTED: The very first thing to do is obtain a set of Atari OS ROMs and a disk image to boot with. The ROMs are _not_ distributed with Atari800Win, and you may _not_ put Atari800Win in an archive with them included and re-post it. We all know the drill, right? You will find pointers on how to obtain the ROMs on the Atari800Win home page at http://www.cris.com/~Twist/atari800win/ At a minimum you will need one machine ROM (either OS rev A, OS rev B, XL, XE, or 5200) to boot Atari800Win. Probably you should have OS rev B (required for most picky games), XE (the later generation machine with more memory), and 5200. You will also need a disk image, as mentioned previously. The most prevalent Atari DOS versions are 2.0S, and 2.5. There are plenty of later versions from Atari, and also several versions from other manufacturers. Take your pick, but keep in mind maximum compatibility is an Atari 800 OS rev B running 2.0S DOS for most games and the like. After you have your OS and a disk image, you can start up Atari800Win. The default configuration will look for an Atari XL OS named atarixl.rom in the same directory as Atari800Win itself. If you boot without this image present a dialog box will appear telling you it couldn't be loaded, then the emulator itself will appear. You can change the OS selection/name using the menu "Atari" and submenu "Hardware". When you correctly configure the OS settings, if you have changed nothing else, when you "OK" that dialog Atari800Win will switch into a full-screen 800x600 256 color DirectDraw display. This mode is ideal because it displays the full area of the Atari screen, including overscan. You may however select a different mode at lower resolution if you are willing to sacrifice some of the overscan area. The actual display resolution of the Atari is 384x240, and for most PC resolutions this is doubled to 768x480. You can also select to run Atari800Win in a window, which works fine if a little slow. I do not recommend 768x480 in a window. It will be very slow no matter how fast your machine is. Talk to Bill Gates about it. SOME DirectX machines may handle it. SOME AGP cards will do it with no problems (do not assume AGP=performance, it is not so). From here you can configure your disk drives using the "Atari/Disk Drives" menu, change cartridges via the Atari/Cartridges menu, and select directories on your PC hard disk to act as Atari virtual "Hard Disks", accessed via the H1:, H2:, etc device names. The regular PC keys should act like their Atari equivalents (i.e. break is break, escape is escape, letters/numbers are the same, etc). See the section KEYBOARD LAYOUT for specifics. One important key is the F5 key - it will either warmstart the Atari, or with Shift-F5 will "Cold"start it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- KEYBOARD LAYOUT: The general philosophy in keyboard layout is to assign the functionality of the original Atari key to the equivalent PC keyboard key. This differs from some other emulators - I am not aiming for the original key in the _same location_ as on the Atari keyboard, just trying to match the same functionality. Some keys that exist on the PC have no equivalence on the Atari and will do nothing, such as { and }. Atari Key Windows Key --------------- --------------- A-Z A-Z a-z a-z 0-9 0-9 (not keypad) Esc Esc Break Break Atari key Delete key (sorry, couldn't find a better one) Help key ` Select F2 Option F3 Start F4 Restart F5 (shift-F5 is a Coldstart, same as turning on/off Atari) -- F8 Run Atari as fast as possible (toggle) -- F9 (pauses the Atari emulation code, F9 restarts) Ctrl-a to z Ctrl-a to z (yes, no windows accelerator keys) ", *, -, etc Equivalent Windows keys Up, Down, Same as Atari up, down, right left arrow keys. Right, Left (When emulating the joystick, the keypad keys will act as if they are continously pressed after pressed the first time, until another key is pressed. So pressing "4" once will pull the joystick left continually until you press "5" to cancel it. Turn numlock OFF to use the keypad as a joystick). Keypad 0 Joystick trigger (if numlock off and no joystick selected) Keypad 8 Joystick Up (same as above) Keypad 4 Joystick Left (same, etc.) Keypad 6 Joystick Right Keypad 2 Joystick Down Keypad 7 Joystick Up/Left (note: _NOT_ Keypad8 + Keypad4! ) Keypad 9 Joystick Up/Right Keypad 1 Joystick Down/Left Keypad 3 Joystick Down/Right Keypad 5 Joystick centered (none) Ctrl-F1 Insert disk in drive 1 (none) Ctrl-F2 Insert disk in drive 2 (none) Ctrl-F3 Insert disk in drive 3 (none) Ctrl-F4 Insert disk in drive 4 (none) Ctrl-F5 Insert disk in drive 5 (none) Ctrl-F6 Insert disk in drive 6 (none) Ctrl-F7 Insert disk in drive 7 (none) Ctrl-F8 Insert disk in drive 8 (none) F8 Toggle between full/standard speed (none) F9 Toggle between running/stopped (none) F11 Toggle SIO (fast disk) patch (none) Ctrl-Space Activate built-in Atari800 user interface -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RUNNING UNDER WIN 9X: First, get DirectX 5.0. It is available for free from www.microsoft.com. It has considerably better performance in many cases, many bug fixes, and DirectInput actually works under it. I say again, get DirectX 5.0. After you have done that come back and continue reading. Ok, now that you have 5.0 installed (I mentioned you should get 5.0, right?) you're basically In Like Flint. On slow machines you might want to try the ModeX (320x200 and 320x240) drivers for speed improvements. Even on a P100 I was able to run full speed with 44Khz sound at 320x240. Make sure to write certain card manufacturers and tell them they are dorks for busting ModeX in DirectX drivers for cards that actually support it (I won't mention any names, MATROX). If you're not sure about your performance use the Info/Graphics test and Info/Sound tests. You should be getting <10ms for graphics and <4ms for sound. If you can't get ModeX to work initially, try opening the DirectX Control Panel, go to the DirectDraw tab, and click the "Use ModeX for 320 by X" button. For this release all sound is implemented using the standard WaveOut functions. Not only are these more compatible with a wide range of hardware than Dsound, they work under NT and show no significant performance difference (and just plain sound better on many machines). Sound frequencies are supported up to 48Khz. There are MANY sound cards that will not work at 48Khz, so you should select 44.1Khz for those. PLEASE KEEP IN MIND I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DISFUNCTIONAL DIRECTX DRIVERS THAT SOME MANUFACTURERS DISTRIBUTE. If anybody believes DirectX means universal compatibility they are sadly mistaken. Emulating another computer in real time is a VERY demanding task and Atari800Win tries to take advantage of several key DirectX features because of this. Some drivers (both video and sound) don't support these - that's why there are so many options available, so you can always get it to work. And as a final note on this issue: there is _no such thing_ as a "100% Sound Blaster Compatible" card, other than a SoundBlaster. And even some of those are pretty questionable. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RUNNING UNDER WIN NT: To even think about doing this, you have to have NT 4.0 and have patched it to Service Pack 3 (besides a humongous list of bug fixes, service pack 3 has DirectX 3.0 in it). Go to www.microsoft.com for the service pack. You really want it, trust me. Now, if you have that, there is good news and there is bad news. The good news is that Atari800Win was developed under NT and therefore of course works under it. The bad news is Win NT really sucks for playing games or running emulators. Let me explain before anybody gets religious on me. Under NT, DirectX might as well be called "inDirectX", for completely valid system integrity and security reasons. You wouldn't want someone to crash a corporate web server because they happened to be playing Rally Speedway in Atari800Win on it. This means DirectX performance under NT, generally, is really bad. There are also some things missing from 95 DirectX, most notably having even the concept of a joystick. Until NT 5.0 is out (and stable) with DirectX 6, things look pretty bleak. In my tests during development I found NT to be incredibly slow in DirectDraw blits. This is not a mistake in Atari800Win, the Microsoft DirectX sample code does the same thing. As an example, on a P100 test machine running 95 I could blit an 800x600 area from the Atari source surface in about 6-7ms on average, using a shoddy Diamond DRAM 2000. Doing the same test on a P200 machine with a Millenium card resulting in blits that took almost 40ms, over 5 times slower than the P100! This is actually too slow to correctly emulate an Atari, as the emulator needs to be able to complete an update cycle to the point of a screen blit in under 20ms. You can start to see the problem. Not all modes are like this - they vary considerably by card, driver, and machine. So I put a test in Atari800Win for you, which can be accessed via the Info/Graphics Speed menu. I suggest trying ModeX modes if they are available (320x200 or 320x240). On the same machine above a ModeX 320x200 display took on average less than a millisecond to draw. Of course, not all cards support ModeX. If you can't find a mode try running in a 384x240 window not even using DirectDraw. On a decent machine this will actually be reasonably fast, about 6ms for a P166, which is plenty fast enough. And of course it's as compatible as possible that way. The news is also mixed on the sound front. The original Atari hardware had what amounted to a tone generator for sound. It was very advanced for the time and allowed for a complex range of effects. Since you don't have this type of hardware in a PC, Ron Fries wrote an excellent set of routines that imitate the behavoir of this chip in software. But to work correctly it requires a high mix rate - in fact, the sound buffers have to be regenerated every 20ms (there's that number again) to keep pace with the Atari. Even with typical double-buffer mixing, NT falls apart completely on this. So, I added a period of latency to sound generation - several frames are combined together in one burst - and I started using LOTS of sound buffers (8), the combination of which ALMOST allows for really good sound under NT using the standard WaveOut functions. I say almost, because there is just no such thing as real-time servicing in NT. I don't have interrupts like the DOS guys. So, it is quite possible, even on a whiz-bang machine, that your computer will be busy when the magic update point rolls by for a sound refresh. If this happens, your sound will "pop". I spent a very very long time experimenting with what I feel is the most stable and reasonably high performance solution to this problem, so right now we're about as far as we're going to go with NT sound. It sounds REALLY good compared to early versions, which is the good news. It can still pop at times, which is the bad news. As for DirectInput, well, there is no joystick device. 'Nuff said. In short it pretty much rots running Atari800Win under NT. The best mode is often windowed, sound can be a problem, and you have no joystick (you can use the keypad as a joystick though). Much as I hate to say it I have to recommend Win9X for running this emulator. I develop with NT and use it day in and out as my OS of choice, but it clearly is not yet real-time enough to allow this type of code to run effectively. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SOME COMMON PROBLEMS/FAQ Q. Where can I get coolz warez romz? A. Go away. Q. What's an Atari? How do I use it? What are disks? How do I use those? What kind of DOS is this? etc etc. A. Well, I can't educate you completely on how an Atari 8-bit computer works here, but luckily there are some guidelines on the net. Try Ivo Van Poorten's page at: http://pmwww.cs.vu.nl/home/ipoorten/Atari.8bit.Homepage/index.html Q. How do I get an EXE or COM file to work, one without a disk? A. Copy the file to a directory on your hard disk without a lot of other files present. Assign an H: device to that directory by using the Atari/Hard disk menu. Boot the Atari with a floppy in D1:, then load the program from DOS using the H: device, ie "H1:PROGRAM.EXE". The usual load command in Atari DOS is "L". Q. It doesn't run at 100% Atari speed. A. At this point, any Pentium machine should be able to get 100% speed using a ModeX (320x240) video mode, possibly without sound depending on the sound card. If you are getting REALLY slow response, the most common problem is DirectX drivers that just aren't very good. There are some old video cards out there that just refuse to refresh the screen more than 30 times a second, and I'm trying for 50/60 times. Try setting refresh rate = 2 in the hardware menu (gives you 25/30 frames a second). Q. My sound makes thumping noises. A. The emulator is running too slow to keep up with the sound buffer generation. I have seen this happen because of poor sound cards ("SoundBlaster compatible"), slow display hardware, or just plain slow computers. Anyway if you aren't running at 100% speed consistently sound will never be quiet right. Q. My sound makes high pitched hum noises. A. Increase the "Pokey update divisor" on the Sound menu. This controls how many times sound is computed. If it is set to 1, the Atari computes sound up to 312 times every 1/50th of a second. Set to 2 this drops to 157, set to 3 it drops to 104, etc. The only adverse affect to increasing it is games like Berzerk will sound worse when using digital speech. The HIGHER your sample frequency, the LOWER you can set this value. Q. Program XXX doesn't work. A. Things to try: 1) Try it under a different OS/DOS combination. 2) Cold boot the emulator by hitting Shift-F5. 3) Make sure BASIC isn't inserted for games (unless they happen to be in Basic of course). 4) Perform appropriate incantations over computer. 5) Try booting a full disk image with the program on it. Q. In 800x600 mode, I see strange and mysterious things at the edge of the screen. A. Atari800Win allows you to see the _complete_ overscan area when in 800x600 mode. Most folks with Atari computers never had a chance to see this; the average TV is nauseatingly clipped both vertically and horizontally (I see the light shining on a few of you who now realize you are missing about 30% of the screen area on TV broadcasts). Anyway, since it was very rare to see the overscan area, many programs make mistakes in this part of the screen. The designers figured nobody would see it anyway (or maybe they didn't see it themselves). Q. I have a laptop.... A. You're probably SOL. Laptops refresh their screens very slowly to conserve power (even when plugged in). This causes DirectDraw to pause for long periods when drawing the screen. GDI mode might even be faster. Laptops are very poor game machines, try it on a desktop machine. Q. I got a DirectSound/DirectPlay/DirectDraw error! Halp! A. When you get one of these, it may be just because your DirectX drivers don't support what you want to do - the particular video mode, sound options, etc. I took pains to try and make sure Atari800Win always backs out of these gracefully, so hopefully nobody will get a crash as a result. When a DirectX error appears, try whatever you were doing once more, if the same error appears, your drivers probably don't support that and you should revert to a different video mode/different sound settings. If you really believe you should be able to do whatever it is and it still doesn't work, e-mail me with the particulars (and don't forget to write down the error that appears in the dialog box). Q. The program says the Atari computer died and it needs to shut down! A. This happens (rarely). If the Atari emulation layer gets hopelessly lost, Atari800Win has to shut down to avoid having the rampant emulation code do something bad in a Windows sense. The dialog that appears will ask you if you want to deinsert your boot disk drive when this happens. This is important because if the act of booting causes the crash, you could get stuck in an endless loop of crashes. So if you just booted off the disk and this happens, go ahead and deinsert the boot disk. Q. Never mind that dialog box stuff, it just crashed, as in GPF. A. Er, sorry. I've got layer upon layer of armor in this puppy, but in the first few revs it wouldn't surprise me to have a couple of conditions like this. E-mail me and tell me what happened, we'll see if I can reproduce and fix the condition. Q. Cut/Paste doesn't work? A. Yeah, I know. Next version. Printing the Atari screen works though, and in non-DirectDraw mode you can capture the screen with PrintScreen. Q. Disaster! The program crashes when I start it and I can't get to the menu to reconfigure the disk drives! A. There is a menu option under "Misc" labeled "Clear all settings". Use that menu. Head the warning: only do this if you are really stuck, as it will clear every option you have set in Atari800Win and start over. But it should fix the problem in the process, you'll just have to re-enter you ROM locations etc.