PC Xformer 3.30 Demo - The Atari 8-bit Emulator For MS-DOS Compatible PCs ========================================================================= December 1, 1995. Branch Always Software 14150 N.E. 20th Street Suite 302 Bellevue, WA 98007 U.S.A. phone: 206-236-0540 fax: 206-236-0257 email: brasoft@halcyon.com, brasoft@msn.com WWW: http://www.halcyon.com/brasoft/ Program and documentation by Darek Mihocka. This is a free demo! -------------------- PC Xformer 3.3 is the latest version of my Atari 8-bit emulator. It replaces PC Xformer 3.2 which was released this summer and is a major improvement over PC Xformer 3.0 released last year. This demo version of PC Xformer demonstrates many of the capabilities of the new emulator. In fact, you'll find it to be a significant improvement over PC Xformer 2.0, the freeware version of PC Xformer released last year. PC Xformer 2.0 is almost 2 years old, so if you are still using it, chuck it! Over the last several months I have been tracking down bugs in PC Xformer, and thanks to the many users who reported those bugs and beta tested the new version, I'm glad to say that PC Xformer 3.3 now runs many more Atari 8-bit games and demos than did earlier versions, and faster than ever. PC Xformer 3.3 has been specifically optimized for use on 486 and Pentium processors, making it absolutely the fastest 6502 emulator in the world. On a 90 Mhz Pentium, PC Xformer 3.3 runs about 10 times faster than a 130XE. Even on the slowest 486 it still runs faster than the real thing. This is a demo version. You are free to copy it and give it to others. The real PC Xformer 3.3 goes on sale at Atari 8-bit dealers in North America and Europe later this week and includes a detailed printed manual as well as lots of useful features such as joystick, modem, printer, and sound support. The list price is $34.95 U.S. but dealers may sell for less. Features of PC Xformer 3.3 -------------------------- PC Xformer is the only complete Atari 8-bit emulator (for any computer) written in machine language. As such, it runs much faster and is more compatible than the various other Atari 8-bit emulators. Features of this demo include: - 48K Atari 400/800 emulation - 64K Atari 800XL emulation - displays all ANTIC text and graphics modes, including GTIA modes - 256 color GTIA color palette - player missile graphics with collision detection - horizontal and vertical fine scrolling - display list interrupts, IRQ, and NMI interrupts - reads and writes to ST Xformer and SIO2PC generated disk images - reads MS-DOS files directly - switch Atari BASIC on/off with one keystroke - switch between Atari 400/800 and Atari 800XL emulation with one keystroke - joystick emulation using the keyboard's cursor keys - full speed emulation on any 486 or Pentium - normal and turbo speeds of emulation In addition, the real PC Xformer 3.3 available from your Atari dealer has these additional features: - 130XE emulation with 256K of extended XE memory - built-in 6502 debugger - the ability to change disk images on-the fly - 4 voices of sound, printer, and modem support - joystick and Gravis gamepad support - command line options to disable BASIC and set emulation modes - lots of printed documentation and Atari reference documentation - free upgrade to PC Xformer 4.0 when it becomes available How to buy PC Xformer 3.3 ------------------------- PC Xformer 3.3 can be ordered immediately from Branch Always Software for $34.95 U.S. and that includes shipping anywhere in the world. Call us at the phone number listed above or fax in your order. We accept VISA and MasterCard orders over the phone and personal checks by mail. Here in the U.S. you can also purchase PC Xformer 3.3 from Atari dealers such as Toad Computers and Xanth. In England, contact Micro Discount. In Germany contact the ABBUC user group. Toad Computers 570-F Ritchie Highway Severna Park, MD 21146 phone: 800-448-8623, fax: 410-544-1329 Xanth Corporation 14100 N.E. 20th Street #105 Bellevue, WA 98007 phone: 206-643-9697 Micro Discount 265 Chester Road, Streetly West Midlands, England B74 3EA phone: +44 021 353 5730 ABBUC c/o Wolfgang Burger Wieschenbeck 45 D-4352 Herten, Germany phone: +49 02366/39623 ABBUC also has available a brand new CD-ROM that contains hundreds of megabytes of free and shareware Atari 8-bit software. I highly recommend this CD as it contains compilations of Atari 8-bit software from all over the world and includes magazine disks. The CD can be purchased for $35 U.S. directly from: Ernest R. Schreurs Kempenlandstraat 8 5211 VN Den Bosch The Netherlands Upgrading to PC Xformer 3.3 --------------------------- If you are already a registered user of PC Xformer 3.0, 3.0a, 3.1, or 3.2 then you can download the PC Xformer 3.3 upgrade free of charge directly from the private download area on our web page. If you do not have Internet web access, you can order the upgrade by mail for $15 U.S. to cover our shipping and materials costs. Hardware requirements --------------------- PC Xformer 3.3 (including this demo version) is a 32-bit MS-DOS program. It can only run on 32-bit processors such as the 386, 486, and Pentium. It cannot be used on 8-bit and 16-bit processors such as the 8088, 8086, and 286. A VGA or SuperVGA card is also required since CGA and EGA cards cannot display 256 colors. The brand of VGA card is not important. Any VGA card will work. You also need to be running MS-DOS or a DOS compatible operating system, such as Windows 3.1, Windows 95, and OS/2 Warp. Running this demo ----------------- Unlike earlier demo versions of PC Xformer, this time around I am not packing the ZIP file full of sample Atari 8-bit software. Why? Simple: the Internet! There are numerous sites, including our own web page, where you can download unlimited amounts of Atari 8-bit software. Or you can purchase the CD-ROM. So to keep this demo lean, there are only 3 files: XF33DEMO.EXE - the PC Xformer 3.3 demo Atari 8-bit emulator XF33DEMO.TXT - this documentation file DEMOS.XFD - disk image containing Atari DOS and some demo programs To run PC Xformer, simply type XF33DEMO at your MS-DOS command prompt. You will get an intro screen and at the bottom will be a list of special keyboard keys you need to know about. Press any key and within a few seconds you'll be running Atari BASIC. The most important keys to know about are: Shift+F5 - this exits back to MS-DOS F7 F8 F9 - the START SELECT and OPTION keys F10 - System Reset Shift+F10 - Toggle Atari BASIC on/off Shift+F12 - switch between Atari 800 and Atari 800XL modes. End - the Atari BREAK key ` - the Atari logo key (inverse key) Scrl Lock - toggle between normal speed and turbo speed Page Up and Page Down - move the screen up and down a pixel Use the F10 key to "system reset". Press F10 while holding the Shift key to toggle Atari Basic on or off. Remember, most machine language games prefer to not have BASIC present. In Atari 800XL mode you have access to the new graphics modes (GR.9 through GR.15), plus you can run the newer software designed for the 800XL. Switch back to Atari 400/800 mode to run older software, especially old games. The Scroll Lock (or Scrl Lock) key is very important. It controls the speed of the emulator. Normally the emulator boots up in normal speed mode. i.e. it runs at about the speed of a 1.8 Mhz Atari computer. This gives maximum compatibility with your Atari 8-bit software. For most Atari BASIC programs and even some machine language programs, you can crank up the speed. You do this by pressing the Scroll Lock key. When the Scroll Lock light goes out you are now in turbo speed mode. The emulator will run as fast as possible. For example, on the DEMOS.XFD disk image is a famous Atari demo called swandemo.obj. This is a machine language demo so run it with BASIC disabled. As the demo is running, press the Scrl Lock key every few seconds and you should see a difference in the speed of the rotation of the Atari logo. If you find that some games are simply too fast and unplayable in turbo speed mode, press Scroll Lock again to switch back to normal speed mode. Some games may not even function properly in turbo speed mode because their timing gets too messed up and affects player missile graphics collision detection. However, I've found that many programs still do run fine in turbo speed mode so all I can say is... experiment! Installing Disk Images ---------------------- PC Xformer 3.3 uses the same 90K, 130K, and 180K disk images used by my older ST Xformer and PC Xformer 8-bit emulators, and it also supports reading and writing of SIO2PC generated disk images. If you specify virtual disk files and/or MS-DOS files after the XF33DEMO, those will be installed as Atari disk drives. For example, type: XF33DEMO DOS25.XFD to install DOS 2.5 as D1:. You can specify up to 8 disk image files, which will correspond to drive D1: through D8:. You can also specify individial MS-DOS files on the command line. They will magically appear to the emulator as disk images containing that file. When specifying disk image and other file names on the command line, you can use full path names. For example: XF33DEMO C:\ATARI\DOS25.XFD D:\BASIC\RAINBOW.BAS will load the DOS 2.5 disk image from the C:\ATARI directory and load a BASIC file as drive D2: from the D:\BASIC directory. This way you do not need to keep all your Atari 8-bit software in one directory. Transfering Atari files to your PC ---------------------------------- Downloading files from the Internet or from a CD-ROM is fine, but you probably want to copy your own Atari 8-bit disks to your PC. These are your options: - use the SIO2PC cable - use the Xformer cable - use a null modem cable or two modems - read it on a 5.25" disk drive - have someone else do it Let's look at each option in detail. The SIO2PC cable has been around for 5 years and is fairly well known in the Atari 8-bit community. Contact your local Atari dealer, your user group, download files #5281 and #6414 from the Atari 8-bit roundtable on GEnie, or best yet, contact Nick Kennedy directly at 501-967-3843 or write to him at: Nick Kennedy 300 South Vancouver St. Russellville, AR 72801 I also tackled this problem back in 1988 when I was writing my ST Xformer emulator. The goal there was to connect the Atari disk drive directly to the Atari ST computer. Unlike SIO2PC, this method does not require the use of an 8-bit computer, since the disk drive connects directly to the computer running the emulator. The Xformer cable worked great and in 1988 and 1989 I built and sold hundreds of the cables. Atari dealers also built and sold many more cables. As it turns out, these cables can also be used to connect the Atari disk drives to your PC. The bad news is, neither I nor any Atari dealer has built or sold a Xformer cable in years so you can't exactly buy one right now! I am taking advance orders on the cables and will start producing them again in early 1996. The cables will cost $25 and if you own PC Xformer you will also receive a free upgrade disk that supports the cable. If you are interested in purchasing a PC Xformer cable let me know now. Another way to transfer files directly to your PC is to use one of several utilities that attempts to read Atari 5.25" disks on your PC's 5.25" disk drive (if you still have one). These utilities are not 100% reliable but they do work for some people. There is one other very common way to transfer a file between any two computers, and that is to use a null modem cable or two modems. Run modem software on both your Atari and your PC and transfer each file one by one over to the PC. Then load it into PC Xformer by specifying it on the command line as drive D2: through D7:. PC Xformer allows for up to 8 files to be specified on the XF33DEMO command line. The first file MUST be a virtual disk, since it must contain a valid DOS on it to install as drive D1:. The remaining 7 files may either specify other virtual disk files, or MS-DOS files which will automatically appear as virtual disks as described above. Note that by default DOS 2.5 will only access 2 disk drives (D1: and D2:). See you DOS manual on how to expand that, or use a different DOS (such as MyDOS 4.5) which supports up to 8 drives. Finally, you can have your Atari disks transfered from Atari 8-bit 5.25" floppy disks to IBM PC 3.5" floppy disks for a small fee by contacting Rob Satonica at: Creative Software Systems 7775 Scottdale Rd. Berrien Springs, MI 49103 phone: (616) 473-3904 Also available from Creative Software Systems is the Atari Emulator Manager, an inexpensive MS-DOS utility which allows you to manage your Atari 8-bit files, configure your PC Xformer settings, and run PC Xformer, all by using your mouse to click on the various options and files on the screen. Contact Rob for more details. Don't be a stranger ------------------- Well, enjoy this latest demo of PC Xformer. Please do visit the PC Xformer web page at http://www.halcyon.com/brasoft/ and give me a shout to let me know what you think of this emulator. PC Xformer 95 (a.k.a. PC Xformer 4.0) is also in the works and is made especially for Windows 95. As soon as it is released I will post the announcement on the web page. As with PC Xformer 3.3, upgrades to version 4.0 will be free to owners of PC Xformer 3.x. Darek Mihocka, Owner of Branch Always Software Creator of ST Xformer, Quick ST, PC Xformer, and Gemulator