ParanoidLittleMan

Strange controls for game: fire is activated by keys Q and S - and yes, only when they are capital, so need to press Caps shift that it work . That self is already weird, and more is that not mouse buttons are used for fire. Maybe they just did not have good enough DOCs about IKBD programing ? And this works with AUTO run, monochrome mode too 🙂

Never heard about. Fire problem is most likely TOS version related. Will check it tomorrow.

We can speculate about what J. Tramiel had in mind. I'm even not sure that it was his job to think/decide what (kind of) SW to develop and publish. Joust was realized in 1985 by Atari. Then more in 1986. But looking it at atarimania can see that in 1986 about 4x so many games were realized for ST. There is learning time factor: you can not program game without some experience and knowledge level. And in 1985 there was big %-age of games not using TOS - oh why ? Because it was not finished, there was only small part of it in 16 KB ROM. I think that it hurt much more than delay of couple games. And Atari games were all with TOS function calls, big part was developed by Andromeda in Hungary - yeah, we can blame J.T. to save on programmers salary 🙂 Or all US TV manufacturers for doing all assembly work in Mexico . Because that, TVs appeared 2 weeks later in shops ! They used to say: power without price. But lower price in $ costed price in time 😁

http://atari.8bitchip.info/TOS/TOSdep.html There will be soon much more ..

Funny to say that Atari corp was not for publishing games for ST, while there is plenty of them published right by Atari. Maybe they just did not want that Atari ST serve for very simple games like Centipede, Pong ...

I don't think that there is any game done for "Mega STE as min spec" . At 16 MHz it is faster some 50-80% (depends from running code), so on some ST, STE it will be just slower. And we have loooot of such games, SW 🙂 Furthermore, I don't see why would someone other deal with this game for Atari ST family. This was just step in 3D shooter direction. And I would like much more to see Tomb Raider on Atari ST. Surely it is much more demanding, but some simplifications could make it work decently. After all, Atari people likes more female heroes - like top list lifetime (or better eternal) member Giana 😃

Well, I think that only thing worth to do is involving blitter in conversion of mono screen data for medium res - that's what can improve speed pretty good. And to go with my second version, what has 2 modes - see first post here.

Resolutions are now much higher. 640x400 px versus now typical 1920x1080px . So big res. is very hard to solve quality with analog technology, and that would cost a lot.

I had SM124 too, around 2004, but did not use it much. 10 years later it did not work, and was not about to fix it - had LCD solution then. Color is lower freq. Monitor need to support about 15 KHz scan rate to be able to display ST color video (old TV frequencies) .

Thanx, it served. I deactivated copy protection check, and it works fine. Don't think that there is some delayed protection - early game. WinnieD.zip Game is for kids, simple but good looking graphics. I guess that Pasti (STX) image would be good (like for atarimania) - not hard to make, just get Pasti http://pasti.fxatari.com/ If no hard disk, Flash card adapter, 1 720 KB floppy can serve for file transfer - hmm. - if there is floppy drive in PC ..

Considering that most of modern LCD/Flat screen monitors is capable of displaying Atari ST monochrome (high res.) video, with proper cable, I want to ask is SW monochrome emulation on color monitor/TV is still of interest ? It gives not so sharp pic. , of course, and causes some slowdown too (on fly conversion). And I looked about what is available. Seen only Mick West's Mono Emu, versions from 1987 and 1988. I dealt with earlier one back in time (1988), and added new mode with 400 hor. lines, what gives sharper pic and faster work, but of course only half of pic is visible at once. As user moves mouse it will change pos. of visible part. That was good in those years for some SW. The bad thing is that it is tied for old. TOS versions 1.00 and 1.02 (only 1988 v.). And even lang. of TOS must be specific. I still have sources, so can update it for all TOS versions (well, not sure about 2.06 - that might be harder), and maybe to add it as option in TOS (1.04 and 1.62). Depends of interest. About cable for Atari ST monochrome to VGA: connect GND, Hor. and vert. signal lines directly, monochrome out to all 3 - R, G, B lines parallel. I did it via 1 18 Ohm resistor to prevent overdrive. And mono sensor line to GND. I guess hardest part in it is to find Atari 13 pin video connector. It should work with monitors with VGA input. In case of TVs - not sure. My 3 years old Philips (very good for ST color) has max refresh rate of 60 Hz, so monochrome works not. Little adjusting of screen size, pos. , and will be pretty fine.

Here is it: SKATEWAR.ZIP

Well, I don't haveNetUSBee, and how things go this year start, will not have it . Without it is not possible to deal with it's support. What I saw is that some drivers for it are pretty large size (C code ?) . Monochrome emulator is something what may be worth, but only if can solve it running fully in ROM. Will see it - I have some code, what I modded some 20 years ago. Although, most of modern LCD monitors are capable for ST mono mode with proper cable. Color mode emulator for monochrome ? Was something like that ever done ? I don't think so. And it would be slow if want some quality of conversion, I guess.

ROM is not enough. Additional HW logic is needed because larger ROM size, and it is different for ST and STE . And I'm thinking about to combine it with TOS switch for having more choice. Would be good to read whole thread before coming with ideas. TOS size is pretty small, about 200 KB. And HW in ST, STE supports that. To use larger size EPROMs there need little HW upgrade, except programmed EPROMs self. We just can not expect some things present in modern OS-es, which are more than 1000x times in size to fit in limited ROM space in ST. Max ROM size can be 11 MB, as was said, but that may cost pretty much. EPROM prices are high in compare to Flash card prices considering capacity.

It is possible to add diverse SW in ROM disk. All it depends of how much people is interested for some thing(s). In any case, even so, it is not so easy, usually need to do some modifications, fixes that it work that way. Building some SW in ROM TOS is almost impossible - SW is written to work from RAM. Even TOS in ROM performs some things in RAM, after copying code or some data in RAM. And when you start some *.PRG from Desktop, already some 90 KB RAM is used (not counting screen) . Part of it is Line-A, VDI, Desktop RSC in RAM. OK, enough talk, here is something arcadish : So, whole 24 games in 1 MB TOS ROM space (2x 27C040 or compat. EPROMs) . TOS is 1.62, and no disk drive attached to machine. Can be done with STs and TOS 1.04 (reworked to new address space, where fits, like STEs $E00000). And size can be even bigger.