ParanoidLittleMan

Actually, TOS date format can go up to 1980+127 = 2107, because it starts at 1980, and 7 bits are given for year. But most of SW is not ready for years above 2000. What was the reason ? Lazyness, don't care, or similar. Or nobody wise expected that people will still use 'those' computers after 2000

I think that we have several SWs, which display TOS version. Even those 'disk corrupting' adaptations But best is to use some serious system tester SW, like SYSINFO. And best is to have switchable TOS - not big deal with now cheap higher capacity EPROMs, or even better Flash EPROMs.

I'm sure that this is just another abandoned project. Why ? I mailed author some 2 years ago.

Hmmm... This is year 2012. I bought 4GB CF card for 10 Euros. There is still 'some' space for even not top-notch games. (+ some other disks lay around by me, more-less filled). But even if you don't have some hard disk with your Atari, you can keep game base on some PC, MAC in image formats, and when want to play something outwrite it onto floppi(es). This is even more reliable than storage on floppies. Finally, you can DL 98% of quality stuff anytime .

Speaking about technical issues, features: There are games with very good scrolling on bare ST - like GoldRunner, Turrican 1-2, etc. So, it is possible to achieve with good coding + time, effort, I guess. But for sure, it needs some extra RAM too, in compare to primitive and not so nice scrolling. There are many good horizontal scrollers on ST, even without HWS, but after playing both Turricans from begin to end, I became spoiled, and others did not impress me much :-) Beside flawless scrolling ( even diagonal ), Turricans have very fast control response, what is elementary by shooters. OK, enough with ADs here

Here is one shorter list, but with some titles missing at other, usual lists: List of monochrome (High ST res.) compatible games on this adaptation page : Alpha Waves BattleZone Black Cauldron Bolo Boston Bombclub Brataccas Colorado Corruption Crystal Castles Crystals of Arborea Fish Flight Simulator 2 Guild of Thieves JET Journey to the Centre of the Earth Missile Command Mission Elevator Moon Patrol No Limit 2 Oxyd - diverse vresions Phoenix Proflight Pro Tennis Tour (aka Great Courts) Robotron 2084 Secret of Monkey Island Silicon Dreams - Trilogy : Eden, Snowball, Worm Starblade Starglider Starglider 2 Stone Age Targhan Ultima III-IV ? Windsurf Willy Zak McKracken ... Usually, Sierra games have monochrom support too. But I need to fix launchers of those games that mono mode work ... All games are comercial. May DL them here: http://atari.8bitchip.info/fromhd.php - hard disk adaptations, but many will work from floppy too. General rule may be: 80% of Silmarils games are mono compatible. Then many of by Atari published, mostly coded by Andromeda. You can go on atarimania.com and look for mono compatible ones with advanced search - pretty complete database. P.S. : I don't think that many cracks were made so, that mono mode is lost. It happened mostly because they discarded mono specific files, if they existed, in usual effort to squeeze as much titles on floppy as possible. In any case, I think that collecting all mono compatible games is possible right now. We have STX images for all of them, likely. Only case where I was in dilemma was Block Out (3D Tetris), where I saw filenames of monochrome screens, menus, but there were no such files on cracks. Later I found STXes of original, and no mono files too. So, that idea was not realised, obviously.

I'm trying here to make as possible complete list of games using STE enhanced features, STE only games and ST games not working on STE machines. Please add what you know about this, if possible with complete infos - what 'E.F.' is used, and similar. Games using STE enhancements : Abrevs. : ADMA - audio DMA EPAL - extended palette (4096 col.) HWS - hardware scrolling BLIT - blitter (not strictly STE feature) **************** Another World - ADMA Beastlord - EPAL Carlos - ADMA Chaos Engine - HWS Creatures - ADMA Dragon's Lair - EPAL Dragon's Lair II - EPAL Dragon's Lair III - EPAL Dragon's Lair Escape from the Singe's Castle - EPAL Elvira the Arcade Game - BLIT First Samurai - EPAL, intro only Magic Boy - ADMA Nicky Boom - ADMA Nicky 2 - ADMA No Limit 2 - ADMA, EPAL Lethal Xcess ? Space Ace - EPAL Space Ace II - EPAL Starball - ADMA Stardust ? Stone Age ? Substation ? Zool - HWS, BLIT There is for sure much more, especially those using EPAL . **************** STE only : Obsession Pacman OE Sleepwalker ********* Not working on STE: This includes not TOS version caused problems, only games writing to bad locations. Note: some games may fail on 4MB machines because lame code. Many of cracks fail on higher TOS versions, so please test with original or Pasti images if possible. Hyperforce - overshot in palette writing loop Grand Monster Slam - overshot in palette writing loop Nightdown - writing to Screen pointer does nothing on ST, on STE bus error. *************************

We could list couple hunderts of such cases - games made after STE release, but not using it's capabilities. I guess that one of the reasons was pure lazyness of coders (or nicer said - they were not paid enough ). But main reason was for sure decreasing sales of machines and SW. I remember that in 1991 was very hard to buy some newer Atari ST SW in Munich. Shops were full with Amiga stuff, and ST SW choice was poor. And ST was best sold machine in Germany just couple years ago. Things can change fast, and slow ones lose.

Adding some fan can make miracles :-)

What makes confusion is that PAL or NTSC is not only 50 or 60 Hz, 625 or 525 lines. More important is color encoding system. And it is not controllable by SW even in newer computers, mostly. So don't expect miracles from old Falcon. However, all it is irrelevant when use RGB or VGA (what is in fact RGB too, just on higher freq.) .

That's right. But you can not set different color encoding than built-in (PAL instead NTSC), or PS for different voltage

Maybe. But then did it not right. Should assign more than 128KB, for sure - and there was plenty of space in range $E00000-$FF0000 (talking for year 1885) . Btw, only pure SW for cartridge (so without some extra HW beside EPROMs) what I know were some languages as Omicron Basic, Fast Basic ...

Beside crystal you need to replace filter too. Not so simple - getting proper components in first place. Of course you can run on some VGA - what is, I guess easier to find today.

I think that Atari made it mostly for diagnostic purposes. Or at least they made diagnostic cartridges with testing SW for all models: 520 to TT, Falcon. Using it for games is possible, but at higher price than on floppies, what is main reason why is not used (at all ?) . Here is concrete example how to put some shorter game (not intended for cartridge) on cartridge: http://8bitchip.info/atari/cartST.html

It can be set to work on 50Hz, but color encoder is not 'adjustable' - it is NTSC only. However, you can use it fine via RGB or on VGA + quality is much better. After solving powering with 110 V

Well, you can use it to run PC SW on Atari - if have some emulator. But it needs some special settings considering steprate of floppy - usually must set to 12mS. Simpler is to copy PC SW on 3.5 floppies, I think. Additional danger is that 5.25 drives have larger load of control lines, what may destroy soundchip in ST(E). Yes, the soundchip, since it's parallel port is used for floppy drive and side selection. Allowed load it only 1mA, what is good for 3.5 drives, but not 5.25 ones. And I don't see why someone should do it in 2012 ... I remember that bothered with this when PC-Ditto came out. After some struggling 5.25 drive worked with ST, but it required above mentioned measures, including adding amplifiers for floppy control lines.

I did not try latest Seagal's builds, but first ones were with Debug version support too. It should be still supported, as complete sources are with switchable normal/debug code. I don't think that you need anything like cheat engines with Steem Debugger (and I found hunderts of cheats already with). There is a lot of features helping it. And some games have tricky/unusual life/energy/etc. decreasing code, often with intention to make hard cheating. Then tracing is the only way.

F1 (formula one world championship) by Domark would be it. Fast - Vroom engine. Tracks are F1 ones, although there are some silly details not present on real ones. http://atari.8bitchip.info/fromhd.php - hard disk runnable v. http://www.thegamearchives.com - for floppy versions

MagicPC, Gemulator, Aranym and one more at least, what I used some years ago, but can not remember name at moment.

Yes, modern OS-es like to write a lot onto disks. So is with Windows XP and later, MacOS ... With Linux I did not notice, although I don't have latest version(s) installed. TOS is just not ready for such things. Furthermore: WinXP can destroy checksum of TOS hard disk MBR, what means that hard disk will not boot when connect back to Atari. It happens mostly on removable media - SD, CF cards. If there are zeros on some specific locations in MBR, WinXP will write there some signature/random, and adios boot checksum. Happens with older versions of hard disk drivers/partitioners for Atari. For instance with Hddriver 7.80 . Fixing is not big deal, though - reinstall driver or copy back MBR - if have it wisely saved.

Aranym is it. Executing games and demos is not only to access custom chips. They use many of special CPU features, which are not emulated well in 'OS friendly code' emulators.

As I see, Atari ST ++ emulation activity is currently smaller than before ~10 years. The reason may be that ST(E) emulation is pretty good, almost complete. TT and Falcon emulation is very hard to do. There is still no perfect 68030 emulation (PMMU part is missing or is bad for instance). And other things are emulated only partially, like Falcon video. Some technical specs are still unknown. As there is not so much TT/Falcon specific SW, demand for emulationg them is not so big too. What would be nice, and seems as not too hard is to fixing Steem bugs and improving it. Steven Seagal did good job in that way, but there are still many problems - likely remained only because affect very small count of SW.

Instead doing copy with TOS use something much faster and more powerful : http://atari.8bitchip.info/ASThdFAQ.html#DutilSW On that page are some relevant infos for Atari hard disk usage too.

This problem is most likely caused by some LFN (long filename) in STARDUST folder. It confuses TOS. You need to take care to not copy any LFN, and do not delete files in Recycle bin under WIndows - use full delete. It is easy to work with Total Commander - set to 8.3 filenames and Delete not in Recycle Bin. If encounter some LFN files, Recycle bin DIR or other system DIR (with longer name) must fully delete them in Windows - in TOS you can not do it.

You can read/write some ST formatted floppies under Linux with proper command prompt commands, 800KB too. I don't know about some GUI SW intended for floppy imaging in Linux. But, as said, if you have USB floppy. Linux will not help.