How healthy is the ST emulation scene

[carmel_andrews]

Only bought this up since Saint and Hatari (previously known as winston/stew) are the only actively maintained emulators that have only been updated a couple of times in the last 2 years

 

Does that mean that the St emulation scene isn't as healthy as it was in years gone by, what happened to steem engine, pacifist, toxbox, stonx and others...or is the PC/windblows based ST emulation scene not the biggest priorities for emulation of the ST/E/TT or falcon systems (prefering instead to concentrate on mobile platforms and emulation of the ST etc on gaming systems)

Edited June 1, 2012 by carmel_andrews

[Ayreon]

AFAIK: HATARI is frequently updated. SAINT rarely and I believe the sources of STEEM are out there for anyone to use.

On www.atari-forum.com you should be able to find more info.

[anzac]

loved using STEEM, but it´s been a while since i did any emulation....

[Cyprian]

Steem is also alive, There you can find updated version by Steve Seagal http://ataristeven.host898.net/Steem.htm

[Christos]

Does that mean that the St emulation scene isn't as healthy as it was in years gone by, ......... .or is the PC/windblows based ST emulation scene not the biggest priorities for emulation of the ST/E/TT or falcon systems (prefering instead to concentrate on mobile platforms and emulation of the ST etc on gaming systems)

 

No and no

Edited June 1, 2012 by Christos

[Triads]

Steem is also alive, There you can find updated version by Steve Seagal http://ataristeven.h...8.net/Steem.htm

 

thanks for the link!

[ParanoidLittleMan]

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.

[macgoo]

What we really need in the ST community is something like AROS for TOS. So you can run Atari ST/TT/Falcon apps with legal op-codes and OS friendly code etc and zoom it up as none of the custom chips need to be emulated, only a 2ghz virtual 68000

 

There was something like this a long time ago made in Germany, it was about the time of Windows 95/98/2000. Kind of like GEMulator but not really, more like Atari GEM on x86 CPU. If this project was resurrected and an ST emulator JIT function run if you execute games or demos etc to take over and do a 16/8mhz STE impersonation only when access to the custom chips and bespoke ST hardware features above GEM/TOS are required.

[+DarkLord]

Janus?

[ParanoidLittleMan]

What we really need in the ST community is something like AROS for TOS. So you can run Atari ST/TT/Falcon apps with legal op-codes and OS friendly code etc and zoom it up as none of the custom chips need to be emulated, only a 2ghz virtual 68000

There was something like this a long time ago made in Germany, it was about the time of Windows 95/98/2000. Kind of like GEMulator but not really, more like Atari GEM on x86 CPU. If this project was resurrected and an ST emulator JIT function run if you execute games or demos etc to take over and do a 16/8mhz STE impersonation only when access to the custom chips and bespoke ST hardware features above GEM/TOS are required.

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.

[+rdemming]

There was something like this a long time ago made in Germany, it was about the time of Windows 95/98/2000. Kind of like GEMulator but not really, more like Atari GEM on x86 CPU. If this project was resurrected and an ST emulator JIT function run if you execute games or demos etc to take over and do a 16/8mhz STE impersonation only when access to the custom chips and bespoke ST hardware features above GEM/TOS are required.

 

Or MagicPC. This allows well behaved ST software to run on the PC.

[ParanoidLittleMan]

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

[macgoo]

All I remember is the German language version was more developed than the English version, it was posted on another forum about 6 months ago. Someone asked me to translate it! (don't speak German)

 

Never said it would be easy but it is the future. It is something the Amiga community are lucky to have with decade of work on AROS but it is so much more than just using an emulator to play Shadow of the Beast on a PC. I think it is the way forward, GEM application level compatibility followed by hooks to kick in a full blown emulator (which one though??) when the system needs actual shifter/YM/68000 emulation etc.

[macgoo]

I think it was MagicPC but that only has German downloads and the page I visited had both German and English versions to download, but the version number of the English one was lower.

 

Aranym looks interesting, thanks for posting that

 

AFROS Live CD minimum specs say Pentium, so I am guessing the native drivers for video cards are going to be ones from a decade ago?

Edited June 6, 2012 by macgoo

[carmel_andrews]

Any chance that steven seagal can do the debug version as well (since the old S/E came as a debug version also), helpful for finding memory based cheats (if used with something like artmoney/cheat engine)

[ParanoidLittleMan]

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.

[onlysublime]

has anyone implemented Kaillera or something similar in ST emulators? You find great support in many other emulators but I searched and searched for ST support. My friends and I would love to play ST games over the Internet!