Atari 8 bit emulator (Raspberry Pi)

[retrofan11]

A few days ago a friend sent me links to a few Raspberry Pi emulators he bought on ebay as a digital download.
I looked at the Atari XL/XE emulator and realized that it was just a standard Atari800 emulator taken from Retropie and put into a Raspbian startup sequence.
There is no reason for anyone to take money from Atari fans for software that the original authors intended to be free.
So, here's the download link I got, you can freely download it, record it on a micro sd card and use it on your rapberry pi if you like.

https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1Q1RMgF0MCxV1snqVGhQkIeiviJbY6Ma1&export=download
 

[gozar]

4 hours ago, retrofan11 said:

A few days ago a friend sent me links to a few Raspberry Pi emulators he bought on ebay as a digital download.
I looked at the Atari XL/XE emulator and realized that it was just a standard Atari800 emulator taken from Retropie and put into a Raspbian startup sequence.
There is no reason for anyone to take money from Atari fans for software that the original authors intended to be free.
So, here's the download link I got, you can freely download it, record it on a micro sd card and use it on your rapberry pi if you like.

https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1Q1RMgF0MCxV1snqVGhQkIeiviJbY6Ma1&export=download
 

Ugh, that's terrible that someone doing that. atari800 is in the repo, so I believe an `apt-get install atari800` will also add it to any Raspbian install.

[Ute]

On 10/16/2019 at 11:45 PM, retrofan11 said:

A few days ago a friend sent me links to a few Raspberry Pi emulators he bought on ebay as a digital download.
I looked at the Atari XL/XE emulator and realized that it was just a standard Atari800 emulator taken from Retropie and put into a Raspbian startup sequence.
There is no reason for anyone to take money from Atari fans for software that the original authors intended to be free.
So, here's the download link I got, you can freely download it, record it on a micro sd card and use it on your rapberry pi if you like.

https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1Q1RMgF0MCxV1snqVGhQkIeiviJbY6Ma1&export=download
 

I really hate guys that do that, taking advantage of people who are unaware. I've seen them on ebay from time to time, unfortunately there is not a whole lot you can do to discourage them.

 

They need to be slapped.

[+Mr Robot]

rc.local just says

sudo dmesg --console-off
sudo /home/pi/emulators/atari8.sh
sudo shutdown now
exit 0

atari8.sh says

#!/bin/bash

pushd "/root/atari800/bin"
./atari800
popd

/root/atari800/bin contains the emulator, the standard 4 roms and a folder called Atari_software, I've zipped that (329.4MB) and uploaded it to my website. There isn't even an .atari800.cfg file

 

There is also copy of retropie on there but it isn't used. The rest is just a copy of Rasbian.

 

I hope he didn't pay too much for it, its bad enough that people are charging for things like this, its worse when it's this shoddily done. 

 

 

[the4thman]

Thank You for this... I have a Pi-Top 3 (Raspberry Pi3b+) and have managed to get the Pimiga, C64, and Atari ST emulators running on different MicroSD cards. This has a very nice selection of games and applications. Unfortunately, it won't boot for me. With Pimiga I had to add the line hdmi_ignore_edid=0xa5000080, but it doesn't seem to do the trick for this one. The hunt continues.

[E474]

Emulators + Raspberry Pi: https://retropie.org.uk/ - I would also trust this a lot more than any random "download this" for gamez link.

[NISMOPC]

I just built a pi zero w with most recent version of Raspberry Pi OS (32 bit) and am using this ATARI800 Debian build file that I was able to locate with a lot of searching on the web.

 

atari800_4.2.0_rpi0+2+3_stretch+buster.deb

 

Here is the Pi4 version as well if you are using a pi4

 

atari800_4.2.0_rpi4_buster.deb

 

No need for any OS files unless you want to. Has Alterra OSes already built in.

Edited February 16 by NISMOPC

[NISMOPC]

[zzip]

I built atari800 from source on my Pi 400.   It works well except many times when I hit F9, it goes into the monitor mode instead of exiting like it should.   Anyone else experience this on the Pi?

[NISMOPC]

16 minutes ago, zzip said:

I built atari800 from source on my Pi 400.   It works well except many times when I hit F9, it goes into the monitor mode instead of exiting like it should.   Anyone else experience this on the Pi?

I am not experiencing this with F9 - immediate shutdown of emulator when I push F9 everytime.

[zzip]

10 minutes ago, NISMOPC said:

I am not experiencing this with F9 - immediate shutdown of emulator when I push F9 everytime.

Interesting.   Well I do have the source code,  I could disable the monitor completely since I don't use it.

[mimo]

1 hour ago, NISMOPC said:

I just built a pi zero w with most recent version of Raspberry Pi OS (32 bit) and am using this ATARI800 Debian build file that I was able to locate with a lot of searching on the web.

Do you have an idiot's guide? I've got a pi3 that just sits in its box waiting for me to do something with 

[NISMOPC]

9 minutes ago, mimo said:

Do you have an idiot's guide? I've got a pi3 that just sits in its box waiting for me to do something with 

Well, I would have to say that I need an idiot's guide as well. Took me a while to figure out what I was doing as I had not played around with Pi's in a while. I have just enough UNIX knowledge to be dangerous, but am in no way full of knowledge.

 

Steps I took. This is not in any way fully detailed, just a high level of what I did.
1. I installed Raspberry pi OS on a 32GB micro-SD using the Raspberry Pi Imager app for Windows 10.

2. Performed OS update and all package updates

3. Installed the ATARI800 Debian package made for the Pi 0,2,3
4. Located the executable and created a shortcut on the desktop

5. Executed the app

Everything just worked.

[+Mr Robot]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

I built atari800 from source on my Pi 400.   It works well except many times when I hit F9, it goes into the monitor mode instead of exiting like it should.   Anyone else experience this on the Pi?

F8 is monitor mode, did you miss when aiming for f9? I do that regularly on my mac.

 

There is a pull request waiting to be merged that allows all the F keys to be reassigned, so hopefully soon it will be possible to move the quit button.

[mimo]

13 minutes ago, NISMOPC said:

Well, I would have to say that I need an idiot's guide as well. Took me a while to figure out what I was doing as I had not played around with Pi's in a while. I have just enough UNIX knowledge to be dangerous, but am in no way full of knowledge.

 

Steps I took. This is not in any way fully detailed, just a high level of what I did.
1. I installed Raspberry pi OS on a 32GB micro-SD using the Raspberry Pi Imager app for Windows 10.

2. Performed OS update and all package updates

3. Installed the ATARI800 Debian package made for the Pi 0,2,3
4. Located the executable and created a shortcut on the desktop

5. Executed the app

Everything just worked.

Thanks, I'll have a go when I get some free time 🤣

[zzip]

1 hour ago, Mr Robot said:

F8 is monitor mode, did you miss when aiming for f9? I do that regularly on my mac.

 

There is a pull request waiting to be merged that allows all the F keys to be reassigned, so hopefully soon it will be possible to move the quit button.

Maybe that is the problem..   I just went and checked several games and made 100% sure I was pushing F9, and it exited correctly each time.

 

The Pi 400 keyboard is compact and my finger might just be miscalculating where F9 is.   I think I'll still disable F8 to prevent the problem because falling into the monitor because my frontend isn't able to recover from this easily (it runs in full screen, the monitor runs in a terminal)

[Potemkyn]

Might try this one day....

Edited February 16 by Potemkyn

[Faicuai]

Well, if anyone wants to package this on a PBI or Slot-3 800 board, with its own dedicated Storage, Audio, Video and WiFi connectivity, and capable or running cycle-exact emulation in NTSC/PAL standards, with control of artifacting, scaling and scan-lines, and capable of at least leveraging SIO, Keyboard and PIA inputs from host machine, you have there a killer upgrade (the upgrade of all upgrades). Even running future emulations of AppleII, C64, etc, on the same board.

 

For the rest, these will always be half-way salvos that won't leave the "proof-of-concept" realm, though. 

[+Mr Robot]

2 hours ago, zzip said:

The Pi 400 keyboard is compact and my finger might just be miscalculating where F9 is. 

my macbook is the same, i hit the bloody thing all the time

 

[JimF]

If you have a Pi4 or Pi400 and install the excellent TwisterOS, I believe Atari800 appears in Add/Remove Software (as does Hatari), though in standard Raspbian OS only Hatari shows.

[NISMOPC]

Update on my set-up. I've been using the directional pad on the mini-wireless keyboard with success, but it's not a good way to play games. Too cramped and tiny. So I tried to hook-up one of my Retro Atari USB joystick I purchased from the late and great Curt Vendel a while back.

 

My pi would not recognize it even though it could be seen. After some research I found I just needed to install standard joystick driver. So for those who might run into this same issue, here is all I needed to do:

 

      sudo apt-get install joystick

 

Optional:

      jscal /dev/input/js0 (Calibrate the Joystick)
      jstest /dev/input/js0 (Test the Joystick)

[JimF]

Further to my post about TwisterOS: you can indeed install and run Atari800 as I said, but I find the sound is distorted and I have been unable fix it. However RetroPie is already installed in TwisterOS and when you run that version of Atari800 the sound is just fine.

[TIX]

Haven't touch Atari emulation (Atari800) on pi for a while..

last I remember a constant 'hissing' sound in all games,

another problem was that A8 and 5200 shared the same configuration, with all kind of problems occurring because of this.

 

Any idea if these problems persist ?

Edited February 17 by TIX

[NISMOPC]

4 hours ago, TIX said:

Haven't touch Atari emulation (Atari800) on pi for a while..

last I remember a constant 'hissing' sound in all games,

another problem was that A8 and 5200 shared the same configuration, with all kind of problems occurring because of this.

 

Any idea if these problems persist ?

I have not attempted to run any 5200 roms, but have had no issues sound or glitches with 800/XE/XL ROMS. I did however swap my microSD card into my PI 3B because the PI ZERO W just isn't up to par on speed for the emulation. Choppy play and sound experiences. PI 3B runs as smooth as an emu on PI could.

 

Currently have

- a PI ZERO W connected to my TI-99/4A for TIPI/PI add on

- a PI ZERO v1.3 and PI ZERO W as extras

- a PI 3B for ATARI emulation (for now)

[zzip]

16 hours ago, JimF said:

Further to my post about TwisterOS: you can indeed install and run Atari800 as I said, but I find the sound is distorted and I have been unable fix it. However RetroPie is already installed in TwisterOS and when you run that version of Atari800 the sound is just fine.

I had distorted sound on PC with Ubuntu 18.   The issue there wasn't atari800, it was the way the sound hardware was getting initialized..   sound buffers too small for pulseaudio as I recall.   I fixed that and atari800 works fine.    There might be a similar issue happening in TwisterOS