Falcon Compatibility

[Tempest]

Does anyone know what percentage of ST/STe games are compatible with the Falcon? I've heard mixed reports.

 

Tempest

[Clint Thompson]

Tempest,

 

I don't know what exact precentage but I do know it's pretty low.

Just to put it this way, I won 4 ST games on eBay.

 

2 of the AD&D style games, War Zone and Beverely Hills Cop.

NONE of them work on the Falcon (AD&D boots, but freezes, same

as with the War Zone)

 

Now, I know there are/is program(s) out there that kinda give your

Falcon the backward compatability and fixes a lot of issues to increase

the library of games playable on the Falcon... however I don't have

such a program at the time.

 

Clint Thompson

[Tempest]

Bah so I'm probably better off getting a Mega Ste if I want to play games then right? Did that have any compatibility problems? If I got a Falcon I suppose it would just be a show piece and not very useful (like my TT030).

 

Tempest

[Tempest]

Found this list, looks like compatibility is about 50-50 with the backwards emulator. http://www.atariarchives.org/cfn/06/03/07.php

 

Tempest

[Clint Thompson]

Temptest,

 

If all you wanna do is play games then yea, probably the Mega STE.

But, if you can just get the Mega STe for a good price and already have

a source for getting a Falcon, why not get both?

 

There's still some cool stuff out there that is Falcon only,

Dead Hackers Soc. and Resevior Gods are still doing quite a bit too!

Interesting machine still!

 

Clint Thompson

[Tempest]

Really? How active is the Falcon scene these days? What kind of stuff are they doing?

 

Tempest

[Clint Thompson]

http://www.dhs.nu/

 

Check it out!

 

Resevoir Gods released Chu Chu Rockets and quite a few other games

for free. Plus there are many demos for the Falcon.

 

Crown of Creation is supposed to be a pretty good game (Falcon only)

I've yet to obtain this one however!

[+Sauron]

Bah so I'm probably better off getting a Mega Ste if I want to play games then right?

 

No. If you want to play games, I'd recommend nothing other than a 1040 ST with TOS 1.0, as that will be the most compatible. However, I'd still pick up a Falcon in it's own right, as there's some pretty cool software out there for it. Besides, what harm would there be in owning Atari's last computer? I say go for it, even if you can't play that many ST games. Last I checked, stock STs go for pretty cheap nowadays.

[Tempest]

Actually I'm looking at getting a Mega ST for playing games. Gotta love that case (almost as good as the Mega STE).

 

Tempest

[Mendon]

To bad you don't live in Tampa; there is a flea market here that has a Mega 2 ST, external HD, monitor AND an Atari laser printer (not sure of the model at the moment as I'm having a brain fart... its the BIG heavy mother). I played with it a little, everything seems to work fine (didn't try the printer) and he wants $125 for everything.

 

Mendon

[Tempest]

Yeah I have enough montiors and even the laser printer. All I need is a system.

 

Tempest

[+Sauron]

There just so happens to be several Mega STs on eBay right now. Here's one:

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...66&category=179

[Tempest]

Yeah I'm watching a few Mega ST 4's. Did any games use the extra 2 Megs of memory or was it only for applications?

 

Tempest

[+Sauron]

Can't recall off hand which games did, but I know there's a few. Most games were written to run in 512KB, but many that utilized large maps (like Dungeon Master) use more memory when it's available. This has the drawback of the game taking longer to boot, as it's loading and uncompressing more data into memory, but it takes away the longer load times when switching levels.

 

Having said that, I'm not really sure if most of those games use more than 1 Meg. In fact, some games refuse to run on systems with more than 1 Meg, although there was a program available that allowed you to "shorten" the amount of memory available, just for this purpose. I know a few of the later games which came out near the end of the ST's life utilized as much memory as was available, but that's generally the exception rather than the rule. However, you'll find that even a Mega ST has far better compatibility with ST games than a TT, Falcon, or even a Mega STe.

[Atari_Owl]

Really? How active is the Falcon scene these days? What kind of stuff are they doing?

 

Also, i JUST got my CT60, which admittedly isn't working yet, but will be soon, I'm sure.

 

see www.czuba-tech.com to see what the fuss is about. It seems to be FAST, 66MHz, 68060 up to 130MIPS, 512MB RAM, GREAT

 

Now, if only mine would boot MUST build that Xilinx cable.

 

Cheers

 

Oh, also, back to topic, about 70-80% of my games are working with the use of Backwards and a little tuning, although i can't get F1GP to save games to HD.

[Tempest]

Interesting, but what the heck would you do with all that speed?

 

Oh, also, back to topic, about 70-80% of my games are working with the use of Backwards and a little tuning, although i can't get F1GP to save games to HD.

 

70%-80%? Wow that's pretty good. Define "a little tuning".

 

Tempest

[+Sauron]

Interesting, but what the heck would you do with all that speed?

 

MP3's, movies, better web browsing, etc. I would absolutely love to have a CT60, but they're a little beyond my price range right now.

 

 

70%-80%?  Wow that's pretty good.  Define "a little tuning".

 

I'd like to hear the answer to this as well. I should be getting a Falcon fairly soon, and I'd like to be able to play at least some of my extensive ST game collection on it (provided all those disks are still good, of course).

[Ayreon]

The later thalion/eclipse games use kinda all (standard) extra's they can find.Leaving Terramis, Wings of Death, Lethal Xcess, No second price (there's a Falcon version ... more or less a fixed version that does run on falcon) and there are a few other that check the available memory and chipset.

[Atari_Owl]

Generally the 8MHz speed is the most important setting, but also switching off the caches and blitter is also very useful.

 

Other settings which are often of help are:

Simulate 1 or 2MB memory

DMA Sound Interrupt to Timer A or B

Move Exception Table

Move PMMU tree

Emulate ST RAM bug

Emulate old Screen Base

YM settings

 

There's a LOT to play around with.

Usually its a case of trial and error.

I still get messed up colours with Civilisation though

 

What am i going to do with all that speed?

Why, write something much MUCH better than what i'm trying on the Jaguar of course.

 

I have Translucent polys working already hehe

[+Sauron]

Atari_Owl, thanks for sharing that info. One thing I'm still a bit confused about, though, is how exactly that "Backwards" program works. Since a good portion of the ST games booted directly from floppy, does the program insert itself into memory first as a boot-loader, or can you just run the games directly from TOS through that program?

[Atari_Owl]

Its basically a TSR that survives a hot boot.

Reset.

Then you boot from the disk exactly as you would with an ST.

 

Some however, such as Supersprint YAYYYYYY work directly from the desktop PROVIDED You're in the correct screen modes.

 

The Sierra games generally work this way too. And before it got corrupted (afted i'd deleted it from my hard disk) so did Monkey Island.

 

There's also a couple of other codes that also do a similar thing to Backwards, I can't remember their names offhand but i'll look for them.

 

Cheers

[+Sauron]

Cool, that sounds great! I can't wait for my Falcon to arrive so I get start finally playing with my "Holy Grail" of computers!

[Atari_Owl]

I really think you will enjoy it. Even if its not quite so quick as a TT.

 

And if you get a CT60 at some point, even better

 

Cheers

[lais]

Does anyone know what percentage of ST/STe games are compatible with the Falcon?  I've heard mixed reports.  

 

Tempest

 

If you want to play ST games then buy an ST... It's not hard to find one dirt cheap. When I bought my Falcon I had no intention to run ST games on it, for that I kept my ST. I use the Falcon for Falcon software (and only GEM-based applications which of course work on all TOS machines, but at greatly increased speed on the newer generation hardware).