Maximum Menu Disk Compatibility

[Atari8guy]

So for my STE which has 4mb Ram, TOS 2.06, Ultrasatan, A/B floppy drive switch and an HXC floppy emulator (external but will boot as A with the switch) I'd like to achieve maximum compatibility with Menu disks. What are the options and best ways to achieve this... I've done some googling and come up with two paths (maybe there are more?)

 

1) get a tos switcher to have both 1.62 and 2.06, this option let's me keep the imaged disks on the floppy emulator.

 

2) use something like imagerunner and the program that allows me to load TOS 1.4 into high memory - will this allow me to boot and image disk? With this option I would keep the imaged disks on the Ultrasatan.

 

 

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[snarkdluG]

I don't think you can run 1.04 on a STe. 

[ParanoidLittleMan]

1.04 can not work as ROM TOS in STE but can work from RAM. Btw. 1.04 and 1.62 are very similar. After all HW is initialized (so extra STE HW too) it can work with 1.04.  Plenty of my game HD adaptations use TOS 1.04 GEMDOS part, and lately complete 1.04 with AES too works with STE, Mega STE and even TT, Falcon (then need some corrections like stackframe), in high RAM.

Indeed TOS 2.06 is worst for menu disks (OK, there is worse - EmuTOS, but let's stay at regular Atari TOS versions) . Switch and 1.62 opt. is best simple solution for STE.

While TOS 1.04 is usually recommended for ST - and it is surely best TOS for, it will not solve running of all games, not even on ST. Actually 1.02 could be better, especially if playing older games from period 1985-1989 . Because game coders could not see the future, and worse, could not see some relevant DOCs (mosty Atari's fault), so for instance joystick will not work in 1.04 . But there are games which work only with 1.00 (Tracker) .

I did lot of game fixes to make them run on later TOS versions.   http://atari.8bitchip.info/ASTGA/T/tracker.php

But there are games which need other fixes too - like those not running with 1 MB RAM (only with half) or 4 MB RAM - yes, this sounds stupid, but is true. There are fixes for such errors too. But not on menu disks, which are made in less RAM times than now.

In any case, Floppy Image Runner is not recommended for menu disks, especially if have HxC - more of it will work via it (direct FDC code using games will not work with Image Runner or Virtual Floppy).

TOS 1.04 in high RAM can make it little better.  http://atari.8bitchip.info/tosload.htm

That should work with STE too.

And there are few games which fail on STE regardless from TOS version, runs it from ROM or RAM -because bug in code, what screws video only on STE-s, on STs it does not harm (overshot in color palette write cycle), so only fixing them helps.

Example: http://atari.8bitchip.info/ASTGA/G/grandms.php

 

 

[Atari8guy]

Thank you very much for the detailed answer.  It's really for nostalgia reasons I want to run these (title screens, music, etc...), most of my favourite games are already available via your (and others) HD conversions.  Before I spend on new hardware I'll see how many I can get to run via software... If I can get into the 60-70% range or higher, that's probably good enough.