CD Actual 13/CDA13.ISO/cdactual/demobin/share/DOS/emu/atari/atari.exe/XF2.DOC

Text File | 1994-06-20 | 29.7 KB | 635 lines

PC Xformer 2.0 - The Atari 400/800 Emulator For MS-DOS Compatible PCs
=====================================================================

June 20, 1994.

Branch Always Software
14150 N.E. 20th Street
Suite 302
Bellevue, WA  98007
U.S.A.

Program by Darek Mihocka. Many thanks to Danny Miller and Bob Woolley for
their beta testing and technical help, to Greg Tibbets for the many Rana
drives, to Jan Gray for sharing the cool programming tricks, and to Nick
Kennedy for developing the SIO2PC cable which makes life so much easier.


Copy this program!
------------------

PC Xformer 2.0 is a free emulator for MS-DOS users who wish to run their old
Atari 400/800 software. The file XF2.ZIP may be freely redistributed under the
condition that the contents of the ZIP file are not modified in any way, and
that no fee is charged for the software other than reasonable long distance
and online charges for downloads.

These files must be present in the XF2.ZIP archive:

    XF2.EXE     - an MS-DOS program that is the PC Xformer 2.0 emulator
    XF2.DOC     - this documentation file
    DOS25.XFD   - an ST Xformer virtual disk containing Atari DOS 2.5 files
    MYDOS45.ATR - an SIO2PC virtual disk containing MyDOS 4.5 files
    DEMOS.XFD   - an ST Xformer virtual disk containing Atari 8-bit demos

PC Xformer 2.0 is NOT shareware. You can freely use it to your hearts delight
without having to feel guilty about not paying for it, just as the original
ST Xformer program has been freely available for 7 years.

Future upgrades of PC Xformer will be available for $29.95 for those people
who want the additional features, extra documentation, and product support.

I do ask one thing. Every user of PC Xformer 2.0 needs to send me a letter
or postcard describing the PC that you are using the emulator on (brand,
memory, processor, video card, etc), a list of the Atari 8-bit software that
you are running on it, and how well each program runs. And of course, feel
free to comment and make suggestions for future versions of PC Xformer. Also
include a list of other computers you own or plan to purchase.


Quick Start
-----------

To just quickly run PC Xformer 2.0, type XF2 from the DOS prompt. The familiar
blue and white Atari Basic screen will appear with the READY prompt. Type
in a small Basic program and you'll see it's just like an Atari 400/800!

If you specify virtual disk files and/or MS-DOS files after the XF2, those
will be installed as Atari disk drives. For example, type:

XF2 DOS25.XFD DEMOS.XFD

to boot up DOS 2.5 from D1: and then access demo files from D2:. Using the
same example, once you are in Atari Basic type:

RUN"D2:ATARI800.BAS"

to run a demo program. Or type DOS to go to the DOS 2.5 file manager.
Machine language programs (typically files ending with .OBJ or .COM) should
be run with Basic disabled by pressing Shift+F10 to reboot without Basic.

Press F5 to exit back to the DOS prompt. Then read the rest of this document!


Features
--------

Many of the limitations of the ST Xformer emulator are gone thanks to the much
faster processing power of the PC and its superior VGA graphics capablities.
If you previously used ST Xformer you'll find much faster emulation of Atari
8-bit programs with much greater compatibility.

PC Xformer 2.0 is the first and only Atari 8-bit emulator for either the ST or
PC that supports all these features:

    - 48K RAM with built-in Atari 400/800 operating system and Atari BASIC

    - displays all ANTIC text and graphics modes, including GTIA modes

    - displays player missile graphics (no collision detection)

    - handles display list interrupts, IRQ, and NMI interrupts

    - 256 color GTIA palette

    - reads and writes to ST Xformer and SIO2PC generated disk images

    - reads MS-DOS files directly and automatically converts to disk image

    - switches Atari Basic on/off with one keystroke

    - joystick emulation using the keyboard

    - full speed emulation on a 386/33 or faster

    - slow and fast modes of emulation

Features that will be found in future versions of PC Xformer (described later
in this document) are:

    - 800XL/130XE memory bank switching

    - player missile graphics collision detection

    - sound card, joystick port, modem port, and printer port support

The speed of Atari 8-bit emulation is proportional to the speed of your PC,
with a 33 Mhz 386 approximately giving the normal speed of an Atari 800.

Below is a list of processors and the approximate speed of emulation relative
to an Atari 800:

    - 286/16    - 0.3
    - 386SX/20  - 0.5
    - 386DX/33  - 1.0
    - 486DX/33  - 2.0
    - 486DX2/66 - 4.0
    - Pentium   - 7+

486 and Pentium users can use the slow/fast option to slow down the emulator
to normal speed if necessary.


Hardware requirements
---------------------

PC Xformer 2.0 is a 16-bit MS-DOS application. It is designed to run on most
PCs with minimum hardware requirements. It requires only a 286 compatible CPU,
so it is compatible with all 286, 386, 486 and Pentium based PC, as well as any
PC that can emulate the 286. For example, the Mac running SoftAT, the PowerMac
running SoftWindows, and any Windows NT based RISC machine.

PC Xformer 2.0 also requires a VGA compatible display, and about 200K of RAM.


History
-------

The whole idea of emulating an Atari 800 computer on another computer popped
into my head about 8 years ago while working at a job developing Apple II
software. It occured to me that the Apple II was so super simple, so utterly
primitive a machine, that it shouldn't be too hard to emulate it on my (then)
brand new Atari 1040ST.

So I set about doing that and a couple months later had an Apple II emulator
up and running. The next obvious step was to emulate an Atari 400, which I had
prior to the ST. The Atari 400 and Apple II, while both 6502 based machines,
were radically different in the rest of their hardware. The Atari 400 in
effect has two microprocessors - the 6502, and the ANTIC chip which handles
all the cool graphics, and so the end result required an emulator that was
really two emulators - a 6502 emulator to execute the programs, and an
ANTIC/GTIA/POKEY emulator to handle the video and other Atari 400 hardware.

The result was a not so spectacular Atari 400/800 emulator which I called
ST Xformer (pronounced ST Transformer because it transforms your computer
into an Atari 8-bit computer). The main problem was speed. The Atari ST's
68000 processor was too slow to interpreter 6502 machine language in real-time
and the Atari ST's graphics capabilities were inadequate to handle the 256
color displays of most Atari 8-bit software.

In the summer of 1988, I rewrote ST Xformer from scratch and ended up with a
much improved and much faster ST Xformer II, which did things a lot better
but still lacked the processing speed required to emulate an Atari 400.

In 1989 I released the last version of ST Xformer II for the Atari ST, a
version that emulated the 130XE and ran as fast as I could make it. I used my
new found skill at writing really fast 68000 machine language to move on to
developing other Atar ST programs such as Quick ST, Quick Index, Quick View
(kind of a Quick theme, eh?) MonSTer, and others.

Emulators are a fairly common thing now (the PowerPC emulating a Mac, the MIPS
emulating a 286, the PC emulating an Atari ST, etc) and the general rule of
thumb is that you need at least a 10:1 speed ratio to successfully emulate
one machine on another. In other words, computer A can emulate computer B if
computer A is at least 10 times faster than computer B. As it was, the 8 Mhz
68000 chip in the Atari ST was only about 5 times more powerful than a 6502
and add to that the extra task of emulating the ANTIC chip and it was quite
obvious that ST Xformer II could only be improved so far. I even release the
source code to ST Xformer and to this day no one has ever managed to speed it
up or significantly improve it. A few have tried, once even in GFA Basic!

In 1990 I moved to developing on PCs and as my first project I decided to
rewrite ST Xformer from 68000 machine language to 8086 machine language to
see what sort of speed I'd get. So was born PC Xformer 1.0 in late 1990 during
one of Seattle's few major snow storms that shut down the city for a few days.
(Not that it was that major a snow storm, and being from the east coast I've
seen real snow storms, but drop 6 inches of snow on the ground here and people
freak out to no end).

Running on a few 20 and 25 Mhz 386 machines I had, PC Xformer did quite well.
The 386 chip is several times more powerful than a 68000 and so it does meet
the 10:1 speed requirement and does allow for full speed real-time emulation
of the 6502. Major progress! PC Xformer 1.0 did not emulate the ANTIC chip or
any of the other custom chips of the 8-bit Atari, so it was limited to running
in text mode (graphics mode 0) only.

This re-kindled my interest in emulators enough to go back to the Atari and
try to run ST Xformer II on the then new Atari TT computer. Unfortunately
ST Xformer was heavily optimized for the 68000 chip and used tricks that
prevented it from running on the TT's 68030 chip directly. With a few minor
modification and disabling the 68030's cache, I was able to run ST Xformer II
on the TT, only to find out that it ran no quicker on a 16 Mhz 68030 than on
a 16 Mhz 68000. A major rewrite of ST Xformer into 68030 code was required
which I decided not to do at the time.

Throughout 1991, I showed PC Xformer 1.0 at various Atari shows and at the
time there was not much interest in it. Back then even a slow 386 machine
cost over $2000, and why pay $2000 to buy a PC to then emulate a text-only
Atari 400 when a real Atari 400 costs about $50?

But several people did start bringing up the idea of emulating an Atari ST
on the PC. After all, buying a $2000 computer to emulate a $1000 computer
made a little more sense. Other people dared me to do it, as if emulating a
lowly Atari 400 was one thing but emulating a powerful Atari ST was another.

So I set out to write a totally new emulator, Gemulator, which would emulate
the 68000 chip as well as all of the Atari ST hardware. Gemulator took over
a year to write (as a 68000 is several orders of magnitude more complex than
a 6502 chip). But nothing is impossible in software!

In 1992 I released Gemulator, and by then for $2000 you could buy the more
powerful 486 based computers which could not only emulate the 68000 in real
time, but even faster. Over the next year I fine tuned Gemulator to the point
where in many ways it was a better Atari ST than a real Atari ST - faster,
better graphics, higher disk and memory capacity, etc. And the 486 kept
getting cheaper, and cheaper, and cheaper, and the 386 even cheaper.

So in late 1993, after releasing the major Gemulator 3.0 upgrade I took a look
back at PC Xformer. With all the new tricks I had learned developing Gemulator,
I now saw solutions to what previously were difficult technical problems with
regards to emulating the Atari 8-bit's ANTIC and other custom chips.

With 386 machines selling in the under $500 range now, it also because quite
obvious that there would be plenty of people out there who were one time
(or still are) Atari 8-bit users who had PCs and would seriously consider
using a $500 PC to emulate a $50 Atari. Whether for real work or just for the
hell of it, it would be a cool thing to use and for me to write.

I also happen to run across a few other people on the internet who had similar
ideas and planned to write their own Atari 8-bit emulators for the PC, but who
obviously lacked the technical knowledge and experience to do such a thing.
One Atari 8-bit emulator from Germany already making its rounds on the internet
is such a pathetic piece of work that it makes emulators look bad.

So once again it was time to write a brand new emulator! Taking the existing
PC Xformer 1.0 code written for the 8-bit 8086 chip, I rewrote it for the 286
chip (let's face it, how many people still use an 8086 based computer?) to
take advantage of its 16-bit power. That resulted in faster 6502 emulation
and enough power to emulate the custom chips even on a 386.

And that is how PC Xformer 2.0 came into being! Some of you are probably
thinking "Poor boy, he should get a life". Well don't worry, there is reason
behind the madness. Just as with Quick ST and Gemulator, I want your money.
Then I can afford to go have a life!

Back in March I demoed it for the first time at an Atari show in Sacramento.
This time around the people who saw it were quite interested. "How much, I'll
buy it" was the typical response after seeing it. I'd respond with "How about
$30?" and usually the person would still be standing there, still interested.
But first I have to get people interested.

So I decided to do what many software companies are starting to do - give away
the first version of the product for free (or pretty close to it) and then
charge for upgrades.

That way everybody has a chance to use the product and decide if they like it
and want to continue using it. But unlike demos and shareware, the product is
not crippled, does not have a time limit, does not constantly interrupt your
work to give you an in your face reminder that you have not paid for it yet.

The goal with PC Xformer 2.0 is to run Atari 8-bit software reasonably well
on most of the PCs now out there, all 100 million or so of them. So it has
very few special needs. If you have a PC that is 286 compatible and can
display VGA graphics, you can run PC Xformer 2.0. No special video cards,
sound cards, game cards or anything like that required. Every person on the
face of the planet who has access to some sort of PC should be able to run
PC Xformer 2.0 and get hands on experience with it. And then get hooked on it.

Ok, now that I've bored everyone to tears, let's get started!


Running PC Xformer 2.0
----------------------

Running PC Xformer 2.0 is extremely simple. From an MS-DOS (or compatible)
prompt, type XF2 followed by an optional one or two virtual disk image files.
The first file will be installed as Atari disk drive D1: and the second file
will be installed as disk drive D2. The virtual disk image files may be either
in ST Xformer (.SD, .DD, .XFD files) or SIO2PC format (.ATR files).

If PC Xformer 2.0 is unable to access a virtual disk in read/write mode, it
will try to open it in read mode. In that case, any attempt to save or delete
files in the virtual disk will result in an error 144 (write protect error).

PC Xformer 2.0 is compatible with any MS-DOS compatible operating system,
including Windows 3.1, OS/2 2.1, and Windows NT 3.1. When running in a
windowed environment, you'll get the most speed out of PC Xformer 2.0 if you
set Exclusive mode and run in a full screen instead of a window. Most Windows
VGA drivers do not allow graphical DOS programs to even run in a window.

If you find that PC Xformer 2.0 is running too fast (because you are using a
Pentium or other fast computer) press the Scroll Lock key. This will slow down
the emulator to a more reasonable speed.


The keyboard, cursor keys, and joystick emulation
-------------------------------------------------

All letter and number keys function as on the 400/800 keyboard. Punctuation
keys will give the characters shown on the PC keyboard, not the characters
that appear on the Atari keyboard. i.e. Shift+2 gives the @ character, not ".

If you are used to using the Atari keyboard and want keys to work as they
do on the Atari keyboard, keep in mind that PC keyboards come in every style
and layout and so it is impossible to do that. Simply spend a few minutes
looking at they keys as you type and you will get used to your particular
PC's keyboard layout.

F1 F2 F3 F4 function as cursor keys (up, down, left, right), similar to the
four function keys on a 1200XL.

F5 exits back to DOS. Remember this when you want to exit PC Xformer!!

F6 is the BREAK key.

F7 is the START key.

F8 is the SELECT key.

F9 is the OPTION key.

F10 is RESET. Press Shift+F10 to coldboot the 400/800 and toggle Basic.

Insert and Delete insert and delete a character.

Shift+Insert and Shift+Delete insert and delete a line of text.

Home is the CLEAR key.

End is also the BREAK key.

The ` key is the Atari logo key used to toggle inverse text on/off.

Page Up and Page Down are used to move the display window up or down a pixel
at a time. This allows you to center the screen for programs whose display
extends either too far up or too far down.

The numeric keypad functions in two modes. When the Num Lock is set, the
numeric keypad produces numbers. When Num Lock is not set, the keys 2 4 6 8
function as a 4 direction joystick. 0 on the keypad is the fire button.

If your keyboard has an "inverted T" set of cursor keys, those also function
in two modes. By themselves they function as a 4 direction joystick. When
pressed with the Ctrl key, they act as cursor keys (same as F1 F2 F3 F4).

Due to differences in the layout of the Atari 400/800 and PC keyboards,
the keys + - = * do not function as cursor keys. You must use F1 F2 F3 F4 or
the PC's cursor keys.

Some PC keyboards have an 8-way set of cursor keys, containing the usual
up down left and right cursor keys, plus four diagonal keys. Pressing those
diagonal keys will generate diagonal joystick movements as expected.

Pressing Ctrl and a letter key will give you the graphics characters as on
the Atari 400/800. However, the two graphics characters produced by pressing
Ctrl+, and Ctrl+. can be obtained on the PC keyboard by typing Ctrl+[ and
Ctrl+].

Caps Lock functions as the Atari's Caps key, not as a true Caps Lock. Press
Caps Lock once to enter lower case mode, then press Shift+Caps Lock to go
back to upper case mode.

Scroll Lock toggles fast/slow mode. Scroll Lock on is the slow mode. Use this
feature only on 486 and Pentium machine. On slower machines it will cause the
emulator to slow down too much. See below.

To pause a program or a listing, press the PC's Pause key instead of Ctrl+1.

In place of Ctrl+3 press break.

Ok, got that? Just spend a few minutes playing around with the PC's keyboard
and things will start to make sense.


Slow/Fast modes
---------------

Scroll Lock toggles the slow/fast speed of the emulator. By default the
emulator is in fast mode, meaning it runs as fast as possible. On a 286 or
386 based PC, PC Xformer 2.0 should run at or slightly below the speed of an
8-bit Atari so leave it in the default setting. On a 486 or Pentium, the speed
may be too fast for some games, although the faster speed may be just what is
needed for some slow BASIC games. In any case, if you do need to slow down the
emulator, activate Scroll Lock to place the emulator into slow speed mode.
At this point the emulator "applies the brakes" and attempts to drop down to
about normal speed. Press Scroll Lock again to switch back to fast mode.


Disk drive emulation
--------------------

Now we come to what to some people is the most confusing part about using an
emulator, whether PC Xformer, ST Xformer, DOS emulators on UNIX, or the many
different Apple II emulators out there - disks. It's quite simple once you
understand the concepts so let me try to explain.

With Gemulator I lucked out. Both the Atari ST and most PCs use the exact same
3.5 inch floppy disks and they even format the disks the exact same way. What
that means to you is that you can take a disk from an Atari ST and just pop
it into a PC and just read the files directly. No special cables, no special
adjustments to your disk drive.

Not so with most computers. A PC's 5.25" floppy disk drive can't directly
read an Apple II's 5.25" floppy disks. An old Mac II can't directly read
Atari ST disks. And of course, the bummer, a PC's 5.25" floppy disk drive
can't read Atari 8-bit floppy disks.

So what to do? The same problem existed on the Atari ST with ST Xformer. I
tried several different techniques. ST Xformer 1.0 emulated Atari DOS and
faked up the D: device, so that whatever filename you specified actually
accessed that file on the Atari ST's disk. ST Xformer II did the same thing
but called it the F: device.

Unfortunately most (well, a lot) of Atari 8-bit software bypasses Atari DOS
and read sectors from the disk directly. So the F: thing doesn't work too well
for them, or boot disk that don't use a DOS at all.

So I did what all of the Apple II emulators and most other emulators do: use
virtual disks. A virtual disk is just a large data file that contains all the
information of a single floppy disk.

A virtual disk containing all the information of an Atari 8-bit single density
disk must hold all the information from the 720 sectors on that disk. At
128 bytes per sector, 720*128 = 92160 bytes. And that is exactly how large
ST Xformer virtual disk files are. 92160 bytes. Every byte in the file
corresponds to a byte originally found on the disk.

The question still remains how to create a virtual disk file. Shortly after
releasing ST Xformer II, I realized that the Atari ST's parallel printer port
is very much like the Atari 800's serial port. One has 25 pins, the other has
13 pins. Big deal. What the pins do is very similar, and so I developed a
cable known as the ST Xformer Cable (what else!) which allowed you to directly
connect an Atari 810 or 1050 disk drive to the Atari ST. Then using some
software, the ST read each of the 720 sectors on the Atari 8-bit disk and
stored those 92160 bytes into a file (usually with a .SD or .XFD extender).

And that is how you create a virtual disk on the Atari ST. If you are an Atari
ST user and have user ST Xformer II in the past, then all of your Atari 8-bit
software is already in virtual disk format and ready for use on PC Xformer!

If not, and you don't know any Atari ST users who have the ST Xformer Cable,
don't despair. There are still plenty of ways to transfer a file to the PC.

About 4 years ago an Atari user by the name of Nick Kennedy tackled exactly
this problem. And he developed a cable called the SIO2PC cable, to directly
connect an Atari 8-bit computer to the PC.

Now of course he had no clue that 4 years later someone would come around and
write an emulator, so the reason for his cable was to use a PC with its big
PC hard disk to store Atari 8-bit files. Basically, using a PC as a very large
hard disk for an Atari 800. By daisy chaining both a PC as well as a real
Atari 8-bit disk drive onto the cable you are then able to copy files from
the 8-bit disk drive to the PC.

As it happens, guess how the SIO2PC software stores the 8-bit files on the PC
once they're transfered over the cable? In virtual disks of course! In fact,
virtual disks created by SIO2PC are almost identical to those created by
the ST Xformer cable, and so PC Xformer 2.0 supports both types of virtual
disk files. (The difference is an extra 16 byte header that SIO2PC uses).

The SIO2PC cable has been around for 4 years and is fairly well known in
the Atari 8-bit community, so this document will not describe how to build
or use the SIO2PC cable. Contact your local Atari dealer, your user group,
download files #5281 and #6414 from the Atari 8-bit roundtable on GEnie, or
best yet, contact Nick Kennedy directly at 501-967-3843 or write to him at:

Nick Kennedy
300 South Vancouver St.
Russellville, AR  72801

There is one other very common way to transfer a file between any two
computers, and that is to use a null modem cable or two modems. Whenever you
call a BBS with your modem and download a file, you are transfering a file
from one computer (whether it be a PC or Mac or ST) to another.

There are thousands of public domain and shareware Atari 8-bit programs
available for download from BBSs and online services. Download these files
to your PC using whatever DOS or Windows based terminal software you normally
used (that's most likely how you obtained this copy of PC Xformer 2.0)

Once the file is on your PC, copy it to the same directory that you run
PC Xformer 2.0 from. Then specify the file on the XF2 command line as the
second file. For example, let's say you downloaded a file called BUDGET.BAS.
Typing this:

XF2 DOS25.XFD BUDGET.BAS

causes PC Xformer 2.0 to boot up using DOS25.XFD as drive D1:, and the file
BUDGET.BAS will appear as the only file on drive D2:. Then using DOS 2.5
(or any other Atari DOS) copy the file from D2: to D1: so that it is now
on a virtual disk. You want to eventually copy all your Atari 8-bit files into
virtual disk image files.

PC Xformer 2.0 allows for up to 8 files to be specified on the XF2 command
line. The first file MUST be a virtual disk, since it must contain a valid
DOS on it to install as drive D1:. The remaining 7 files may either specify
other virtual disk files, or MS-DOS files which will automatically appear
as virtual disks as described above.

Note that by default DOS 2.5 will only access 2 disk drives (D1: and D2:).
See you DOS manual on how to expand that, or use a different DOS (such as
MyDOS 4.5) which supports up to 8 drives.

Note that there is one other method to transfer 8-bit files to the PC. It
seems that the PC's 5.25 inch floppy disk drive actually CAN read Atari disks
if they are formatted double density and you run a special utility. I have not
seen this work reliably, but people claim it works. So try it out if you can.

And now you are set to run PC Xformer 2.0 to your heart's content! But don't
stop reading yet.


PC Xformer 3.0: 32-bit Atari 130XE emulator
-------------------------------------------

Currently in the works and available later this summer is PC Xformer 3.0,
an upgrade from PC Xformer that features a 32-bit emulator that supports
emulation of the 800XL, 65XE, and 130XE computers. The 32-bit code makes it
faster than PC Xformer 2.0, and thus is capable of handling player missile
graphics collision detection, sound, and other new features.

The PC Xformer 3.0 upgrade costs $29.95 and will be available both directly
from Branch Always Software and through your favorite Atari dealer.

To order the PC Xformer 3.0 upgrade directly from us, send a personal check
or money order (made out to Branch Always Software for $34.95 U.S. to cover
shipping costs) to:

Branch Always Software
14150 N.E. 20th Street
Suite 302
Bellevue, WA  98007
U.S.A.

or include your VISA or Mastercard number, expiry date, and the name as it
appears on the card and your card will be charged $34.95.


Future versions of Xformer for other computers
----------------------------------------------

Most computers now on the market use 32-bit processors such as the 386, 486,
Pentium, 68030, 68040, PowerPC, MIPS, Alpha, etc. 8 years ago when I first
started writing ST Xformer, the top of the line home computers were 16-bit
machines, such as 286 based ATs, or 68000 based Macintoshes and Ataris.

So all versions of Xformer up until now, including PC Xformer 2.0, have been
geared towards running on 16-bit machines. Rewriting things for a 32-bit
processor takes a bit of work, one of the reasons why I have not done the
68030 rewrite of ST Xformer for the Falcon. But starting with PC Xformer 3.0,
all new versions of Xformer will be 32-bit. With so many 32-bit machines to
choose from now, the question is what are people actually going to be using
and thus, what machines should Xformer be ported to?

PC Xformer 3.0 will obviously find a home with many PC people simple because
there are so many 386/486 type machines out there. Most of you will probably
be running PC Xformer 2.0 on a 386 or higher. But the same can't be said of
new machines like the Falcon and PowerPC since they are so new. Will people
use them in large enough numbers?

So, when you send in your letters describing the machine you are currently
using, also place your vote for what machine you might plan to buy in the
future and would like to see a version of Xformer for. Below is a list of
various new 32-bit machines with various OS combinations, but feel free
to add other machines to your list. Please vote for one or more of these
systems, and I'll publish the results in our next newsletter. Your voting
will help decide what new versions of Xformer will be developed in the future.

    - 386/486/Pentium running Chicago
    - 386/486/Pentium running Windows NT
    - 68030/68040 Mac running System 7.x
    - PowerPC Mac running System 7.x
    - PowerPC IBM running Windows NT
    - MIPS R4000 running Windows NT
    - DEC Alpha running Windows NT
    - 68030 Atari TT running GEM/TOS
    - 68030 Atari Falcon running GEM/TOS


Report bugs!
------------

If while using PC Xformer 2.0 you come across anything out of the ordinary,
such as some Atari 400/800 program that does not run properly, a keyboard
that doesn't work properly, or even a typo in this document, please let me
know about it. Don't assume somebody else will. If possible, include a disk
contaning the software that does not work.

If you don't like the way I explained something in this document, let me know
what part and what is confusing about it and how I can make it clearer.

Report bugs and suggestions by mail directly to me at this address:

Darek Mihocka, c/o
Branch Always Software
14150 N.E. 20th Street
Suite 302
Bellevue, WA  98007
U.S.A.

or fax me at 206-885-5893. I can also be reached by GEnie email as BRASOFT,
and on Compuserve as 73657,2714.



Well thank you for reading through this and enjoy using PC Xformer 2.0. Don't
forget to write! And remember, I frequently travel to Atari shows and visit
Atari user groups around the country, so if you have a show or meeting
scheduled and would like to arrange for a demonstration of either Gemulator or
PC Xformer, please contact me.


Darek Mihocka, owner of Branch Always Software