Floppyshop 2/Floppyshop - 2.zip/Floppyshop - 2.iso/diskmags/5791-.end/dmg-5925/st_/emulator.st_/emulator.st_

Text File | 1998-10-24 | 7KB | 200 lines

<PICLOAD>EMULATOR.DAJ
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  What is an emulator?,  In simple terms it is one computer pretending  to   be
another,  The  most famouse of these would be the Spectrum Emulator,  You   can
emulate a Spectrum on just about any platform, the ATARI, Amiga and  IBM PC all
have the ability to run Spectrum software, I have to admit to  always pondering
as  to  the point of this?,  why use a state of the art  machine  to  play  old
technology games?.

  With the explosion of the PC market,  people who used to own ATARI   machines
are now turning to the various ATARI emulators to play old  classics long since
played but never forgotten.

 Indeed I own both an ATARI and a PC, I thought it would be nice to write  this
article  using  my favourite word processor (First Word) on my  PC  using   the
Gemulator96 to emulate a Tos206 ATARI.

  Most  people  have emulators to play games that are not  available  on  there
current machine,  unfortunatly the ATARI emulators fall a little short in  this
respect  as they are very GEM orientated and as we know,  GEM is far  too  slow
and boring for a decent game!,  Some will work of course,  but  ATARI Demos and
most commercial games will not.

  However  all  is not doom and gloom,  we all already know  that  our  beloved
ATARIs are not just for playing games,  Serious applications have no   problems
at all using Gemulator as the choice emulator, and Yes there are  choices for a
normal everyday PC user.


<PICSHOWD>128,073,192,125,000
                              GEMULATOR CLASSIC :

                 Is dos based and does not  support the joystick or hard drive,
                it would  seem  everything  has to  be run  from  floppy  disk,
                recently  released as  PD,probably because the authors realised
                it is pretty useless, Needs a TOS image or rom card.

<PICSHOWD>064,072,112,124,272
                              GEMULATOR96 DEMO :

 The  top package in  my opinion, runs from Windows 95 and and can
be used  as software  only, either  use a  tos image or if you own
magiC you can use that as your OS, supports full screen and indeed
works  faster with this,  can also be run in a window.

<PICSHOWD>000,072,048,126,000
                                GEMULATOR96 :

             The  full  version  supposedly  supports  sound  although I havn't
            managed to  get any, it also will not allow the use of a tos image,
            therefore you are  stuck with magiC or a rom card,  either of which
            is  pretty expensive.


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                                  TOSTOWIN :

 The only version I could find was in German,  but what this  Emulator
seems to do  is allow  you to  run an  ATARI program in a PC Window, I
could not  actualy run an ATARI desktop,  although  by far the fastest
Emulator I tried, it was just not good enough in my opinion.


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                                   OTHERS :

              There is, at the time of writing, at  least one  more Emulator in
             production for the PC, according to the spec' it sounds impressive
             but I  have read  enough spec'  sheets in my time to  know to take
             them with a pinch  of salt, seeing is believing?.


<PENCOLOR>1
 On trying all the above, I am now using the GEMULATOR DEMO, Yes even  over the
full  version,  I have the TOS 206 desktop and access to all my CD  drives  and
easy access to my CD,  For seriouse use I do not need sound or  joystick, I can
use First Word,  CAB, GFA Basic, Hisoft Basic2, C compilers  as well as Pascal,
every GEM application I have tried works just as it  would on any tos 206 ATARI
machine.

  I also get access to all three resolutions including super smooth high   res,
For me the High res emulation is one of the reasons for running the  Emulator.

  I  use  my PC for Internet access and I run my  own  WWW  page,   having  the
emulator  I can run ATARI Internet software and check to make  sure  the  pages
work  for other ATARIans,  the alternative would be to copy  all the  files  to
disk, take upstairs to the ATARI, Kick the kids off the  ST then check.

  As an ATARI programmer I can now start to add high resolution options  to  my
programs,  plus  now  have the ability to test them on various  tos   vesrions,
All  in  all  there  are plenty of reasons to  use  an  emulator  without  even
considering games?.

 STOS works on Gemulator, something the others could not manage, all  manner of
desktops have been tried and tested,  EASE,  NEODESK,  TERRADESK  and more have
all past with flying colours, Unfortunatly my all time  favourite desktop THING
would not access the PC hard drive?.

 NVDI works  and in High resolution on this svga monitor,  well you would think
you  where looking at a MAC,  Your PC does not use an AUTO Folder therefore you
can  quite  safely  make   one  for your  ATARI  emulator  to  use,  placing  a
replacement file selector or  NVDI or many other programs in there, or indeed a
selection of them all.

 Accesories can be placed in the root of your boot drive and accessed  like any
normal ST,  If you are an ex ATARIan and have a PC then this is a  must get, if
you  own  both  then like me,  you could still find  advantages  to   using  an
emulator such as Gemulator 96.

  Richard  Karsmaker of ST News and The famouse U.V.K.  range of  Virus  Killer
software   has  after selling up his ATARI stuff recently started  a  Gemulator
mailing   list  for  people to contribute there experiences  and  he  has  also
started  to   author a gemulator FAQ,A more unblinkered view by  Richard  would
have  maybe  seen a general PC- ATARI emulation FAQ and mailing  list,An  "alt"
newsgroup  is also in the planning stage.

<PENCOLOR>2
 Gemulator can be obtained from FaST club who can also supply the tos roms that
are needed to run the full version, Their number is 0115 9455250

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