for running from hard disk, gamestate saving, TOS 2.06, Falcon, TT compatibility
Dear visitor, gamer, before you accessing DL area would be good
to make it little more clear for yourself - how to use, so pls. read
diverse advices, explanations. I deal with this for over 14 years.
About 1600 games are examined, adapted. Developed diverse helping files
to make adapting process easier and faster, to make this more
compatible with diverse Atari ST and it's followers, diverse TOS
versions ...
First
thing to say is that bigger %-age of
Atari ST games, about 65 % uses floppy disk file access via TOS
functions. + lot of operations is performed via TOS function calls too
- like print on screen, reading input devices (keyboard, mouse,
joystick). TOS normally executes from ROM, version what is built in
machine (or upgraded to). End not all games work well or at all with
all TOS versions. Because it, and to make adapting games with TOS
version compatibility problems easier I took best TOS version for
gaming -
and it is 1.04, disassembled it, made some modifications, and made it
to run from RAM . So, it will be used instead built in TOS for big %-of
games. It does not take too much RAM, about 100 KB. And since min RAM
for hard disk gaming is 1 MB, for games needing 512 KB when run them
from floppy, except few cases, it does not increase min. RAM
requirement. Actually, there is in that 512 KB above RAM
reserved for game run space to save current state of machine
in moment of game start -
and it allows instant exit to Desktop from any game, and even something
better - saving game state, possible in any moment of game play.
And can continue from that point later, with couple mouse clicks.
It
is recommended to have clean RAM before game starting - what means:
avoid diverse ACC-essories, resident driver SW (usually starts from
AUTO folder), etc. Hard disk drivers: Earlier adaptations, before
Jan. 2012 work only with mine drivers, AHDI, and Seimet's Hddriver.
Later ones, where you can see file HAGA or HAGE, HAG2 in root folder of
game will work with any decent driver what works with by Atari ST
serial used AHDI FAT16 filesystem. And
keep some floppy disk in your floppy drive A, or in case of some new HW
floppy emulator (like Gotek) set some image for A - of course not such
one what contains valuable files. Important mostly for earlier
adaptations, from ~2015 it was tested for floppy access, and it was
removed.
File transfers between media with Atari partitions and some modern computer: This
is very useful thing. And actually with now cheap and very spread Flash
cards, diverse adapters for them for using with our old Ataris, then
USB readers for PC and other new computers it is really easy, and fast.
However, SW part, or better said compatibility of with Atari used
partitions with wide used FAT16 standard is special problem. In short:
FAT16 what TOS supports is not exactly same as widely used DOS FAT16.
But there is a way to make partitions compatible with both. I call it
TOS/DOS compatible partitions. Partitioner program is part of my
commercial driver package. So, when you attach such card to PC
(Win, Linux) or MAC will have access to partitions and can do diverse
transfers. I recommend to do it with Total Commander in case of Windows.
Saving
some disk space : as
you
may see, there are files D15R_*.FIC, then T14*.FIC, HAGA, HAGE, HAG2
... in many of adaptations. So, normal
is that we can save some disk space by storing them in some common DIR
and read from there. Support for it is in adapts since 2010, and
from then is in practically all. What to do : create DIR GAMEX on
partition C:
. Copy latest (and only them, not some old versions) files
called: D15R_HH4.FIC, D15R_F4.FIC, D15R_5H.FIC, D15R_5F.FIC,
D15RU.FIC, HAGA, HAGE, HAG2, T14AG.FIC, T14GG.FIC
in that DIR. Then may delete mentioned files from later (at 2010)
game's
directories. It may save several MBs in only 1 partition. If after that
game works not, you
may always copy back files from ZIP archive . Running in emulators: again, adapts. using GemDOS 0.15 core
(where files D15R_***.FIC are present) will work under Steem and Hatari
(not Saint), but only when real hard disk emulation is set. So, you
need latest Pasti with Steem and enable harddisk in Pasti settings. By
Hatari need to select ACSI (may IDE too, if have image with IDE
autoboot) image. For beginners is recommended to use prepared
images (with games and autoboot driver on) - see entry page for adapted games for details. fromhd.php And
to add here that different ones (D15R***.FIC) are needed for improved
TOS (by me, like 1.04i, 1.62i) - because file access to hard disk goes
via them, and only iTOS filesystem can access files from more efficient
and possibly larger partitions what iTOS can use, plus it can handle up
to 30 partitions, while regular TOS versions max 14 (any in range
1.00-4,04 ) .
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