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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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