A good command line Atari5200 (and Atari800XL) emulator does exist!

[unclet]

I discovered "Atari800WinPlus4.0" and it plays all the Atari 5200 games (except Pitfall, Wizard of Wor, Star Trek) ..... it also plays the Atari 800XL games and interfaces with my TV in fullscreen excellently.

I still need to see if I can get those three games working though.  They do come up and look great .... I just can not "start" the game....oh well.

Thing is ..... I could not figure out what the command line parameters were for this emulator.   It originally seemed like a windows only GUI application, however, I looked at the source code and found the following command line options were available:


-configure       Update Configuration File"
-config <file>   Specify Alternate Configuration File"

-atari           Emulate Atari 800"
-xl              Emulate Atari 800XL"
-xe              Emulate Atari 130XE"
-320xe           Emulate Atari 320XE (COMPY SHOP)"
-rambo           Emulate Atari 320XE (RAMBO)"
-5200            Emulate Atari 5200 Games System"

-nobasic         Turn off Atari BASIC ROM"
-basic           Turn on Atari BASIC ROM"

-pal             Enable PAL TV mode"
-ntsc            Enable NTSC TV mode"

-osa_rom <file>  Load OS A ROM from file"
-osb_rom <file>  Load OS B ROM from file"
-xlxe_rom <file> Load XL/XE ROM from file"
-5200_rom <file> Load 5200 ROM from file"
-basic_rom <fil> Load BASIC ROM from file"

-cart <file>     Install cartridge (raw or CART format)"
-run <file>      Run Atari executable file (COM, EXE, XEX)"

-state <file>    Load saved-state file"
-refresh <rate>  Specify screen refresh rate"

-nopatch         Don't patch SIO routine in OS"
-nopatchall      Don't patch OS at all, H: device won't work"

-a               Use OS A"
-b               Use OS B"

-c               Enable RAM between 0xc000 and 0xcfff in Atari 800"
-v               Show version/release number"


Anyway, I use the following command line parameters to launch games:

ATARI5200:    atari800win -5200 -ntsc -cart "D:\myGamePath\game.CAR"
ATARI800XL:  atari800win -xl -ntsc -run "D:\myGamePath\game.exe"


IMPORTANT NOTE: Originally my Atari 5200 game roms had an extension of "bin" (or "a52").   What you need to do is start each game in the Atari800Win emulator manually by going into the "File\Attach Cartridge" menu and selecting the bin (or a52) game file.  If the game is not considered a "true" cartridge file (ie: does not have specific cartridge header information included) then the emulator will ask you to select whether the game is a "One  chip 16KB 5200 cartridge" or "Two chip 16KB 5200 cartridge".   You can try either and see which one works.   Once you find which one works you can go into the "Misc\Convert" menu and select "ROM to CART" option.  This will allow you to convert a BIN (or a52) file to a cartridge (CAR) file by appending the correct header cartridge information to your file.  Dont worry, it will not overwrite your existing ROM file but will instead ask you to save it to a different file ..... just save it as extension CAR.    Once the file has been converted you can try to "attach" the cartridge (CAR) file via the menu and will now see that the emulator starts the game automatically.

Converting does not take long since the Atari5200 only has about 90+ games...... and the actual conversion is super quick.....

Anyway, thought I would inform everyone that a good Atari5200 emulator does exist...... enjoy!

[jcrouse]

I am not sure what your issue was with MESS but if possible and if you really want to play those couple of games you could always use MESS for just those games via a game specific INI file.

Just a reminder,
John

[unclet]

Only three games out of all 96 Atari 5200 games worked in MESS v103 ...... maybe other version of MESS would work better, but I am not upgrading versions .... too many other things configured and working now so not changing.

The "Jum52" emulator supported about 60+ games very well but did not allow fullscreen stretching for my TV, so it was not useable to me.   

The "Atari800WinPLus4.0" emulator supported 93 games which is very good.  I can play Pitfall on other consoles so that is not really a problem.  Actually the Atari800XL Pitfall game works fine on the "Atari800WinPlus4.0" emulator ... weird..... but it works.   Anyway, this means I can not play "Wizard of Wor" and "Star Trek".   I really do not care about Star tTrek at all .... but I wish I could play Wizrd of Wor.

[2600]

Now sit down as this may shock you, but....






... are you sitting?







You can have multiple versions of MESS installed in multiple directories.

I told you it was shocking.

[unclet]

funny ......  never thought of that ..... good thing I was sitting down when I read it   

I guess I am just tired of dealing with emulators since I finally finished configuring my last one.   Took me about 7 months to gather everything (games, snaps, etc...) and configure everything up properly.  I configured 21 emulators for 43 different consoles,etc.. 

I guess I could try the newer version of MESS if I get my second wind......  just to see if "Wizard of Wor" works ...... perhaps someone here can test it for me and let me know a version of MESS where it does work.....