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Matthew Preston puts his trouble-shooting hat on
Welcome, this
month let's take a look at trouble-shooting your
emulator. Unfortunately as good as emulators
are, you may find that some software will just
not run, it is the case with all emulators,
even commercial ones costing hundreds of pounds.
It is also true to say that a great deal
of problems are down to human error, for example
can you remember if the software you are trying
to use needs BASIC on or off?
I will not be
able to cover every piece of software in my
collection here, but I will cover most of the
common problems that you will come across setting
up and using your emulation software.
Initial setting up Most of you will
have a working emulator by now, if you haven't,
one of the early problems you may encounter
is a corrupted ROM file. If you have made
a ROM file from your own Atari - as I showed in
the last article - then you should have little
problem at all in replacing a corrupted ROM
file and trying again. However if you
have borrowed a ROM from another emulator then
it may not work, not all ROMs on the internet
are complete and may have been patched in some
way by the author. You can check your
ROM in Atari800WinPLus by clicking on the
Info button in the ROM selection menu.
![[Screen-shot: ROM Information dialog]](images/rominfo.gif)
This will check
the ROM and let you know exactly what it is,
if it does not match the correct profile then
the emulator will tell you.
All emulators
use some kind of batch file in order to run,
this contains your preferences for running the
software. If this becomes corrupted then
your emulator will not run either. You
may have to write the file again by hand with
a text editor or reset the emulator.
![[Screen-shot: Checking memory settings within Atari800WinPLus]](images/reset.gif)
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Checking
memory settings within Atari800WinPLus.
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![[Screen-shot: Confirming your action]](images/areusure.gif)
You get a second
chance, after you reset you will have to re-enter
where the ROMs are and any other preferences
you may have.
All being well
your Atari should at least boot into BASIC,
or self test.
Using virtual disks and DOS As explained
in an earlier article, virtual disks are an exact
copy of an original Atari disk, some include
additional headers and other information. What
is important to know is that every emulator
will only work with certain types of virtual
disk; this is because emulators developed over
time and there is no true standard format. For
example you may find files with extenders such
as '.atr' '.xfd' '.dcm' '.atr.gz'
'.atz' or '.xfz'. The first
three are the common ones; the last three being
zipped formats of virtual disks. Later
emulators usually recognise more than one type,
in fact Atari800WinPLus will accept all of them.
Now you are sure which virtual disk to
use, how big is the file? Single density
disks will be 91 KB, Enhanced density will be
131 KB. Early emulators will not understand
double density virtual disks at all.
When booting
into a DOS environment remember to have BASIC
switched on in your emulator if you need it.
This may sound obvious, but remember the
old days loading cassettes, when you forgot
to press [Option] and it crashed halfway through
loading. The same can happen here, without
BASIC you will only get the DOS menu just as
a real Atari.
When accessing
other virtual disks from within your emulator,
remember to check that it is compatible with
the DOS you are using. Not all versions of DOS are compatible
with each other, so you may have to convert the
disks within the emulator. Most though
are in DOS 2.5 or MyDOS format.
Have you got
enough memory? To have a DOS 2.5
disk loaded, you needed 128 KB of RAM in a real
Atari, the same is true in an emulator. Check
your settings to see what is loaded.
![[Screen-shot: Setting your memory size]](images/memory.gif)
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Checking memory
settings within Atari800WinPLus.
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Is the software
you have loaded compatible with European Ataris?
Eh?
Not all games
will work at the correct speed when set to a
PAL clock, the reason for this is because of
the timing differences between the NTSC and
PAL television systems. Software that
did not check for timing values and was preset
in software will appear to run very slowly on
the PAL systems. If you have problems running
a demo or game in your emulator try changing
the video system settings in your emulator.
![[Screen-shot: Selecting a video format in Atari800WinPLus]](images/video.gif)
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Selecting a video
format in Atari800WinPLus.
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That covers most
of the common problems; others may be specific
to your emulator. Always refer to the
help files that came with your emulator they
may contain last minute information, check the
web site of the author as there may be an update.
I keep several versions of my emulators;
sometimes software will run on an earlier emulator,
you just have to keep trying. Emulators
are a compromise; you can't beat the real thing!
Remember if you
are still having real problems then try the
MyAtari forum, someone will be able to help.
m.preston@myatari.co.uk
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