SOME COMMON PROBLEMS/FAQ Q. Where can I get coolz warez romz? A. Go away. Q. What's an Atari? How do I use it? What are disks? How do I use those? What kind of DOS is this? etc etc. A. Well, I can't teach folks everything about an Atari 8-bit computer here, but luckily there are some guidelines on the net. Try Ivo Van Poorten's page at: http://pmwww.cs.vu.nl/home/ipoorten/Atari.8bit.Homepage/index.html Q. I get something about MFC.DLL or MSVCRT.DLL not found. A. This should be rare (these are common DLLs used by many Microsoft products, and so are often already installed). However if you see this problem download this file: http://activex.microsoft.com/controls/vc/mfc42.cab. If you have Internet Explorer it can install it automatically. If you don't, get the Powertoys Cab Viewer at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/downloads/contents/powertoys/w95cabview/default.asp and install it (it's quite small and useful besides). Not including these files by default makes Atari800win much smaller and easier to download for the majority of people who already have them. This should never happen in Win98. Q. How about not found on DINPUT.DLL, DDRAW.DLL, DSOUND.DLL? A. You do not have DirectX installed correctly. Don't even think of e-mailing me telling me you do (as often happens). I repeat, you do not have it installed correctly. Re-install DirectX 5.0 or higher if you have Win9X, or install Service Pack 3 or higher if you have NT 4.0. Q. In stretched DirectDraw windowed mode, my screen looks a little "fuzzy". A. Bone-head graphics card tricks. This is becoming more common on 2D/3D card combinations. Since I am asking it to stretch the bitmap to 2X original size, the card does foolish and unrequested things like bilinear filtering even though the source and destination surface are both 2D. Some cards allow you to turn this off, with others you will just have to use GDI mode, which always works correctly. Q. I can't use my joystick under NT. A. That's right, you can't. Can't use it anywhere else under NT either, right? Well there you go. There are some custom drivers that allow this, but they aren't DirectInput compatible. Wait for NT 5.0. Q. Why can't I save a game on a compressed (DCM, gzip) disk? A. Compressed disks are automatically inserted as read-only. If you want to save a game or write to a compressed disk, decompress it first and insert it as a regular ATR. Q. How do I get an EXE or COM file to work, one without a disk? A. A new feature in version 2.5 allows you to load these directly (use the Atari, Load EXE menu option). It will not work with all executables however. If it doesn't, use the method below: Copy the file to a directory on your hard disk without a lot of other files present. Assign an H: device to that directory by using the Atari/Hard disk menu. Boot the Atari with a floppy in D1:, then load the program from DOS using the H: device, ie "H1:PROGRAM.EXE". The usual load command in Atari DOS is "L". Q. What's a "BIN" file? A. It could be either an executable (as in the point above) or a cartridge. Try loading it from DOS first, if that works, it's a regular EXE, and you should rename it to EXE. If it works as a cartridge rename it as .ROM to make things easier next time around. Q. Why don't 5200 carts work in a 130XE/800XL/whatever, or vice versa? A. Because they were made not to do that originally. Q. It doesn't run at 100% Atari speed. A. At this point, any Pentium machine should be able to get 100% speed using a low res (320x240) video mode, possibly without sound depending on the sound card. If you are getting REALLY slow response, the most common problem is DirectX drivers that just aren't very good. There are some old video cards out there that just refuse to refresh the screen more than 30 times a second, and I'm trying for 50/60 times. Try setting refresh rate = 2 in the hardware menu (gives you 25/30 frames a second). This doesn't hurt the emulation, just updates the screen less frequently. Q. I have a 5Ghz Dominator Extreme system, and when I run full speed, it doesn't run 42 times Atari speed! What's with that? A. First, the priority of Atari800win is not to run as fast as possible, but to be as accurate as possible. Second, the most limiting factor in trying to run very fast as an Atari is screen updates. If you want to really crank the speed up, set your refresh rate to 5 or higher and THEN set to full speed. Q. My sound makes thumping noises. A. The emulator is running too slow to keep up with the sound buffer generation. I have seen this happen because of poor sound cards ("SoundBlaster compatible"), slow display hardware, or just plain slow computers. Anyway if you aren't running at 100% speed consistently sound will never be quite right. Q. My sound makes high pitched hum noises. A. Increase the "Pokey update divisor" on the Sound menu. This controls how many times sound is computed. If it is set to 1, the Atari computes sound up to 312 times every 1/50th of a second. Set to 2 this drops to 157, set to 3 it drops to 104, etc. The only adverse affect to increasing it is games like Berzerk will sound worse when using digital speech. The HIGHER your sample frequency, the LOWER you can set this value. Q. Program XXX doesn't work. A. Things to try: 1) Try it under a different OS/DOS combination. 2) Cold boot the emulator by hitting Shift-F5. 3) Make sure BASIC isn't inserted for games (unless they happen to be in Basic of course). 4) Perform appropriate incantations over computer. 5) Try booting a full disk image with the program on it. IMPORTANT: Some games require write access to the disk! (Alternate Reality for one). If a game isn't working, decompress the image and make sure you aren't using it off a CD-ROM, so you will have write access! Q. In 800x600 mode, I see strange and mysterious things at the edge of the screen. A. Atari800Win allows you to see the _complete_ overscan area when in 800x600 mode. Most folks with Atari computers never had a chance to see this; the average TV is nauseatingly clipped both vertically and horizontally (I see the light shining on a few of you who now realize you are missing about 30% of the screen area on TV broadcasts). Anyway, since it was very rare to see the overscan area, many programs make mistakes in this part of the screen. The designers figured nobody would see it anyway (or maybe they didn't see it themselves). Q. I have a laptop.... A. You're probably SOL. Laptops refresh their screens very slowly to conserve power (even when plugged in). This causes DirectDraw to pause for long periods when drawing the screen. GDI mode might even be faster. Laptops are very poor game machines, try it on a desktop machine. Q. I got a DirectSound/DirectPlay/DirectDraw error! Halp! A. When you get one of these, it may be just because your DirectX drivers don't support what you want to do - the particular video mode, sound options, etc. I took pains to try and make sure Atari800Win always backs out of these gracefully, so hopefully nobody will get a crash as a result. When a DirectX error appears, try whatever you were doing once more, if the same error appears, your drivers probably don't support that and you should revert to a different video mode/different sound settings. If you really believe you should be able to do whatever it is and it still doesn't work, e-mail me with the particulars (and don't forget to write down the error that appears in the dialog box). Q. The program says the Atari computer died! A. Yep, this happens. It basically means the Atari just tried to execute an instruction that doesn't exist on the computer. Most likely a real Atari would have locked up as well. A *common* cause of this is having BASIC resident with programs that don't like it, or vice versa. Another common cause is running on the wrong platform. Although it still can happen these days it is pretty rare that the emulator actually broke something that should run ok under the selected machine/OS. Q. Never mind that dialog box stuff, it just crashed, as in GPF. A. Atari800Win is extremely stable at this time. If a GPF occurs, please try the same operation again (after starting back up) and see if it is reproduceable. If so, hit ctrl-printscreen with the GPF dialog box up, and mail it to me. Q. Disaster! The program crashes when I start it and I can't get to the menu to reconfigure the disk drives! A. There is a menu option under "Misc" labeled "Clear all settings". Use that menu. Head the warning: only do this if you are really stuck, as it will clear every option you have set in Atari800Win and start over. But it should fix the problem in the process, you'll just have to re-enter you ROM locations etc. If you are completely unable to boot the emulator, it should ask you (after you kill it once) whether you want to clear your settings when starting up. Do so, and everything will be reset to defaults.
polki159