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 NT4.
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. Win2K will do this for you however.

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.