Part 3
Sinclair QL The QL (abbreviation for "Quantum Leap") was published in 1984 and featured a 68008 processor - a mixture between a 8 bit and a 32 bit cpu. Although the technical specs were interesting the QL was the first true and fatal failure of Sinclair. Today, there are still user groups and some companies which develop hardware extensions like a VGA graphic card. The QL emulator for the Atari ST/Falcon is called QLem and runs in ST medium and high res. QLem emulates a complete QL except the sound. Even the multitasking which was supported by the QL o.s. right from the start is emulated. There are no easy load routines via a file selector or a preferences dialog. That's why you will need some QL experiences or a QL manual to work with this emulator because the manual doesn't explain QL beginners how to load/save a program. I never owned a QL and so I couldn't test any programs. According to some sources the emulator is not perfect but compatible with a lot of programs. Future plans include sound support, higher resolutions and DSP support (!). Rating The Atari seems to be the greatest Sinclair emulation machine. QLem looks professional but is not recommended to beginners. An easy load routine or a short explanation in the manual would be useful. A second, older emulator exists. This emulator worked with a hardware extension but is not available anymore.
Atari 400/800/XL/XE These 8 bit computers were not as successfull as the C64 but they had technical specs which are even today remarkable: 256 colours, player-missile graphics (similar to the 64's sprites) and a programmable video chip. Darek Mihocka wrote the only XL emulator for the ST called XFormer. Development ceased with version 3.0 which was never officially released. I only have access to v2.55 which is not Falcon compatible.
The author now only develops the PC version of XFormer and the Gemulator so there will be no future versions for the Atari. However, programmers can ask for the source code. Rating Better than the C64 emulator but couldn't beat the Sinclair emulators (except Speccy).
TRS-80 (The TRS-80 emulator for the Atari ST is called 2nd Life and was reviewed in Atari Times issue 9) Game Boy [Godboy is given another full review this issue - Editor] The most successfull handheld game ever, with a b/w LCD display and stereo sound.
Rating I guess that most people would have been more confident with God-Boy if the first release game would be "Super Mario Land", "Castlevania" or another Game Boy-only game. The two releases are already available in a better quality for the Atari (except the sound). But on the other side there's now the possibility to have Mario on your Falcon which was impossible one year ago. So let's wait for the next few releases...
Other emulators To complete the emulators for the ST part of this article here are some other emulators. Amiga PC1000 is an Amiga emulator - that's what the manual says. I have doubts that this a real emulator because it requires two disk drives (the second one is used as a Amiga drive which is impossible!) and a blitter which was announced but not integrated in any ST in 1986 - the year of this programs release. The manual claims that the virtual Amiga is faster than a real one. If you are looking for a real Amiga emulator install Linux and UAE. Amiga PC1000 was published in a German PD library. I haven't found it on a FTP server. Mac-Bongo is the name of a Mac-PD emulator. It was published in a German PD library and is rumoured to be a pirate copy of the commercial Aladin emulator. Anyway, it is too old to run modern Mac applications. The CP/M emulator is good but the system is old and was replaced by MS-DOS. In the early days of the ST this emulator was used to create new "ST" software. There were advertisements (in Germany at least) like "Wordstar and Microsoft Word for the Atari ST". These were not real ST versions - they had only converted these CP/M programs to a 3,5" disk and added the emulator so that these programs could run. The emulator was only mentioned at the end of the article. Although this was a very clever idea they were not very successfull. The CP/M emulator was forgotten with the first good Atari text editors (SM-Text 520, 1st Word). Screen emulators try to emulate another resolution e.g. the high resolution on a colour monitor. These emulators have become less important since the release of the Falcon 030. Well known examples include Sebra and Emula. Sometimes you will find Hoax emulators. These are not full emulators and are usually written to make fun of lesser machines! There is a hoax emulator for the C64 which lets you type in and list programs but when try to run them the program displays "Syntax Error". A good one is the MS-DOS emulator by Barry Lancaster: This program imitates a DOS PC and there are a lot of secret commands to find. The second program you should watch is the Amiga Demo by TEX: This demo plays Amiga tracks (although only some integrated ones) and shows a picture of the Amiga program Sonix.
The lost emulators The first should have been a faster successor of FalconSpeed and exists! Some people have seen it working but the manufacturer refuses to publish it. There are very obscure and funny rumours why Sack electronics (the manufacturer) doesn't publish it: Technical ones, holiday ones and family ones. Several people have tried to convince him but they failed. Falcon GCR was announced in an early Falcon brochure together with much more interesting projects. I don't know much of this project but it could have been an emulator which uses the 512 KByte Mac roms and with colour support. It is unknown what Dave Small, the manufacturer of Spectre GCR, is doing now. A completion of this emulator is not likely.
Atari PC Emulator was shown several times at computer fairs by Atari. Although this emulator worked Atari decided not to publish it. The possible reason was that an emulator would have slowed down software production for the new ST computers. Emulators for the Atari 400/800/XL/XE The following emulator requires an original Atari 8-bit computer. Writting an emuator for a 8-bit machine is quite difficult because the low performance of the computer makes a good emulation of another cpu nearly impossible. Anyway, there was an attempt to emulate CP/M and MS-DOS with a 8-bit Atari. The ATR8000 was connected to the parallel port and was a complete CP/M computer - the Atari was only responsible for the input/output. Now there was also a MS-DOS card for the ATR8000 which allows to use MS-DOS (1.0 or 2.0) programs. But ATR and the extension card were so expensive that it failed like the other 8-bit PC emulators (remember the PC emulator for the Amstrad CPC?). The emulator was only sold a short time in the USA so there are perhaps still some ATR users there. Linux/Unix-Emulatoren You are a C coder and you would like to see a C64 or Amiga emulator on the ST? Get the source code of the portable emulators! Portable emulators are mainly written in Ansi-C and so the only task left to do are system specific drivers. You won't have to do much work and there are probably a lot ST users who would be very thankfull for a good C64 emulator!
UAE (http://www-users.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/~crux/uae.html):
VICE (http://stekt.oulu.fi/~jopi/vice/README_0100.html):
ColEm (http://freeflight.com/fms/ColEm/):
fMSX (http://www.freeflight.com/fms/MSX/):
vMAC (http://www.clearlight.com/~jagtech/vmac/index.htm): Last words Now we are at the end of this article and this is the part to sum up. Most of the emulators were too old or crap - or both. But there are usable emulators which allow you to use hundreds of interesting software programs. I have the impression that Atari programmers have forgotten the programming of emulators. So here is a little call for C/Assembler programmers: Try to write an emulator! There are dozens of text editors and graphic programs - you would get more attention for a good emulator. It is also a good way to get a shareware fee because you would have nearly no competing programs! Announced is a Pentium card for the Hades computer. I don't know if this is released yet - if not it will definetly come when the new PCI Atari clones are released: Centek 040/060 and ST Milan 2000 (project name). As you have read several times in tis article that old STs are too slow for great emulation projects - future emulators will at least require a Falcon or TT. Finally I would like to thank Ali Goukassian, chief editor of the ST-Computer/Atari Inside (a commercial German Atari magazine) who didn't have any objections against a translation.
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