Their story: Effect, a brief history in time
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- Tronic
This is not a formal chronicle, nor an attempt at perfect historical accuracy, but rather a heartfelt recollection, stitched...
zeST, the open source FPGA re-creation of the Atari ST was updated today with several new features and fixes.
The major new features are a 50 MHz mode for a much faster ST and MIDI support. Other improvements include shifter and MFP fixes as well as improvements to the UI.
ZyncBerry, one of several boards supported by zeST
🔗 Read the full release-update on Zerkmans zeST site
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- Written by: evldhs
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When looking at the Avena listings on Pouet or Demozoo one could be forgiven for thinking the crew is more or less inactive compared to its late 1990s heyday.
In fact, nothing can be further from the truth and I wanted to draw Atariscne's attention to some of the latest under-the-radar content. Of course, we all remember Tat from landmark Falcon productions such as Sonolumineszenz or more recently the goalpost moving 44 (chapeau Tat!). In between his day job at Sony's elite advanced technology group Tat has been actively working on a number of Atari projects.
News and deep technical dives on these projects is available on what appears to be an anonymous blog, but is actually a gold mine of "the good stuff": results of his bleeding edge experiments.
Here are some particularly juicy articles which we'd like to draw your attention to:
A massive project Tat has been working on is an add-on for the Hatari emulator which adds features similar to the old Steem debugger. Sadly not officially part of Hatari, the debugger is almost a requirement for fixing certain bugs when developing under Hatari.
As someone who is fond of looking at disassemblies of other people's YM drivers, this is a very good starting point for understanding what you may see in Easy Rider when looking at YM drivers. It could even be some inspiration for writing your own!
I can say from personal experience that these notes describe 90% of the challenges you face if you want to create a multi-part 4K demo with music on the ST, or any platform. Tat takes things to another level though, in particular with his knowledge of packing.
Here Tat shares more of his coding articles and source code, including Falcon must-see Sonolumineszenz.
A covid lockdown project Tat worked on after being inspired by some chats with Damo and I. This is really low-level information and explains how and why you can get the YM and 68K to synchronise on a cycle level, essential for the sync square effect.
The fashions in ST demos have unfortunately returned to minimising CPU time used for the music. Using a dump of register writes to the soundchip might be a way to claw back some precious CPU cycles. On the other hand, such a register dump can be quite big. Tat presents a novel solution to this problem.
gwEm/PHF June 2025
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- Written by: gwEm
A huge project of re-creating the Atari Falcon custom chips has been going on for a while. Today Mikro with crew (including the veteran ST customchip decapper Ijor) released a presentation of the work done so far. For a noob like the article author this seems like black magic and absolutely impossible, truly fascinating!
The process of decapping and delayering the chips together with making very high-resolution photograps is quite expensive, and so far Mikro have funded the entire operation. Now it's possible to help the project by donating, which in the long run could help reproduce the Falcon chips to repair broken computers and building new ones from newly manufacturered motherboards.
Lowres photograph of a decapped Atari Falcon Videl custom chip
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- Written by: evldhs
As reported before, Rajah Lone's P2SM sprite editing tool is in development. Recently another update was published:
Changes in 1.3F version:
add: encapsulate several images in one GIF as containor.
mod: preference ‘Save’ moved from menu to new button in preferences window.
add: in the menu: ‘Open tools folder’ (if AVSERVER is available).
mod: images list export parameters moved to Tool attributes panel.
add: images list export new method: append to selected file (copy to clipboard method still available).
add: store tools attributes choices in preferences file (except Surfaces which is specific image setting).
fix: correct local variables in load GIF function.
Along with the progress we find a nice video explaining the features and use cases of the tool.
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- Written by: 505
An remake of the Atari Transputer Workstation was recently announced and sold out very quickly. This device seems to be a major inspiration for many as proven by at least two highly active forum threads in renowned Atari internet sources:
ATW800/2 owners thread on atari-forum.com (English)
ATW800/2 user thread on atari-home.de (German)
For the interested - Enjoy! :-)
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- Written by: 505
The cross platform Atari ST, Mega ST, STe, Mega STe, TT and Falcon emulator Hatari is out in version 2.6.0.
Hatari 2.6.0 emulating a Falcon 060
Snapped from the Hatari 2.6.0 release notes:
Emulation improvements:
- 030+MMU:
- Workaround to correct prefetch data after bus errors
- DSP:
- Fix: JMP can also form a long interrupt instruction
- VME/SCU:
- TT / MegaSTE SCU registers and interrupts implemented
- Falcon Videl:
- Refresh rate of monochrome monitor is now correctly detected with 71 Hz
- MegaSTE:
- Add support for CPU Freq / Cache control at $FF8E21 when running in cycle accurate mode. This gives cycle exact memory accesses when running at 16 MHz, as well as emulation of the external 16 KB cache
- SCSI:
- Fix REQUEST SENSE for SCSI v2
- Serial Ports:
- Update values of DCD and CTS signals for the RS232 port connected to the MFP (as reported by the underlying OS)
- Add support for using TCCLK as RTxCB clock for the Atari TT's SCC
- Video:
- Improve support for 4 pixel hardscroll by stopping shifter with $FF8260=3. Also handle $FF8261.
- MFP:
- Fix counter when timer is stopped/restarted while counting from 1 to 0
Emulator improvements:
- SDL-GUI (and config options):
- Improvements to GUI font characters
- Add separate option for enabling/disabling >=030 CPU data cache
- Fix: file selector exit with keyboard
- Windows:
- Open console window for error and help output, so that Windows users can actually see them
- Keyboard / TOS localization:
- Symbolic key mapping improved for different TOS language versions
- Made it possible to use a mapping file with fallback to scancode mapping
- New "--fast-forward-key-repeat" option for key repeat
- (EmuTOS v1.4) Catalan country code support
- Memory snapshots:
- Fix: re/store all relevant YM2149 & MMU state variables
- Joysticks:
- Fix: segfault with negative joystick indexes
- GEMDOS HD:
- Fix: Fattrib() call on a directory
- Fix: Return correct attrib for volume labels in FsFirst()
- Fix: Fsnext() calls with DTAs having different attribs, when DTA is not from preceding Fsfirst() but earlier one
- Fix: Handle additional '*' chars at end of file mask
- Fix: Dfree() total/free on really large disk, free on Mac/BSD
- SCC:
- Fix: invalid channel B file close on uninit
- SCSI:
- Add CLI + config file option for (per ID) SCSI version
- Command FIFO:
- Fix crash when FIFO gets command right at Hatari start
- Debugger:
- Fix: DSP RESET instruction tracing
- Similarly to Atari program symbols override, load TOS symbols on TOS load, if autoloading is enabled and .sym file is present
- Add "find" command for searching CPU memory contents
- Add "struct" command to better show contents of program's structures
- Variable & debug symbol names can be given directly also to load, save, memwrite and register commands in addition to numeric values
- File name completion for commands having optional file name args
- Symbol name completion for "loadbin", "savebin" & "dspsymbols" commands
- Align "memdump" character representation also when line is not full
- Show also non-ASCII Atari chars in debugger memory content output
- Add 'c' (character) argument type support for "memwrite" command
- CPU disassembly shows resulting relative branch addresses
- "dspreg" command shows also stack contents
- When disassembling, translate logical addresses to physical ones if MMU is enabled
- Tracing:
- GEMDOS Dsetpath() + Frename() calls included to "os_base" traces
- PC value added to more traces
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- Written by: evldhs
GEMTOS 2025 made it possible. No more words needed.
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- Written by: 505
rmac, the assembler for all Ataris, supporting 68k, DSP 56k, 6502 and Jaguar chips has just been updated.
Changes in version 2.4.3 (copy/pasted from the release notice)
- Harden movem/fmovem parsing by checking the whole line has been parsed
- Promote “missing .endifs” warning to error
-sswitch now warns about potential optimisations when +o0 to +o9 optimisation switches are disabled- Line numbers of errors inside macros are now reported precisely
- Switched macro error reporting to save the line number during macro expansion
- Introduced a symbol named
_RMAC_that contains the version number in BCD format in order to be detectable during assembly time - Added HiSoft line number format when outputting ST .prg executables and -g is enabled
- Jaguar OP: Fix XPOS masking
- BSD stabs output code cleanup, adding custom word swap commands for ELF
- Fixed
+Oallcorrupting branch instructions - Fixed mingw build
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- Written by: evldhs
Warning! This was expected to be a long text, and so it turned out as such. If you’re trying to read this in one go, then a large mug of your favourite beverage may be recommended, along with the optimum most comfortable and least disturbed sitting position. Anyway, enjoy!
The long and winding story of CiH’s Falcon and some of the places it has been to.
Preamble:- Once upon a time, back in 1992, there were a lot of excited words poured out about a new and transformative computer coming from Atari. This was the near mythical Atari Falcon 030. Quite a lot of these words came from me, as the Maggie Diskmag editor cheerleader.
The Falcon 030 was Atari’s attempt to bring the next generation of home computing to life after the long saga of the ST series. The new buzzword, multimedia, was bandied about freely, unironically. There was a lot of excited near magical thinking about the specification of such a wunder-machine. As we all realise now, it required some serious cognitive input from the very best people to get the most from it. Also that there was the looming tsunami of beige commodity Wintel boxes, crashing down and swamping all hopes and dreams of a long happy commercial lifespan for the Falcon.
Some of the advertising from Atari was a bit off and hard to understand.
Still, this article is not for regrets and recriminations, but is the story of one long-lived bird in particular.
Mine…
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- Written by: CiH
The legendary US-based company Wizztronics is stepping forward in making an Atari Falcon rebuild.
"The entire team that Wizztronics is dedicated to getting this project done. We will release information as to the progress when it becomes available, we thank you for your patience.
Steve Cohen CEO"
Apparently the layout is progressing.
🔗 Read more on Wizztronic's Atari Falcon rebuild page
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- Written by: 505
There are some news regarding upcoming Sillyventure Sommer Edition: A little invitro was released on Atari 8-Bit created by Foster and PPS.
🔗 Download and comment the SV 2025 SE invitro by Foster and PPS on Demozoo
🔗 Download and comment the SV 2025 SE invitro by Foster and PPS on Pouet
Additionally, the compo rules have been updated taking into account the handling of AI generated content and other bits. You can read the new compo rules on the SV compo pages.
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- Written by: 505
Olivier Landemarre has published MyAES 0.99 Beta 8.
with following changes:
Bug fix:
- Snapshot under video format X1R5G5B5 wrong color fixed
- Some debug message on screen could appear during snapshot removed
- Fix appl_control(APC_TOP)
- Some edit field could be corrupted (1 char too far)
- Object with SHADOW flag was 1 pixel too large
- Fix some popup and object redraw with buggy object tree in Papyrus 5
- Fix MU_TIMER that have 20ms too much if value request was different of 0
Improvement:
- MU_TIMER enhancement at the level of other modern AES
- Remove uneed bitmap format conversion that not exist
- Better display of popup
- Add new message for application list update at request (throw appl_control) to not all the time update list for nothing (interesting for task bar like)
- Update Yopla for new feature just above.
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- Written by: 505
Not to be overlooked: P01/Ribbon strikes back on Atari ST with this "dot record" released at recent Outline, accompanied by a stomping Dubmood track. Record or not? Judge yourself!
P01 has surprised on Atari ST before at Outline parties, particularly with these amazing zoom and voxel bootsectors roughly a decade ago. Great to have him back on Atari!
🔗 Download and comment Ellipsis on Pouet
🔗 Download and comment Ellipsis on Demozoo
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- Written by: 505
This time we move our spotlight over to someone who's work is only know by far too few people in the Atari scene. He deconstructed, reengineered, documented and gathered schematics and information for a lot of hardware for our beloved 16 bit systems - so that it ultimately is preserved and can be reconstructed by people like us. The person we are talking about here is...
Olivier Gossuin.
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- Written by: tIn
Read more: In the spotlight: Réalisations Olivier - a hardware (re)engineer par excellence
Lately two projects have emerged on the web in an attempt to bring world famous Doom game onto the ST. So far we had been given a few great FPS in the likes of Substation in 1995 and above all Wolfenstein 3D in 2025. In 2021 the new challenger was called Dread and a great playable demo was even released before the game gradually vanished for some reason. The project later changed name/background and now calls itselft Grind but this time the ST version has disappeared...
In the meantime our friend AtariCrypt has written a couple of article about these new projects so let's try to sum things up:
1. First there is STDoom. Developped by Jonas Eschenburg who earlier brought us an ambitious voxel engine, this port uses the original sources. A few previews later what we have is something that looks like Doom yet requires an accelerated ST (Mega STe in the videos right below) but we can still dream of a final version running on a standard ST or STe.
2. The second project is called Doom8088 and is a port from the PC low spec version coded by a guy named Frenkel. It runs on standard STs even though much still has to be done before final version. Yet it also looks promising!
Want to read more about these two then go to AtariCrypt to learn more about STDoom and Doom8088. Now let's cross fingers and see what happens in the next few months!
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- Written by: sts
The open source TOS alternative, EmuTOS, was released in version 1.4 a few hours ago.
Major changes in EmuTOS 1.4: - General: Full support for true-color modes on the Falcon (and on other hardware and emulators that support true-color) - General: New Catalan translation - BIOS: IDE driver support for LBA48 and CHS addressing - ARAnyM ROM is now 1024 KB (see readme-aranym.txt) - Amiga: Support for NTSC machines Other changes: - BIOS: Improved serial port drivers - EmuDesk: Floppy formatting dialog supports 800K format - Many minor and/or obscure bugs have been fixed
EmTOS v1.4 running in Falcon truecolour mode
💾 Download EmuTOS at Sourceforge
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- Written by: evldhs
I’m going to explain how I rip SNDH music files from intros and demos using Steem Debug. This isn’t intended as a definitive or advanced guide, but rather a practical walkthrough that should help you get started — and give you a foundation to build on.
The SNDH Archive is always on the lookout for new rips, so if you’ve got the curiosity and a bit of patience, you can definitely contribute. I don’t consider myself an expert, but this guide is focused purely on the task of ripping SNDH files directly from memory.
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- Written by: Tronic
Read more: Back to Basics: Ripping SNDH tunes using Steem Debug
As we've slightly hinted about over the past weekend, Outline 2025 demo party took place.
Now all the ST/e-chiptunes from the music compo as well as the winning demo soundtrack is available in SNDH-format. Check them out in the player below, bear in mind that the 505 track is using many new features and even the LMC1992 chip of STe-machines which is not supported in the web player (yet).
🔗 Check out all Outline 2025 releases at Demozoo
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- Written by: evldhs
Rich Whitehouse has published the new version 1.19 of his Jaguar emulator BigPEmu.
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- Written by: 505
Robson, well-known for his amazing case modding skills, has published a collection of information on his latest finding: a tower created by German company Tetra GmbH (which still exists today). The tower was marketed as Manhatten tower in the 90s as a replacement for the ST/TT case and fitted all kinds of extensions, similar to the Lighthouse Tower, the Rocke Tower or the Digital Data Deicke (DDD) cases.
Robson's website contains detailed information, photos and screenshots as well as many other great Atari topics. It's highly recommended to have a closer look at the whole website.
🔗 Original thread on Atari-forum.com
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- Written by: 505
