Overview

Contents of this document:

• System requirements
• Emulated system components
• Running STonX
• The VDI Driver for X
• Using disk files

• A (preferably fast) computer with a Unix-ish operating system
• X11R5 or X11R6 (older releases haven't been tested)
• Approximately 6MB harddisk space if you're going to compile it yourself, or 2MB if you're using the precompiled binaries (set "limit coredumpsize 0"!)
• At least 8 MB physical memory, recommended are 16-24MB (especially if you're going to compile STonX!)
• A color or monochrome X display, preferably ":0.0" of the machine you run STonX on
• A TOS 2.06 image file

• MC68000 CPU
• ST Shifter (with STe palette, i.e. 4096 colours) in all 3 modes (on a color display; monochrome displays work only with ST-High)
• MFP (partly, i.e. just well enough to make TOS 2.06 run)
• IKBD (partly; no joystick support and no CPU->IKBD commands)
• Mega ST(e) clock chip (with bugs)
• BIOS-Level disk routines (see Using disk files)
• 4 or 14MB ST RAM

-q

Be Quiet - do not output warnings or debugging messages of any kind

-disk <X>:<File>

Map a disk image called File to BIOS drive X:. For example,

-disk A:Disk1

maps the disk image named Disk1 to BIOS drive A:. The default is to map Diskfile in the current directory to A:. See also Using disk files.

-color|-mono

Selects the default "monitor type" to boot with. You can't switch between monochrome and color at run time (yet). The default is -mono.

-usec <X>

Set the base timer interval to X microseconds. On systems where the given interval is not supported, it is automatically scaled to the closest possible interval. However, STonX will use the given interval to calculate the VBL and Timer-C frequencies reported at startup time, so these may not always be correct. The default value is 10000 microseconds (10ms).

-vbl <X>

Set the number of base timer interrupts per VBL to X. The default value is 4, which results in a 25Hz VBL interrupt. For games, set this so that the VBL runs at 50 or more Hz!

-timer-c <X>

Set the number of base timer interrupts per Timer-C interrupt to X. The default is 1, meaning that Timer-C runs at 100Hz (which is half as much as in the ST, so you will have to multiply the measured times for benchmarks etc. running with the emulator by 2 to obtain the real time used).

-refresh <X>

Set the number of VBL interrupts for one screen update to X. The default value is 2. Decrease this and/or the -vbl argument to get less jerky screen updates.

-vdi

Use the VDI driver for X. Note that this will not work with -color!. See also The VDI Driver for X.

Note that the "Main Window" is still updated if you move your mouse cursor into it. This is a feature I call "dual mode", and helps looking at output from unimplemented VDI functions such as the alpha mode commands (the desktop uses these to "Show" files). This will be removed in future releases, because it limits the VDI driver to the ST's graphics capabilities, while it should ideally use the full color and resolution of your X display.

In order to use the VDI driver, you need to install the Atari ST system fonts into a directory visible for your X server. The Makefile tries to do this, but this will not work e.g. for X Terminals. This results in typical X error messages during the font installation:

X Error of failed request:  BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation)
  Major opcode of failed request:  51 (X_SetFontPath)
  Value in failed request:  0x7
  Serial number of failed request:  4
  Current serial number in output stream:  6

1. Find out where your X server looks for fonts and copy the *.pcf files from the data subdirectory there. We will assume that the directory /usr/lib/X11/ncd/fonts/pcf/misc/ is world-writable and in the font path (check with xset q):

    cp data/*.pcf /usr/lib/X11/ncd/fonts/pcf/misc

2. Update the fonts.* files using mkfontdir:

    mkfontdir /usr/lib/X11/ncd/fonts/pcf/misc

If the Makefile succeeded in installing the fonts in the data subdirectory of the STonX build directory (which we will assume is called /home/nino/STonX), you will have to add the following lines to your ~/.xinitrc:

    xset fp+ /home/nino/STonX/data
    xset fp rehash

    cp /dev/fd0 Diskfile

    stonx -disk A:Diskfile -disk C:EmptyHarddisk

You can also use the "raw" disk device on some Unix systems to access disks directly. For example, on Suns with disk drives this can be done with the following argument to STonX:

    stonx -disk A:/dev/rfd0