Amiga Stella

Amiga Stella Screenshot

Stella is a freely distributed multi-platform Atari 2600 VCS emulator originally developed for Linux by Bradford W. Mott, and ported to the Amiga by Matthew Stroup. Stella allows you to enjoy all of your favorite 2600 games once again by emulating the 2600's hardware with software. Stella is written in C++, which allows it to be ported to other operating systems and architectures. Since its original release Stella has been ported to AcornOS, AmigaOS, DOS, FreeBSD, IRIX, Linux, MacOS, OpenStep, OS/2, Unix, and Windows.

If you are having problems with Stella please visit the home page and make sure you're running the latest release before sending mail. There are versions of Stella for Linux, DOS, OS/2, Power Macs, Unix/X, Windows, and now Amiga.

Features:

• Compiled for 68060 for 15% speed improvement over 68020 version
• High speed emulation using optimized C++ code
• Includes several "homebrew" games for the Atari 2600
• Supports high quality sound emulation using Ron Fries' TIA Sound Emulation code
• Emulates the Atari 2600 Joystick Controllers using Amiga joysticks
• Emulates the Atari 2600 Keyboard Controllers using the keyboard
• Emulates one Atari 2600 Paddle Controller using the Amiga's mouse
• Emulates the Atari 2600 Driving Controllers Amiga joysticks
• Emulates the CBS Booster-Grip Controller using two-button joysticks
• Supports four REAL Atari 2600 Paddle Controllers using the Amiga's joystick/mouse ports
• Supports cartridges using Atari's standard 2K and 4K format
• Supports cartridges using Atari's 8K, 16K, and 32K bank-switching schemes
• Supports cartridges using Activision's 8K bank-switching scheme (Robot Tank and Decathlon)
• Supports cartridges using CBS Electronics' 12K bank-switching scheme
• Supports cartridges using Chris Wilkson's Megacart 128K bank-switching scheme
• Supports cartridges using M-Network's 16K bank-switching scheme
• Supports cartridges using Parker Brothers' 8K bank-switching scheme
• Supports cartridges using Tigervision's bank-switching scheme with up to 512K ROM
• Supports Supercharger single-load and multi-load games
• Supports property file for setting the properties associated with games
• Built-in properties contains settings for over 540 games
• Supports user specified frame rate
• Supports the NTSC and PAL television palettes
• Supports several "undocumented features" of the TIA graphics chip used by some games
• TIA emulation supports full collision checking
• Screen mode selection for support of AGA or graphics cards
• Font-sensitive GUI using Gadtools and ASL

IMPORTANT NOTES:

You must set your stack size to 200000 before running Amiga Stella, or else Stella will crash your Amiga. You might be able to use a smaller stack size, but outside of trial and error, I don't know how to find out. If someone could tell me how to set the stack from within a program, I'd appreciate it.

You must also run SetPatch before running Stella, or it will crash your Amiga.

Stella requires an FPU. I didn't mean for that to happen, but I'm new to egcs. I'll hopefully eliminate the FPU dependency on the next release. If someone can give me some help on this, I'd appreciate it.

My machine is an Amiga 1200 with an Apollo 060/50. I don't have a graphics card yet. I have tried to run Stella on my CD32, but it crashed for lack of an FPU. I don't know if it will work on an 040 or 030 with FPU. If somebody tries it, let me know.

Stella uses WritePixelLine8 for compatibility. I highly recommend using NewWPA8, which is available on Aminet. This will speed up screen updates considerably. I'd say it speeds it up twice as fast. I get 32 fps.

Amiga Stella was compiled with egcs. It was compiled for 68060. OxyPatcher patches some instructions, but I have not noticed any speed difference when not running OxyPatcher, so it's probably no big deal.

Sound is not implemented yet. Neither is a GUI. But I figured I'd release this version to give people something to play with while I'm working on adding features.

The next version will be based on Stella version 1.0 beta 1.

While building this page I could not find a copy of Amiga Stella 1.1 060 anywhere. So, I contacted author Matthew Stroup and he was nice enough to to get out his Amiga 1200, work with it until it booted, copy the file, and send it to me. We'd like to take this opportunity to say thank you to Matthew for his troubles. He's a very nice guy and we're happy to be able to preserve his work for everyone's enjoyment. Thanks Matthew, you rock.

He also sent a read me file for the 1.1 060 version. It's available as a separate download below, but please keep in mind that some of the information in this document will not apply to Amiga Stella 1.1 020.

You may also want to check out Amgia Stella's page on aminet.

Filename	Version	Author*	Size	Updated				Help Mouse over any icon below for a short description of what each item means.
Stella.lha	1.1 020	Matthew Stroup	201.745 kb	08/26/1999	.lha File An LHA archive contains one or more files that have been compressed to reduce file size and then appended with the .lha extension. This data compression and archive format was originally created in 1988 by...   click for more	AmigaOS AmigaOS is an operating system developed for Amiga Corporation's family of personal computers including the CD32, CDTV, A500, A500+, A600, A1000, A1200, A1500, A2000, A2500, A3000, A3000T, A3000UX, A4000,...   click for more	Checksum The following are the Md5 and SHA1 hashes of this file. MD5: 8472934b7d4aed4ce49b81c97e9af92c SHA1: 62565043e9c28befd8cec55e9b6a106c99e6fdbf	Download Click here to download your file. Please be patient as it may take 3-5 seconds to initiate the file transfer.
Stella060.lha	1.1 060	Matthew Stroup	201.054 kb	08/26/1999	.lha File An LHA archive contains one or more files that have been compressed to reduce file size and then appended with the .lha extension. This data compression and archive format was originally created in 1988 by...   click for more	AmigaOS AmigaOS is an operating system developed for Amiga Corporation's family of personal computers including the CD32, CDTV, A500, A500+, A600, A1000, A1200, A1500, A2000, A2500, A3000, A3000T, A3000UX, A4000,...   click for more	Checksum The following are the Md5 and SHA1 hashes of this file. MD5: 2ae1c50611719a67f192f4e66355acdf SHA1: 45f1ca10e7e379dfd69bb71ba17b1f6eff635e09	Download Click here to download your file. Please be patient as it may take 3-5 seconds to initiate the file transfer.
Stella060.readme.lha	1.1 060 Read Me	Matthew Stroup	1.146 kb	08/26/1999	.lha File An LHA archive contains one or more files that have been compressed to reduce file size and then appended with the .lha extension. This data compression and archive format was originally created in 1988 by...   click for more	AmigaOS AmigaOS is an operating system developed for Amiga Corporation's family of personal computers including the CD32, CDTV, A500, A500+, A600, A1000, A1200, A1500, A2000, A2500, A3000, A3000T, A3000UX, A4000,...   click for more	Checksum The following are the Md5 and SHA1 hashes of this file. MD5: 0093882c8b56efcbc04266f3b0a7e34f SHA1: 981f3672ac21dca8369f79b5d77b3328cd4fd287	Download Click here to download your file. Please be patient as it may take 3-5 seconds to initiate the file transfer.
stella.lzx	0.7	Matthew Stroup	115.944 kb	06/01/1998	.lzx File An LZX archive is a compressed archive format native to AmigaOS using a .lzx extension. Usually, a LZX file contains one or more compressed files that can be extracted, in much the same way that ZIP and RA...   click for more	AmigaOS AmigaOS is an operating system developed for Amiga Corporation's family of personal computers including the CD32, CDTV, A500, A500+, A600, A1000, A1200, A1500, A2000, A2500, A3000, A3000T, A3000UX, A4000,...   click for more	Checksum The following are the Md5 and SHA1 hashes of this file. MD5: 7aae15ea8832ae76e4ce54570bb68281 SHA1: 3e34b6674ac2b8144bc8a4e353ff7910d75472de	Download Click here to download your file. Please be patient as it may take 3-5 seconds to initiate the file transfer.

* Author refers to the current or last maintainer of the distribution; see the emulator's documentation or homepage for full credits. Click the author's name to send them an email (if provided) or look for a alternative contact option on the emulator's homepage.

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