Altirra is an emulator for the Atari 8-bit series of home computers, including the 800, 800XL, and 130XE versions. Because modern computers are so much faster than the original 1.79MHz machine, a nearly complete emulation of the hardware is provided and thus the emulator can run a large amount of the software available for the platform.
The main reasons I wrote Altirra was for two purposes: education, and nostalgia. I grew up with a number of 8-bit computers, and the Atari was my favorite, partially because it was the ancestor of the Amiga. I've learned a tremendous amount about the original hardware while writing the emulator, and it's certainly been an interesting (and sometimes frustrating experience). This does mean that Altirra is missing some polish and has some rather odd development features, which I hope you'll bear with. Please excuse my eccentricity.
Of course, I should note that Atari is a trademark I don't own, that neither I nor Altirra are affilated with Atari, and that Altirra does not intentionally include any unlicensed intellectual property of other entities. Finally, Altirra is not intended for piracy, and I do not condone or approve of distributing Altirra with unlicensed software.
I hope Altirra is useful to you, and all comments are welcome. Altirra is a side project, and as such I don't work on it consistently, but I still wouldn't mind hearing from people who try it.
By default, Altirra uses an internal kernel ROM which partially supports basic Atari kernel services, such as interrupts, display, and disk I/O. If you have cartridge or disk images already, you can use them with the emulator as-is, and some of them may work. There are also freely available demo images on the Internet you can obtain which were written by people around the world to stretch and demonstrate the power of the Atari hardware, and which you can view with the emulator if you have not seen an Atari in action before.
To load a disk, simply use the File > Open Disk/Program... option, and select the disk image. The most common disk images are in .ATR format. If they are compressed in a .zip archive, you must extract them with a separate utility first.
Most games are compatible with the original Atari 800, and as such should use the 800 hardware mode. Some newer games that need more memory will need 800XL mode and 64K memory instead, and perhaps 128K of memory. When running demos, 800XL hardware mode with 320K of memory will run almost anything, although you should use PAL for demos as the vast majority of demos are produced in Europe.
Altirra emulates the hardware with much higher compatibility than its internal ROM emulates the kernel, so for much better success, it's recommended that you use real Atari kernel ROMs if available. These should be placed next to Altirra.exe:
With these available, you can switch the firmware to 800 OS-B and 800XL mode. I won't tell how to obtain these ROMs, and needless to say, you should only use images of the ROMs if you actually own the real ones. If you don't, you can still run a lot of software on the internal kernel, and the full Atari hardware is still emulated.
-- Avery Lee <phaeron [AT] virtualdub [DOT] org>
- Taken from the Altirra homepage and/or documentation| Filename | Version | Author* | Size | Updated |
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| Altirra-1.2-src.zip | 1.2 (src) | Avery Lee | 997.727 kb | 07/05/2009 |
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| Altirra-1.2.zip | 1.2 | Avery Lee | 397.109 kb | 07/05/2009 |
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The following are the Md5 and SHA1 hashes of this file. MD5: a2e08c559e77157f79959e1360f8454b SHA1: a85351bdad845cd8ddc2844e11be43b2568cb19e |
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| Altirra-1.3pre14-src.zip | 1.3 (pre14 src) | Avery Lee | 1.025 mb | 09/06/2009 |
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A zip archive contains one or more files that have been compressed to reduce file size or stored as-is and then appended with the .zip extension. This data compression and archive format was originally cre... click for more |
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Windows is a family of operating systems created by Microsoft for x86 IBM-PC compatible computers. Software written for Windows could run on any of the older DOS based versions including Windows 3.1, Windo... click for more |
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The following are the Md5 and SHA1 hashes of this file. MD5: 08cc4b3c303966657ac5fd8c747cb369 SHA1: 66508fc2b468ce0fc52332a27fef2521d772bdb0 |
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| Altirra-1.3pre14.zip | 1.3 (pre14) | Avery Lee | 414.338 kb | 09/06/2009 |
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A zip archive contains one or more files that have been compressed to reduce file size or stored as-is and then appended with the .zip extension. This data compression and archive format was originally cre... click for more |
Windows
Windows is a family of operating systems created by Microsoft for x86 IBM-PC compatible computers. Software written for Windows could run on any of the older DOS based versions including Windows 3.1, Windo... click for more |
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The following are the Md5 and SHA1 hashes of this file. MD5: 207a9abca4e5d280781250bf04f8863b SHA1: 6faf447af72c676c1f0add68ea16e92115cead3a |
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| Altirra-1.3pre15.zip | 1.3 (pre15) | Avery Lee | 414.992 kb | 09/06/2009 |
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Windows is a family of operating systems created by Microsoft for x86 IBM-PC compatible computers. Software written for Windows could run on any of the older DOS based versions including Windows 3.1, Windo... click for more |
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The following are the Md5 and SHA1 hashes of this file. MD5: 89ab6b3184637502698bd442cb30eebe SHA1: eeef13883ea03e1c2143c7c9392ec3fcd713af48 |
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* 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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