SainT is an ATARI-ST emulator for Windows. SainT is written by James Boulton and me. James writes almost all the emulator code. He gets in touch with me for the sound part (As I wrote the sound emulation of Pacifist). We both love the ATARI, emulator and assembly code, so SainT is definitivly the BEST emulator ever !!

For the moment, SainT is running about 90% of ATARI demos, including fullscreen and syncscroller ! Our actual version has the fastest CPU emulation, the best MFP emulation, the best SHIFTER emulation and of course the best sound emulation (sound-chip, digi-sample, soundtracker)

Ok we (James and me) have a great news ! You can download the pre-released version of SainT at saint.atari.org. That version is far to be perfect but it's better than nothing ! :-)

Just copy SainT09b.exe in a SainT folder and run it. First, you need to select a TOS image file (ATARI Orginal ROM). You can find TOS on various web site, such as Little Green Desktop. Click on the "Options" tab then click to the ADD button in the bottom of the screen. Then you have to select a TOS file. Better use a classic TOS 1.0. When TOS image is loaded, click on the file name then click on the "Set Active" button.

In the option tab, you can select 1Mb machine. Now for the video settings... SainT only works in fullscreen (as your original ST :-)). PC programer know how the PC hardware is bad... Now look at the two combo boxes "Graphic card" and "Refresh rate". If they are empty, then DirectX don't know the refresh rate, so you have to select "ST Sync Freq" in the Sync Mode selector. That mode tells SainT to run exactly at 50Hz, as your ST. The only drawback for that method is that PC is not video - synchronized, so bitmap scrollers are not very smooth.

If you're a lucky "new video card" owner, you may notice some informations in the "Refresh rate" combo box. So look at the refresh mode, and if you're *really* lucky, you'll have a 100Hz mode. If yes, select it, and then select "PC Vertical blank", and put "1" in the "Frame skip" dialog. So SainT will wait 2 sync at 100Hz, wich means 50Hz, and video synchronized. That's the best configaration available !!

Now click on the "Disk Menu" tab. This is the most common used tab. Select an image file by clicking on the file (you can see immediatly informations about the disk image in the floppy, at the right bottom. Then, if you want to use it, click on the "Insert" button just over the floppy A:. The floppy becomes lighted, and you're ready to run it. Just click on the "Run" tab and pump up the volume, even the floppy drive sound is emulated !! :)

Keys:

F12: Back to the main menu. You can change disk, change options, take snapshot, sound shot or whatever you want.

F11: Reset (SHIFT-F11 for cold reset)

We hope to release a decent SainT package for the v1.0. (I mean, documentation, and some bugs removed)

• Pressing ESC key crash the program
• A fatal error appairs when quitting SainT under Windows 9x, so some settings are not saved

If you notice some other bugs, please note carefully the bug and your machine configuration (and OS) and write to James Boulton or me if the bug is sound specific.

You can see some screen-shot, taken with SainT in my ATARI demo section.

The nice "SainT" logo at top was painted by Mon/OXYGENE.