Ideal Gaming Environment for Mega STe

[Shou]

I'm an ST noob so please be gentle. I have a Mega STe w/ 4MB RAM and would like to know what the ideal game setup for it would be. I have no interest in any apps except games.

Thus far, the majority of commercial ST games I have do not run on the machine and throw the 4 bombs error on boot or the 2 bombs error during bootup.
In fact, only the STe only games like Substation and Obsession & Targhan (re-release) have worked so far. Games like Xenon 1 and Wanted all throw errors.

If anyone could recommend which TOS versions I should have installed or on disk and any helper programs to trick the machine into thinking it's an old 512k ST, etc, I'd really appreciate your input.

[Dal]

The Mega STE isn't the most game-compatible of the ST range. That said, all is not lost. Most (all?) Sierra games should run with no problem on a MSTE and, if you have some kind ofmass storage device on your MSTE (hard disk or ultrasatan), there are archives of patched games that will run on MSTE.

See Dbug's archive here (Go to the 'Patches' tab)

and

See PPera's archive here

[dma]

Nice to see a Mega-STe user from Japan!

But indeed this system isn't the most compatible ST machine.
Get patched games versions on the websites that Dal linked, these will work perfectly on your system (and you will even be able to try those with CPU switched at 16mhz, great for slow 3D games at 8mhz).

[Shou]

Thanks for the advice.

I do have an UltraSatan but I have not installed it. Do I just put the patched games on the SD card?

Are patched games the best way to go? Is there no way to use my original disks?

I am not sure what OS is installed as I bought it from Germany and the settings are in German. Should I install a new TOS?

Sorry for all of my newbie questions. I have not met or heard of another ST user in Japan...

[simonsunnyboy]

Try booting an old TOS (1.0) from disk. On my normal 1040STE it happens to increase compatibility for original games.

[alexh]

The Mega STE isn't the most game-compatible of the ST range. That said, all is not lost.

?? My MegaSTe will run practically anything you throw at it. In the standard 8MHz mode it is for all intents and purposes an STe isn't it?

The only incompatibilities I've come across are present on my TOS 2.06 STe also.

If your MegaSTe has TOS2.05 or 2.06 (I think most MegaSTe's have those two versions) I *think* you can switch to English using the menu.

[Official Ninja]

Interesting thread. I am considering paying a good amount of money for a Mega STe from Best Electronics. NTSC as I'm in the USA.
I will only use it to play games. I am interested in it because of the 16Mhz speed and the fact it can drop back to 8Mhz when needed.
It has a hard drive and just look plain awesome.

Lets say I sit down to play a few of my favorites. Anyone know if these games would run on a Mega STe with an troubles?
Gauntlet, Gauntlet 2, Super Space Invaders, Stormlord, Crapman, Pac-Mania, Golden Axe, Ghost and Goblins....

[Klapauzius]

As alexh already said, the MegaSTE isn't such a bad choice if you're into gaming.

On a clean boot, it will behave almost 100% like an 8MHz STE as regards the hardware.
Only caveat is the newer 2.x TOS version on the MegaSTE. Some original games (and 'classic' cracks) will not work because of that.

Better do like Dal suggests and get fixed versions from the sites mentioned above.
If memory serves, most of the games you mention exist in patched versions and will also allow you to take advantage of the 16MHz CPU speed and the hard disk on your MegaSTE.

[Klapauzius]

If your MegaSTe has TOS2.05 or 2.06 (I think most MegaSTe's have those two versions) I *think* you can switch to English using the menu.

No, unfortunately not.
Language selection was only available in Falcon TOSes (4.x).

[Shou]

Try booting an old TOS (1.0) from disk. On my normal 1040STE it happens to increase compatibility for original games.

Will TOS 1.0 work with a Mega STe or should I download a specific version of 1.0?

Is TOS available to buy anywhere?

[simonsunnyboy]

TOS 1.0 is not available in specific versions for any hardware. Pick German, French, English localization, whatever suits you. Normal versions come as ROM images which will not work in a MSTE. You will need a little utility which can create a bootable floppy from them.

AFAIK no ST-class TOS is anywhere for official sale, maybe you can find a used TOS bootdisk.

[Shou]

TOS 1.0 is not available in specific versions for any hardware. Pick German, French, English localization, whatever suits you. Normal versions come as ROM images which will not work in a MSTE. You will need a little utility which can create a bootable floppy from them.

AFAIK no ST-class TOS is anywhere for official sale, maybe you can find a used TOS bootdisk.

Is TOS 1.0 reocmmended over say 1.04, etc?

IS there anyone who can provide it on a floppy? Also, would like to upgrade my German TOS to English 2.6. Is the only way to do this is by downloading an image and copying to a floppy?

[wongck]

May be this url will help you.
http://www.8bitchip.info/atari/tosload.htm

[simonsunnyboy]

If you downgrade, go for the most compatible TOS which is 1.0. TOS 1.04 will have the same compatibility problems with the older games which already won't work with TOS 2.x or even 1.6x

For the upgrade to TOS 2.06 US or UK version, you will probably simply need to get the correct ROM set and install it.

For TOS 1.0 on floppy, I have attached the US version as a MSA disk image. You only need to find a way to put this on floppy and then you should be able to boot this disk to the old green desktop. After the TOS has been loaded into RAM, you can simply insert the problematic game disk and use the reset button.

The TOS in RAM will be lost most of the time if you reset the loaded game because the games might overwrite some data structures in RAM. In that case, you will have to reboot with the disk.

[calimero]

Here you can find all versions of TOS

http://www.avtandil.narod.ru/tose.html

[leech]

My first ST was the Mega STe, and we had a floppy disk that would load TOS 1.04 for backward compatibility. I'm almost 100% sure you can't actually downgrade the TOS in the system, and realistically you want to be running TOS 2.06 (you can easily tell if you boot up and there is an Atari logo pop up with a memory test, 2.05 does not have this).

Also, depending on if you have a PAL vs NTSC one, you may find that you need a 50/60hz switcher boot disk for some games. This should give you almost 100% compatibility. There weren't that many games I couldn't run when I was younger. And for those, I'm guessing that the patched versions would work.

And as mentioned before, the Sierra games will work, but that's because they're GEM based ones, a few other GEM based ones I can think of that should work without issues are the Phantasie ports and the Ultima games (though for the ST they only made 2-6). By the way, since you have 4mb of ram, an awesome thing I did when I got that much was to create a 2mb ram disk and copy all of Ultima 6 into it, and play it from RAM! Load times were almost non-existent.

Edit: Let me know how it goes, I'm rebuilding my Mega STe setup myself. I've got the UltraSatan hooked up, just needing to figure out how to get the second SD card to format so I can just copy things to it from my Linux box, rather than having to get networking or something working to move things to it.

[Eero Tamminen]

Btw. I don't think TOS 1.0 should be used with hard disk, it has quite a few bugs in HD handling.

[Atari030]

I've run real floppies off my MegaSTE's for years and always had a pretty good success rate. I found TOS 2.06 compatibility was the biggest killer, but most still ran. I have some drama running PP's games off my Link attached SCSI drive but anything natively HD installable will fire up no problem.

If you have an external HDD it pays to bypass or switch it off when you run floppy games.

[joska]

I found TOS 2.06 compatibility was the biggest killer, but most still ran.

One solution would be to use something like Alan's MonSTer-card for the Mega STE. In addition to IDE and RAM it also has flash-ROM with up to four different TOS-versions. So you can have both 2.06, 1.06 and 1.04 installed at the same time.

[emcclariion]

I have a Mega STE and 95% of the patched games work.

its a great gaming machine as the extra CPU Speed does help a little.

[Atari030]

My problem is the original Link I am running on the MegaSTE, not PP's software. I run some of it on my TT and Falcons quite happily. I found the Link to be fussy as hell with HD drivers and disks, once it was running (using ICD's driver) I preferred not to tweak it much.

Joska, I have a ton of things I'd like to add but with so many Atari's it can get a little cost prohibitive. Slowly. I found very few games won't run from floppy that I play, so even thought TOS may be the biggest hurdle, it wasn't much of an issue. I can always hook up an STE or STFM if I get really desperate.

[emcclariion]

ICD is a pig with those games, I run a cut down driver, but its not PP driver.

This it was created by a hacking crew.

[Atari030]

That is what I figured, unfortunately HDDriver won't detect the drive and I don't think PP does a SCSI driver. I'm just grateful it boots.

Do you happen to have a copy of the driver to hand?