How to emulate Atari

More or less at the end of the 1980s, video games were played in almost all Italian homes thanks to the fantastic Commodore Amiga. He was the king of 16bit computers with incredible graphics in those days. Commodore Amiga’s eternal rival was the Atari ST , a computer always destined to hold second place in front of the Commodore monopoly. The most nostalgic will remember how the Atari ST never managed to establish itself in the video game market but was highly appreciated in the musical field because it had built-in MIDI ports. However, notable games and programs have been developed for this old 16bit and if you want to relive the magic of those times you can easily Emulate Atari ST from your PC or mac.

In this guide, without getting too lost in unnecessary details, I will show you the best of the atari st emulator explaining how it works and also directing you to search for ROMs for the Atari ST.

Index

• How to emulate Atari
  • Emulate Atari ST with Steem
  • Atari ST Online Emulator
  • Where to find ROMs for Atari ST

How to emulate Atari

To Emulate Atari ST on a computer you will need:

• an Atari emulator
• a file with the operating system of the ST atari (a file with the extension TOS)
• files with programs and games (roms)

Emulate Atari ST with Steem

Steem is probably the best emulator for Atari ST available for windows, its strong point is being able to emulate and fully use the integrated MIDI ports. You can download this emulator directly from the manufacturer’s home page . At this point, create a folder called Atari on your PC and extract the contents of the emulator zip file inside the folder. Inside the Atari folder it also creates a folder called Roms which will be destined to host atari files (programs and games).

Now you need to download the operating system of the ST atari, you can download it from this page (scroll down and download the latest version); a zip file will be downloaded with a file with TOS extension inside, copy this file into the Atari folder.

Now from the Atari folder click on the steem.exe file and start the installation. In the first screen click on Yes to create a desktop shortcut to the atari st emulator

Then press OK and select the TOS file you previously downloaded. Then press OK and select the Roms certella and in the next screen press the No. key.

At this point the installation of the Atari emulate is finished and the Steem home screen will open. All you have to do is press the first button on the top left and after loading the games and programs inside the roms folder you can click on Floppy Disk to open a game or program.

I am attaching a video (unfortunately in a foreign language) showing all the steps required to use steem.

Atari ST Online Emulator

Don’t have the time and desire to install an emulator on your computer? no problem, there are also Atari ST emulators online, that is executable directly from the web browser.

On this page, for example, you will find an Atari ST emulator that uses TOS 1.00. Unfortunately there are no game roms inside the emulator but there are some graphics programs.

Where to find ROMs for Atari ST

If you play streaming TV series, once you have installed the atari ST emulator you will need to get the ROMs for the Atari ST (each ROM represents a software for the emulator, for example a game).

On the internet you can find many sites that contain ROMs for Atari ST and even complete romsets (ie a zip file with thousands of games inside); downloading romset may be illegal because some roms may still be protected by copyright so I will not give you any addresses of sites containing romsets.

However, there is the Internet Archive , the largest digital archive in the world that contains everything and even all the games and programs for atari ST. From this page you can find all the programs and games produced for atari ST and you can download them to use on your atari emulator for pc. On the internet Archive I had already talked about it in this article, in fact here you can find everything, including programs and games for old consoles and computers.

What you will have to do on the Internet Archive is simply click on the romset you like best, in the page that opens, in the DOWNLOAD OPTIONS box, click on zip to see the games and programs contained within it and then click as indicated below to download the zip file with the games and programs inside.

So in conclusion to Emulate Atari ST on PC you will first have to download the Steem emulator and configure it as described above. If you don’t want to download software but just want to relive a few minutes on the atari ST then you can use the atari ST emulator online on the web. To use the atari ST emulator you will need to download programs and games (ROMs for atari), without wandering around strange sites and at the limit of legality you can go and download games for atari directly on the Internet Archive.