The Atari ST was based around a 680x0-series processor, just like the original Macintosh. It was built, however, mainly for graphical strength, which was shown in its many game titles.
 | PowerST 0.2 for PowerPC Macs. |
| the TOS ROMs, needed for PowerST to run. |
PowerST is a new Atari ST emulator by the author of NoSTalgia! Although the feature set is very similar, PowerST includes an assembly core making it three times faster than NoSTalgia, and is shareware.
 | the PowerST home page. |
 | to Philippe Gerin, author of PowerST. |
| NoSTalgia 1.3 for OS X. |
| NoSTalgia 1.1 for classic Mac OS. |
| the TOS ROMs, needed for NoSTalgia to run. |
| Dust 1.0.4, a utility which can convert Atari ST disks into images which NoSTalgia can use. |
NoSTalgia is a real Atari ST emulator, rather than just emulating an OS as MagiCMac does--there is full hardware support for Atari ST video and sound capabilities. Therefore, most games and applications run perfectly under NoSTalgia!
| the NoSTalgia home page. |
| the Unofficial NoSTalgia Compatibility page. |
 | of NoSTalgia running Xenon II. |
| to Philippe Gerin, who is developing this emulator. |
| Hatari 0.45 for OS X. |
| an 80MB Hatari hard disk image. |
Hatari is an Atari ST emulator for Mac OS X, Linux, BSD, BeOS and other systems that are supported by the SDL library. Hatari is an modification of the WinSTon source code that uses the SDL library and the portable UAE CPU core instead of the original, non-portable assembler CPU core. Although Hatari is still in an early state (there are many features still missing and the emulator is a bit unstable), you can already use disk images and run many programs, games or demos with it. Hatari is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).
| the Hatari home page. |
| of Hatari for X-Windows running Xenon 2 Megablast. |
| ACSI-mtools 0.01, a small set of utilities for using ACSI hard disk images with the mtools package. If you are using hard disk images, you might want to get these. |
| the MagiCMac X 1.1 demo (in German). |
| the MagiCMac 6.1.5 demo (in German). |
MagiCMac reproduces the functions of TOS and the TOS replacement-OS called MagiC. Since MagiC is a multitasking replacement for TOS, most well-behaved Atari ST programs will run. In fact, anything that runs under MagiC should also run under MagiCMac. Programs that 'break the rules'--like games, which try to access the ST hardware directly--will break under MagiCMac.
Note that MagiCMac is not a true emulator, since it does not emulate the Atari ST in its entirety. However, it does allow the use of many Atari ST programs without modification on the Mac OS.
Coincidentally, many such games also break under different Atari
machines and TOS versions. Many games work under TOS 1.0 and 1.2 but not
1.4x, 2.0x, or 4.x. Many games that work on 68000-based STs break on the
68030-based TT030 and Falcon.
Luckily, older Macintoshes share many identical components to the Atari ST, including the main processor (nowadays, Power Macs have a built-in emulator for the 680x0-series processor). Since the Macintosh has far faster processors than the ST's of the late eighties, a Macintosh performs Magic duties much more rapidly than a real ST. Emulated ST's can, in theory, word-process, spreadsheet, database, and window faster than the Mac OS. An odd theory, but I guess I'll buy it.
A nice side effect of the processor sharing is that MagiCMac runs several times faster than its PC counterpart. Since MagicPC is limited to a software 680x0 emulator, it runs quite slowly in comparison to MagiCMac. (Although PowerPC Macintoshes also incorporate 680x0 emulation, the PowerPC processor can handle 680x0 emulation much more quickly and reliably, since Apple's 680x0 emulator has been so well-polished.)
The MagiCMac demo is limited to fifteen minutes, unfortunately, which makes it worthless to anyone seriously considering the theory postulated above. The full version, unfortunately, costs $189--a steep price for any piece of software.
| an updater to bring MagiCMac to version 6.2.0. |
| to Application Systems Heidelberg, authors of MagiCMac. |
| the Official MagiCMac Home Page. Please note that this page is written in German. |
| Atari Central, for further MagiCMac info. |
| the EmuTOS home page - EmuTOS is a functional Free TOS replacement, currently in development. |
| The Little Green Desktop, an excellent Atari ST resource. |
