Stunt_Cycle_Rules! Posted January 4, 2003 Share Posted January 4, 2003 Hey, hey. I am currently using the Z26. Some of the games lag real bad. Is there any better emulator out there? Keep on Chooglin! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted January 4, 2003 Share Posted January 4, 2003 The only way to find out is to try them. But I need to point out that Z26 is regarded as the FASTEST 2600 emulator with sound (A26 is slightly faster, but no sound)...so switching emulators probably won't help you much. On a 486, are we? Me too. Mine is a 5-stepper, which means that Z26 is even slower on mine No directX, either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trey Posted January 4, 2003 Share Posted January 4, 2003 i'm using stellax v1.1.3a on a pentium ii, 266Mhz. works great for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Atari Posted January 4, 2003 Share Posted January 4, 2003 I use PCAE, works great for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gregory DG Posted January 4, 2003 Share Posted January 4, 2003 I think the best depends on what OS you are using. I use z26 on Win2000 and it's slow as molassas. (I guess because it's a DOS app.) None of the Windows 2600 emulators are that great. I wish someone would make a 2600 emu in the style of Handy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IceCold Posted January 4, 2003 Share Posted January 4, 2003 Z26, CyberStella(I think that's what it's called) and Pcaewin are what I have used, all run great on my 1.1ghz. Nukey Shay - What speed 486 are you using? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted January 5, 2003 Share Posted January 5, 2003 AuthenticAMD X86 family 4 model 15 stepping processor. It claims that it's 133mhz, but it's almost completely Intel-incompatable (which means that anything calling Pentium-class instructions usually run very slow...if at all). My sister's using a P2 desktop @ 200mhz upstairs. I'm tempted just to unplug the CPU and swap it out with a 66mhz 486DX2. Seems that I had better luck with that one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ze_ro Posted January 5, 2003 Share Posted January 5, 2003 I just use Stella here... Are there any other 2600 emulators that run in Linux? Stella does everything I need it to, but I wouldn't mind trying something else. --Zero Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NE146 Posted January 5, 2003 Share Posted January 5, 2003 Every time I ask this, NO ONE says anything.. so I'll ask again. In my experience, the sound in stella totally sucked balls (i.e. does a horrible job of emulation the 2600's sounds on the pc).. does anyone else notice this or is it my pc?.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted January 5, 2003 Share Posted January 5, 2003 I never noticed anything out of the ordinary...when I was able to run Stella, of course. Dunno about the newer versions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atari freak 1 Posted January 5, 2003 Share Posted January 5, 2003 I agree with NE164, the sound sucks, sometimes it kinna...hmmm whats the word...skips almost, like when playing a game like ms.pacman, when you eat a dot, sometimes it doesn't sound it. and the sound is also WRONG, like the beeps in Ms pac-man, there wrong on the emu. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ze_ro Posted January 5, 2003 Share Posted January 5, 2003 I've never noticed bad sound in Stella... however, my ears aren't what they used to be, and I've never been too fussy on accurate sound anyways. --Zero Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted January 5, 2003 Share Posted January 5, 2003 Every time I ask this, NO ONE says anything.. so I'll ask again. In my experience, the sound in stella totally sucked balls (i.e. does a horrible job of emulation the 2600's sounds on the pc).. does anyone else notice this or is it my pc?.. I've generally had good luck with the sound in StellaX running in Windows 2000. I imagine the sound is better still in z26, but I don't get any sound in Windows 2000 when running it (and I haven't even attempted to get that to work, if it's even possible). StellaX is very unstable for me, and crashes often when exiting a game. I haven't used PCAE very much, but I very much like it's ability to record movies from games (which will become very useful on AA pretty soon). I have not played around with CyberStella too much yet. I know a new version of Stella (1.3) is due to be out soon, so perhaps this will spur some updates of the Windows (and Mac) versions. I think z26 is the most accurate 2600 emulator, and I am looking forward to a Windows version someday. It is also updated the most quickly of all the 2600 emulators when new games that break existing emulators come out. ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Artlover Posted January 10, 2003 Share Posted January 10, 2003 Every time I ask this, NO ONE says anything.. so I'll ask again. In my experience, the sound in stella totally sucked balls (i.e. does a horrible job of emulation the 2600's sounds on the pc).. does anyone else notice this or is it my pc?.. I aggree with you. I have used Stella many times, and the sound is awful. Ms.Pacman is one of my favorite games, and it just sounded sad on Stella. Heck, some sounds were missing altogether. I ended up finally buying Ms.Pacman to replace my dead cart after years of searching! Unfortunatly, I haven't had much luck getting other emu's like Z26 to work for me on my P3-650/Win2K box. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted January 11, 2003 Share Posted January 11, 2003 You can tweak z26 by using the -e switch, which enables faster 32 bit graphics routines. Selecting a different (less lines!) video mode with -v or inside the game helps too. And you can tell the emulator where to start scanning with -u. But you have to try to find the highest value (~50) for each game. When running under NT, 2000, XP you should increase the framerate with -f until it's fast enough. Some say -f120 works good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moycon Posted January 11, 2003 Share Posted January 11, 2003 Will any of that help with the sound Thomas? I have a fairly new Compaq at home running XP. z26 works, but the sound is messed up. Actually the sound of the game is fine...But there is a constant *clicking* noise in the background that is very annoying. When I run Stella...There in no sound at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted January 11, 2003 Share Posted January 11, 2003 Will any of that help with the sound Thomas? I don't know. At the only place where I have an NT based OS I better don't activate the sound. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Tumber Posted January 13, 2003 Share Posted January 13, 2003 Will any of that help with the sound Thomas? I have a fairly new Compaq at home running XP. z26 works, but the sound is messed up. Actually the sound of the game is fine...But there is a constant *clicking* noise in the background that is very annoying. When I run Stella...There in no sound at all. I have a similar problem very, very occaisionally running z26 in Win ME where I'll get an intermittent static sound (it's not regular click-click-click or anything, just occaisional "bursts" of static. Like listening to a Walkman on a set of headphones which are going bad). I haven't really looked into it because it happens so rarely, but my impression is that it ocurs when I have a bunch of other windows open and running. Try loading it with only a minimum other processes running and see if it helps (including virus shields or whatever else you may have running in the background)... (hey, worth a try) Chris... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eduardo Posted January 13, 2003 Share Posted January 13, 2003 @Stunt Cycle: Hey, hey. I am currently using the Z26. Some of the games lag real bad. I use Z26 with a PIII and W98se and it works fine with all games, Full speed, great sound, I heard before some static when I was using the built in sound card in my puter but later I installed a Yamaha soundcard and the sound is crystal clear now. Is there any better emulator out there? If you're using a PC then Z26 it's your best choice (by far). Tell us more about the specs and configuration of your system and we might be able to find out what's wrong, but i would point the blaming finger on the CPU speed or your OS config. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cwilkson Posted January 13, 2003 Share Posted January 13, 2003 In Windows 2000, you can install VDMSound and z26 sound works fine. There were minor things to tweak for optimal performance, but the defaults are really good. http://sourceforge.net/projects/vdmsound/ -Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cupcakus Posted January 13, 2003 Share Posted January 13, 2003 I use winXP and use three emulators every day... CyberStella, PCAE and Z26. Z26 runs really slow for me too... I'm not sure why. However it is the only emulator that will show you a scan line count (-v9) and that is invaluable to me as a homebrew author. It also has a trace feature which can be usefull in debugging. For just "playing" games I do not use Z26. Z26 also takes the best in-game screen shots IMO. CyberStella is one of the better emulators... It's fast, runs in Windows, full sound support, however the Stella engine will run games with 300+ scanlines and not have a problem... whereas a real TV would crap out... I'm not quite sure why CyberStella supports that, but as a homebrew author I can't trust it to give me reliable results. PCAEWin is the emulator I use every day... It plays small, in windows. You can stop your game and do other things, and then return and continue where you left off. It has a built in debugger... which doesn't work for the most part, but it does let you look at and modify the RAM and TIA areas. It also has full screen capabilities. And the best feature, you can make AVI movies of your game play for record submission. The screen shot quality is not very good from PCAE... It's supposed online play capabilities do not work. And the colors it shows are a bit off, but otherwise this is the best choice. For WinXP that is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gregory DG Posted January 13, 2003 Share Posted January 13, 2003 PCAEWin is the emulator I use every day... It plays small, in windows. I would probably use it except I can't figure out how to get it to work with a MS Sidewinder... Strange, but 2600 emulator interfaces aren't up to snuff with some of the other emus like Handy, Atari800Win, STeem, or even Proj. Tempest. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted January 13, 2003 Share Posted January 13, 2003 ...did you try unloading it from the system tray? I know that's a problem that springs up with Dos apps, and PCAE was one originally. (?) Do keyset managers exist for the SW? If that's the case, you could configure the manager to use PCAE's keys. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Cafeman Posted January 13, 2003 Share Posted January 13, 2003 Z26 -- it seems to run fine at home, on a 1GHZ PIII running Windows ME. However it really dogs at work, on a similar PC w/Windows NT. go figure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted January 13, 2003 Share Posted January 13, 2003 Z26 -- it seems to run fine at home, on a 1GHZ PIII running Windows ME. However it really dogs at work, on a similar PC w/Windows NT. go figure. Since z26 is DOS based it runs quite well on DOS based OS like Win95, 98 and ME. NT based systems like NT, 2000 and XP don't have a very good DOS emulation. But increasing the framerate (e.g. -f120) might help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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