Best emulator for Atari STE

[Foebane]

I tried the original Steem Engine, but it lacked support for the STE.

I tried Steem SSE, but the audio emulation is exceedingly poor, and with annoying clicks when it comes to the PCM audio.

SainT looked promising, but doesn't seem to support hard drives.

 

I've had a look at Hatari, but it seems really slow on loading disk images. Also, I'm having issues with the 8.3 limitation imposed on the Windows filenames, which seems different to Steem SSE's hard disk mode.

 

Winston is unavailable to me.

 

I need a good all-round emulator for the STE - which is best?

 

[Christos]

Steem. Steem is the STE emulator, it won't emulate an ST. You need to use the proper tos version though. About your sound issues, what did you run that didn't play correctly? Note that unless the program is STE specific, it will use the YM to play samples etc so it won't sound clear.

 

TOS will only support 8.3 filenames so you won't have anything else.

[Foebane]

I always figured that Steem Engine supported the original ST, as no options came up in the menus for STE, and that Steem SSE was an updated version with STE support.

 

I'll try Steem again sometime today, see if the problems clear up.

 

EDIT: By the way, does every Atari user have the STE only? Are there no compatibility issues with ST software? Also, do I only need one ROM file? If so, which one is best?

Edited July 22, 2016 by Foebane

[ParanoidLittleMan]

Steem and Hatari emulate STE well. But regular Steem (up to v. 3.2) emulates HW so, that can not disable/deactivate extra STE HW (palette, audio DMA, etc). In practice that will cause problems only in rare cases. SW made for ST will work fine, since it addresses not STE HW, In Hatari and Steem SSE you can set HW to ST, then STE extra HW is not "present" . Hatari can be faster with floppy images - look settings. And here to say - even in Steem you will need to set accurate (slow) floppy emulaton because some SW may be sensitive on it.

I did not noticed worse sound in Steem SSE. In any case, there are some special filterings, maybe to play little with settings.

I can recommend Steem .3.2 - almost everything works well on, STE SW too, of course. Settings are not so complicated and confusing as in SSE. For beginner almost ideal.

[Foebane]

ParanoidLittleMan, see my thread about STE PCM Audio about sound issues in Steem SSE - I cite four examples there.

[Foebane]

I've just left a few messages over on the Atari Forum about Steem SSE, about how it seems to have degraded in sound support for Atari STE PCM audio, compared to the older Steem last updated in 2004. I don't know what Stevel Seagal is up to, but I sure would like to hear from him.