Atari ST - Why do some roms load the game and others load to the desktop?

[TPR]

I'm fairly new to the Atari ST and I'm setting it up on my RetroPie using lr-hatari. I can't figure out why some roms will load up to the actual game and others will load into the computer desktop and you have to double click the .prg file.

 

I've noticed several versions of roms: .stx .st and .msa seem to be the file types I'm seeing the most.

 

Do some direct load a game while others don't?

 

Is there a certain trick to making a game auto-load similar to the WHLoad files for Amiga or is this just how the system is?

 

Thanks in advance for your help!

[darwinmac]

17 minutes ago, TPR said:

I'm fairly new to the Atari ST and I'm setting it up on my RetroPie using lr-hatari. I can't figure out why some roms will load up to the actual game and others will load into the computer desktop and you have to double click the .prg file.

 

I've noticed several versions of roms: .stx .st and .msa seem to be the file types I'm seeing the most.

 

Do some direct load a game while others don't?

 

Is there a certain trick to making a game auto-load similar to the WHLoad files for Amiga or is this just how the system is?

 

Thanks in advance for your help!

First of all, .STX files are files that include the copy protection. They are similar to IPF files on the Amiga. They try to duplicate the original disk exactly (including quirks like the game only runs on certain versions of TOS). .ST and .MSA files are unprotected disk images. MSA (Magic Shadow Archiver) compresses the disk image. .ST files are digital versions of a normally formatted ST floppy disk. 
 

Some games run from an AUTO folder. Those are the games that immediately boot up to the game. Other games were designed to run from the GEM desktop and may not be able to be run from an AUTO folder. 
 

The closest thing the ST has to the WHLoad is either the hard drive adapted games of PP (https://atari.8bitchip.info) or the D-Bug collection (http://d-bug.mooo.com). They may still run from the desktop, but they have had TOS incompatibilities fixed and can be run from a hard disk image. 
 

My Amiga experience is very limited so I’ll defer to someone with more experience in both systems to tell you if there’s an exact equivalent to WHLoad. 
 

Bob C

[TPR]

Thank you!  That is all very useful information.  One question I had was about this... 

6 minutes ago, darwinmac said:

First of all, .STX files are files that include the copy protection.

I haven't run into any .stx files yet that haven't worked or that asked me to "type in a word from the 6th page of the manual", etc...

 

What kind of copy protection would these kinds of files have?  And should I avoid them or are they also okay to use?

 

Thanks for the rest of the info! 

[darwinmac]

I’m not an expert on ST copy protection, but most copy protection schemes prevented the disk from being copied by disk copiers of the time. Only a relatively few games had the “look in the manual” that you describe. 
 

There is no harm I’m using STX files if they work for you. As I mentioned, you may have games (Arkanoid comes to mind) that only work correctly on TOS 1.0 and TOS 1.02. The hard drive adapted versions allow those games to be run on later versions of TOS (like 2.06). 
 

If you download STX files from atarimania.com, I would expect them to work. 
 

Bob C

Edited December 15, 2022 by darwinmac
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[Megalomaniac]

10 hours ago, TPR said:

Thank you!  That is all very useful information.  One question I had was about this... 

I haven't run into any .stx files yet that haven't worked or that asked me to "type in a word from the 6th page of the manual", etc...

 

What kind of copy protection would these kinds of files have?  And should I avoid them or are they also okay to use?

 

Thanks for the rest of the info! 

You're confusing on-disk copy protection with manual based protection - many games didn't copy protect the disks (mainly to allow for hard drive installation - usually 'heavier' stuff like adventures and sims) but would have manual lookup protection so they'd not be easily copyable in the playground. Most of that is true for ST and Amiga, although ST versions were less likely to be hard drive installable, partly as ST gamers were less likely to have one, and perhaps because a game being system-legal meant that it had less available memory, and most ST gamers only had 512k, whereas by 1991 or so most Amiga users had 1meg.

 

Actually the STX of Championship Manager 93 does still require the manual protection codes, but they are available online. Some games (like most of Gremlin's later ones) had both forms of protection.

[TPR]

21 minutes ago, Megalomaniac said:

You're confusing on-disk copy protection with manual based protection.

This is why I asked the question. I wasn’t sure if the .stx files would even work or if I’d have to Google manuals. 
 

Great information overall though. Thanks for the insight, it’s all very helpful! 

[zzip]

12 hours ago, TPR said:

I'm fairly new to the Atari ST and I'm setting it up on my RetroPie using lr-hatari. I can't figure out why some roms will load up to the actual game and others will load into the computer desktop and you have to double click the .prg file.

 

I've noticed several versions of roms: .stx .st and .msa seem to be the file types I'm seeing the most.

 

Do some direct load a game while others don't?

 

Is there a certain trick to making a game auto-load similar to the WHLoad files for Amiga or is this just how the system is?

 

Thanks in advance for your help!

There's some disks that work as boot disks from master boot record,  those are the most straight-forward.

 

Now when there's an app on the disk that you need to launch things get a little more tricky.   If the game/app doesn't require GEM, then it can be launched by putting it in the AUTO folder on the disk.   Stuff in AUTO is executed before GEM gets initialized.

 

If the game does require GEM,   Newer versions of TOS have a way to autostart them (like TOS 2.06), older versions of TOS do not.   There's a menu option (I forget what it is) that allows you to set it to run at boot.

 

MSA started as a way to compress disks to upload.    .ST disks aren't compressed.

Edited December 15, 2022 by zzip

[Keops]

TPR: manual based protections were present for a really small percentage of games on the ST, so you should be good.

In my ST collection things like code wheels, booklets needing a red filter or color grids with numbers represent something like less than 5% of the games. Games using those were usually adventure games.

Edited December 15, 2022 by Keops

[zzip]

For manual-based protection.   If you have a 'cracked' disk image, it might still ask you to look up something in the manual, but will accept any response

[TPR]

47 minutes ago, zzip said:

For manual-based protection.   If you have a 'cracked' disk image, it might still ask you to look up something in the manual, but will accept any response

Yes, that seems pretty common with a lot of other computer consoles from that era as well.  Thank you for this!

[oky2000]

The games that did load a stripped down Workbench desktop I remember are either early games like Mable Madness and FA-18 etc. Also games that used standard Kickstart libraries like Cinemaware games also did this. Generally Amiga games only needed me to load Kickstart on my A1000 so on an A500 you never see Workbench disk request if you power on with the game disk already inside.

[MrMaddog]

On 12/15/2022 at 10:13 AM, zzip said:

There's some disks that work as boot disks from master boot record,  those are the most straight-forward.

 

Now when there's an app on the disk that you need to launch things get a little more tricky.   If the game/app doesn't require GEM, then it can be launched by putting it in the AUTO folder on the disk.   Stuff in AUTO is executed before GEM gets initialized.

 

If the game does require GEM,   Newer versions of TOS have a way to autostart them (like TOS 2.06), older versions of TOS do not.   There's a menu option (I forget what it is) that allows you to set it to run at boot.

 

 

TOS 1.4 and higher gave you the option to set a GEM application (or game) to run automatically after the GEM desktop boots up.  The eariler versions of TOS require a 3rd party program called STARTGEM.

 

Eariler ST games that were GEM based couldn't run from the boot sector or AUTO folder so they had a pre-set Desktop configuration where you double click on the game in a small window to run.

[zzip]

On 12/17/2022 at 5:26 PM, MrMaddog said:

 

TOS 1.4 and higher gave you the option to set a GEM application (or game) to run automatically after the GEM desktop boots up.  The eariler versions of TOS require a 3rd party program called STARTGEM.

 

Eariler ST games that were GEM based couldn't run from the boot sector or AUTO folder so they had a pre-set Desktop configuration where you double click on the game in a small window to run.

Ok so TOS 1.4 added that feature and not 2.0 like I stated?  Good to know

 

[MrMaddog]

9 hours ago, zzip said:

Ok so TOS 1.4 added that feature and not 2.0 like I stated?  Good to know

 

 

With my STe I've always used that for running my applications automatically when I boot the disks up, that and the ability of reading DOS formatted disks makes it so darn useful.

[zzip]

14 hours ago, MrMaddog said:

 

With my STe I've always used that for running my applications automatically when I boot the disks up, that and the ability of reading DOS formatted disks makes it so darn useful.

Yup it was always something my STe could do that my original ST couldn't (never upgraded it beyond TOS 1.0)

 

Once I had a hard drive, and maxed out RAM for the STe, I went nuts with the autostart features.   had it loading Terradesk as default desktop with some app that set wallpaper, an app that played sounds when windows opened ("boing")