Snowbound1996 Posted August 31, 2023 Share Posted August 31, 2023 I've tried 3 different emulators now, the latest being "kat5200", and I'm never able to get a game to actually load. I really want to try out some 5200 games before I take the expensive plunge of buying a system. How exactly do you get kat5200 to work? When I try to load the one rom I have, "Xari arena" I'm just met with a black screen...nothing happens. When I open up the launcher and select one of the many roms in there, it says "error loading ROM image". Why is testing out a 5200 so frustrating? ;.; Guidance on getting Kat5200 to work, OR guidance on how to use another 5200 emulator would be really appreciated Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0078265317 Posted August 31, 2023 Share Posted August 31, 2023 Kat5200 has a few bugs. If you have a Mac this is decent. https://openemu.org/ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+x=usr(1536) Posted August 31, 2023 Share Posted August 31, 2023 For Windows, take a look at Atari800. Supports pretty much every A8-variant machine (including the 5200) extremely well. On macOS, Atari800MacX is equivalent, being a port of the Windows version. This is the one I use and can absolutely recommend it. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RB5200 Posted August 31, 2023 Share Posted August 31, 2023 I had tried the atari800 for awhile and just never could get it load a game, then I switched to altirra and it worked perfectly right off the get go, so I never even bothered to try any other ones, so altirra is another option. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricardo Cividanes da Silva Posted August 31, 2023 Share Posted August 31, 2023 For Atari 5200 I use MAME or MESS. It's a little boring to configure, but it works well. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted August 31, 2023 Share Posted August 31, 2023 Why is nobody recommending Altirra? It's by far the best 8-bit emulator for the computers (and 5200 which is the same thing). 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzip Posted August 31, 2023 Share Posted August 31, 2023 Some of the 5200 emulators will ask for the cartridge type when you load a game, if you get this wrong, the game fails to load, One day I decided to actually read the docs for Atari800, and discovered there was a way to convert the roms to a different format that will prevent the emulator for ever asking about cartridge types again. It works much better for me now. Also make sure you have the OS (5200.rom I think it's called) installed in the right folder or nothing will load. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+x=usr(1536) Posted August 31, 2023 Share Posted August 31, 2023 1 hour ago, Stephen said: Why is nobody recommending Altirra? It's by far the best 8-bit emulator for the computers (and 5200 which is the same thing). Speaking strictly for myself: it's Windows-only. This is fine, but makes it difficult to recommend given that I've used it very little as a result. FWIW, I recommended Atari800 based on experiences with Atari800MacX. While I've used both, I've used the latter far more extensively - but in the case of the former, more than Altirra. Altirra is a damned good emulator, however. Won't debate that for a second. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0078265317 Posted August 31, 2023 Share Posted August 31, 2023 https://www.bannister.org/software/jum52.htm https://emutopia.com/index.php/emulators/item/271-atari-5200/210-jum52 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roadrunner Posted August 31, 2023 Share Posted August 31, 2023 Try these, bios atari -- bios xf25.zip 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snowbound1996 Posted September 1, 2023 Author Share Posted September 1, 2023 Okay! Thanks for all the suggestions everyone, going to try Altirra and Atari800 tomorrow, hoping they'll work without a big headache haha 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pirx Posted September 4, 2023 Share Posted September 4, 2023 (edited) Altirra rulez big time, I use it every day on my Linux machine (with wine). It is more faithful to the real hardware (especially controls) and tries to detect cart type, which worked for me every time. atari800 is also very good, native, and thus many times faster if you crave for 100x speedups. Edited September 4, 2023 by pirx 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+bhall408 Posted September 4, 2023 Share Posted September 4, 2023 For Android (phone/tablet/tv/chromebook), Amazon (Fire TV/Stick/Tablet) and Win11, try Argon... We have 26 games for 5200 baked in for free play, and subscribers can BYO... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
donjn Posted September 8, 2023 Share Posted September 8, 2023 I finally got Atari 5200 working via Retroarch with direct links to each game through Launchbox! Retroarch has "read ahead" options, too for ZERO LAG. It's amazing. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0078265317 Posted September 10, 2023 Share Posted September 10, 2023 On 9/4/2023 at 2:54 PM, bhall408 said: For Android (phone/tablet/tv/chromebook), Amazon (Fire TV/Stick/Tablet) and Win11, try Argon... We have 26 games for 5200 baked in for free play, and subscribers can BYO... Yeah, but those all look like homebrews. I see no familiar titles in there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr SQL Posted September 27, 2023 Share Posted September 27, 2023 On 9/4/2023 at 3:54 PM, bhall408 said: For Android (phone/tablet/tv/chromebook), Amazon (Fire TV/Stick/Tablet) and Win11, try Argon... We have 26 games for 5200 baked in for free play, and subscribers can BYO... No support for Windows 10? That's still the larger base. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CommodoreDecker Posted September 28, 2023 Share Posted September 28, 2023 On 9/10/2023 at 2:45 PM, 0078265317 said: Yeah, but those all look like homebrews. I see no familiar titles in there. It looks like that, if one subscribes, then the ability to bring in other ROMs is opened up...? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted September 28, 2023 Share Posted September 28, 2023 On 9/8/2023 at 5:37 PM, donjn said: I finally got Atari 5200 working via Retroarch with direct links to each game through Launchbox! Retroarch has "read ahead" options, too for ZERO LAG. It's amazing. How do you find the sound, last time I tried using RetroArch for A8 and 5200 it was not very accurate... sTeVE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+bhall408 Posted September 28, 2023 Share Posted September 28, 2023 2 hours ago, CommodoreDecker said: It looks like that, if one subscribes, then the ability to bring in other ROMs is opened up...? Correct - if you subscribe to premium, you get cloud saves, premium games, and the feature to bring your own via local storage (on the device) or a folder on Google Drive. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
donjn Posted September 28, 2023 Share Posted September 28, 2023 2 hours ago, Jetboot Jack said: How do you find the sound, last time I tried using RetroArch for A8 and 5200 it was not very accurate... sTeVE The sound is always going to be an issue. You need to play around with the sound timing settings. I care more about input lag and how the games look and feel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted September 28, 2023 Share Posted September 28, 2023 (edited) So I guess it has not changed much then sadly, I have never found a setting on that core that sounds acceptable. I have a nice launchbox setup and have defaulted to Altirra for A8 and 5200 right now, it has it's quirks, but its accuracy is superb (for both sound and visuals it is far ahead of any other A8/5200 emulator) and I have not really felt any control issues, perhaps I need to revisit those settings in RetroArch 🙂 sTeVE Edited September 28, 2023 by Jetboot Jack 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
donjn Posted November 29, 2023 Share Posted November 29, 2023 On 9/28/2023 at 11:02 AM, Jetboot Jack said: So I guess it has not changed much then sadly, I have never found a setting on that core that sounds acceptable. I have a nice launchbox setup and have defaulted to Altirra for A8 and 5200 right now, it has it's quirks, but its accuracy is superb (for both sound and visuals it is far ahead of any other A8/5200 emulator) and I have not really felt any control issues, perhaps I need to revisit those settings in RetroArch 🙂 sTeVE Yes I like Altirra but hate the input lag when using it for the 800 and 5200. This is why I like using the built-in Atari 800 emulator via Retroarch because I can change read ahead for an almost CRT response time! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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