Loading ACSI & GemDos images with Retroarch

[k1w1]

Over the past year I have been working on a project which I call “Atari Dreams” similar to eXoDOS but for all things Atari. This is being done on Launchbox platform. So far I have completed the entry of around 3k 8bit software, console, handheld and Atari arcade games as well as a magazine and book library. I am hoping to release this to the community early next year.

 

I am about to start on the ST series and am looking  at a streamlined way to to run multi disk games in the retroarch version of hatari. I want to use retroarch over the native version of hatari for a number of reasons but mainly because of the bezel display options.

 

Over the years I have collected a large number of ACSI and GemDos individual game images that I would like to include for end user player convenience. I will also include the the disk versions as an option and for archival completeness.

 

Here is the problem. I am an 8bit guy and don’t have much of a clue in relation to hard drive usage on a ST emulator. How do I run the HD files on retroarch through Launchbox.

 

Any help would be appreciated. I have had a quick search of this forum already and could not find anything to help me.

 

TIA

Edited August 18 by k1w1

[Jfcatari]

There are many options for the ST for an hard disk.

• ultra satan   https://lotharek.pl/productdetail.php?id=48
• asc2scsi    https://github.com/retro16/acsi2stm     A version I built https://sites.google.com/view/jfcretro/acsi2stm?authuser=0
• many others too

[k1w1]

Thanks for your response Jfcatari, but I don’t actually own an ST. As I said in the above I am using the Retroarch implementation of the Hatari emulator with Launchbox as the frontend.

[ijor]

I'm not familiar with Launchbox, and I'm afraid most people here are probably in the same situation. We can advise how to use hard disks with Hatari, but not sure how it works with Launchbox.

 

[k1w1]

3 hours ago, ijor said:

I'm not familiar with Launchbox, and I'm afraid most people here are probably in the same situation. We can advise how to use hard disks with Hatari, but not sure how it works with Launchbox.

 

Thats cool. 

 

I think i have found a workaround in that i have come across a nice piece of software that will allow me to load a bezel with the native Hatari emulator. I have already sorted how to load a GemDos image with Hatari so i will probably use that instead of Retroarch.

[Jfcatari]

14 hours ago, k1w1 said:

Thanks for your response Jfcatari, but I don’t actually own an ST. As I said in the above I am using the Retroarch implementation of the Hatari emulator with Launchbox as the frontend.

With Hatari, you can build an image as an HD.

I do this when running Hatari on Linux.   I have my original Atari ST HD image restored for use in Hatari.

[zzip]

On 8/18/2024 at 4:55 AM, k1w1 said:

Over the past year I have been working on a project which I call “Atari Dreams” similar to eXoDOS but for all things Atari. This is being done on Launchbox platform. So far I have completed the entry of around 3k 8bit software, console, handheld and Atari arcade games as well as a magazine and book library. I am hoping to release this to the community early next year.

 

I am about to start on the ST series and am looking  at a streamlined way to to run multi disk games in the retroarch version of hatari. I want to use retroarch over the native version of hatari for a number of reasons but mainly because of the bezel display options.

 

Over the years I have collected a large number of ACSI and GemDos individual game images that I would like to include for end user player convenience. I will also include the the disk versions as an option and for archival completeness.

 

Here is the problem. I am an 8bit guy and don’t have much of a clue in relation to hard drive usage on a ST emulator. How do I run the HD files on retroarch through Launchbox.

 

Any help would be appreciated. I have had a quick search of this forum already and could not find anything to help me.

 

TIA

I like the display options of Retroarch too, but found that while retroarch works well for console emulation,  computer emulation is a different beast and often doesn't work well with retroarch, so I'm still using hatari native

 

for example, the docs for retroarch's hatari core are here: https://docs.libretro.com/library/hatari/

but the way I read that sound like it expects you to make all the changes within the retroarch interface or in the config file rather than pass them from another front-end

 

By contrast vanilla hatari has extensive documentation which makes integration with a front-end easier

 

There are four flavors of hard drive from hatari's perspective.   ACSI, SCSI, IDE and GEMDOS.  GEMDOS is really just pointing to files on your local hard drive rather than using a disk image.  So it's the easiest for users to work with.  If you have GemDos images, I wonder if they are just zip files that should be extracted first?      hatari supports SCSI for TT and Falcon only,  and IDE is mostly Falcon,  and Falcon emulation doesn't support ACSI images.  But most likely you'll be emulating ST/STe only and won't need to worry about TT or Falcon

 

hatari has these command lines for specifying disks

--acsi <acsi image name>

-d <GEMDOS folder that shows up as a hard drive>

--disk-a <floppy image>  or --disk-b

 

One last thing,  autobooting games on ST is another topic:

- some floppy disk images might have boot code in the boot sector and autoboot

- creating an AUTO and placing programs in it will cause them to boot at start IF they don't require GEM

- Autobooting GEM programs only works for the newer TOSes (I think 1.4 and up?),  and the boot flag is set in the desktop and saved with save desktop

 

but hatari has a flag that lets you autoboot a named program (you need to provide the full path).  This is useful if you have a harddrive image full of games, the front-end can specify which game to autoboot

--auto <program name>

 

[k1w1]

Thanks zzip, that was very helpful.

 

I found a useful utility in the LaunchBox forum for adding bezels to non retroarch emulators. It is called BezelManager and I will be able to use it on the native Hatari.

[zzip]

7 hours ago, k1w1 said:

I found a useful utility in the LaunchBox forum for adding bezels to non retroarch emulators. It is called BezelManager and I will be able to use it on the native Hatari.

Interesting, I'll have to check it out!