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<h1 class="pageheader">Hatari User's Manual</h1>
<p class="pageheader">
Version 1.9.0, September 2015
</p>
<p class="pageheader">
Manual written by: <strong>Thomas Huth</strong>, <strong>Matthias Arndt</strong>
&amp; <strong>Eero Tamminen</strong>
</p>
<p class="pageheader">
Hatari on the WWW:
<strong>
<a href="http://hatari.tuxfamily.org/">http://hatari.tuxfamily.org/</a>
</strong>
</p>
<h2 class="no-TOC">Index</h2>
<div id="generated-toc">
<!-- The TOC is generated automatically via JavaScript -->
</div>
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<h3>General description</h3>
<p>
Hatari is an Atari ST, STE, TT and Falcon emulator for Linux, OSX,
Windows and other Systems which are supported by the SDL library.
The emulator is open source software and is distributed under the terms of the
<a href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html">GNU General
Public License (GPL)</a>.
</p>
<p>
The Atari ST was a 16/32 bit computer system which was first released by Atari
in 1985. Using the Motorola 68000 CPU, it was a very popular computer having
quite a lot of CPU power at that time. See Appendix B for details on emulation
in general.
</p>
<p>
Unlike many other Atari ST emulators which try to give you a good
environment for running GEM applications, Hatari tries to emulate the hardware
of a ST as close as possible so that it is able to run most of the old ST games
and demos. Of course you can run normal GEM applications with Hatari, too.
Recent versions of Hatari even feature STE, Falcon and basic TT emulation.
</p>
<h3>Features</h3>
<ul>
<li>68000 - 68040 emulation via the UAE CPU core
(68060 and MMU emulation only with the WinUAE CPU core)</li>
<li>ST RAM size variable (from 512kiB up to 14MiB are possible)</li>
<li>TT RAM size variable (from 0 up to 256MiB are possible)</li>
<li>optional cartridge images for the ST ROM port</li>
<li>most of the ST specific hardware</li>
<li>ST Shifter with ST-High, ST-Medium and ST-Low resolutions,
overscan effects for all borders in color resolutions</li>
<li>512 color ST palette</li>
<li>Spec512 mode support for low and medium resolutions</li>
<li>many raster effects </li>
<li>scaling of low resolutions by factor two</li>
<li>interleaved lines rendering of ST-medium and (scaled) ST-low
resolutions for the TV "monitor type"</li>
<li>Blitter chip emulation</li>
<li>PSG YM2149 emulation (soundchip) including STFM samples</li>
<li>Printer port emulation on hardware level (print to file)</li>
<li>RS232 emulation</li>
<li>MIDI input/output/through emulation</li>
<li>Mega ST real time clock</li>
<li>IKBD emulation (keyboard, mouse and joystick) with custom
keyboard mapping</li>
<li>joystick emulation via cursor keys and joystick emulation via a
connected PC joystick</li>
<li>FDC (floppy disk controller) emulation using floppy disk images
in standard formats (*.ST, *.MSA, *.DIM and *.STX)</li>
<li>FDC emulation via the IPF support library for using
*.IPF, *.RAW and *.CTR images</li>
<li>support for packed disk images (PkZip and Gzip)</li>
<li>optional write-protection for floppy disk images</li>
<li>ACSI emulation for hard drive support (with basic support for extended
host adapter protocol to access disks &gt; 1 GB)</li>
<li>GEMDOS interface driver to mount directories as hard drives
with optional write-protection</li>
<li>support for memory snapshots (save whole system state)</li>
<li>driver for extended VDI resolutions</li>
<li>recording of sound as .WAV and .YM files</li>
<li>screenshots in PNG or BMP format</li>
<li>AVI animation capturing with sound</li>
<li>TOS versions 1.00, 1.02, 1.04 and 2.06 (and EmuTOS) can be used in ST mode.</li>
</ul>
<h4>STE hardware emulation</h4>
<p>There is support for following additional STE features:</p>
<ul>
<li>horizontal and vertical hardware fine scrolling</li>
<li>split screen techniques / in-screen video address manipulations</li>
<li>(STE specific) left border opening</li>
<li>4096 colors STE palette</li>
<li>Stereo DMA sample sound</li>
<li>Microwire/LMC1992 emulation</li>
<li>STE joypads</li>
<li>TOS versions 1.06, 1.62, 2.05 and 2.06 (and EmuTOS) can be used in STE mode.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Experimental TT hardware emulation</h4>
<p>There is support for following additional TT features:</p>
<ul>
<li>TT low/med/high resolution support</li>
<li>ST/TT palette switching and video shifter</li>
<li>RAM up to 14MiB (ST-RAM) and up to 256 MiB (TT-RAM)</li>
<li>Only TOS version 3.06 (and EmuTOS) can be used in TT mode.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Falcon hardware emulation</h4>
<p>There is support for following additional Falcon features:</p>
<ul>
<li>Partial Videl and Videl borders emulation for all Falcon screen modes</li>
<li>Aspect correction and scaling of small resolutions by an integer factor</li>
<li>STE/Falcon palette switching and shifter</li>
<li>Mono/RGB/VGA/TV monitor types</li>
<li>DSP co-processor emulation</li>
<li>RAM up to 14MiB (ST-RAM) and up to 256 MiB (TT-RAM)</li>
<li>Experimental microphone (jack) emulation</li>
<li>Experimental Crossbar sound matrix (ADC (mic &amp; PSG), DAC, DMA, DSP)
interconnect emulation + support for the additional DMA sound
sample rates</li>
<li>Experimental IDE master and slave emulation for hard drive support</li>
<li>TOS versions 4.00, 4.02, 4.04 and 4.92 (and EmuTOS) can be used in Falcon mode.</li>
</ul>
<p>See the developers' <span class="file">doc/todo.txt</span> file
(included with Hatari sources) for the details on the few remaining
emulation gaps and the <a href="compatibility.html">Hatari Atari
Software Compatibility List</a> for which Atari programs are known
to be affected by them.</p>
<h3>System requirements</h3>
<p> Hatari currently has the following minimum system requirements:</p>
<ul>
<li>a fast PC (&gt;500MHz, for Falcon and TT emulation
<a href="#Performance">even faster</a>)</li>
<li>some sort of Unix (preferable <a href="http://www.linux.org/">GNU/Linux</a>)
</li>
<li>the SDL library (<a href="http://www.libsdl.org/">http://www.libsdl.org/</a>)</li>
<li>the zLib (<a href="http://www.gzip.org/zlib/">http://www.gzip.org/zlib/</a>)
for support of ZIP-packed disk images (*.zip and *.gz)</li>
</ul>
<p>
In the course of time Hatari has successfully been tested by various people on
the following systems:
</p>
<ul>
<li>Linux/i86 with Kernel 2.4.x and 2.6.x</li>
<li>Linux/PPC with Kernel 2.4.x and 2.6.x</li>
<li>BeOS/i86</li>
<li>Apple Mac OS X on PowerPC and i86</li>
<li>NetBSD 1.6 on i86</li>
<li>NetBSD on a Digital Alpha</li>
<li>FreeBSD 4.1 on an i486, FreeBSD 4.8 on a Pentium 4 and FreeBSD 5.1</li>
<li>OpenBSD 3.5 and 5.0</li>
<li>Solaris 8 on a SUN UltraSparc 1</li>
<li>Linux/ARM (oabi) on Sharp Zaurus SL-C760 PDA</li>
<li>Linux/ARM (eabi) on Nokia Maemo Internet Tablets and N900 phone</li>
<li>Windows XP</li>
</ul>
<h2>Compiling and running</h2>
<h3>Compiling Hatari</h3>
<p>Required:</p>
<ul>
<li>A C compiler. Preferably GCC, but others have worked too.</li>
<li>A working CMake installation. See
<a href="http://www.cmake.org/">http://www.cmake.org/</a> for details.
<li>The SDL library v1.2.10 or newer. You can get it from
<a href="http://www.libsdl.org/">http://www.libsdl.org/</a>.
</li>
<li>The zLib compression library. You can get it from
<a href="http://www.gzip.org/zlib/">http://www.gzip.org/zlib/</a>.
</li>
</ul>
<p>Optional:</p>
<ul>
<li>The PNG image library for PNG format screenshots and to
decrease AVI video recording file sizes. You can get it from
<a href="http://www.libpng.org/">http://www.libpng.org/</a>.</li>
<li>The GNU Readline library for Hatari debugger command line editing.</li>
<li>The Xlib library to support Hatari Python UI window embedding
on systems with the X window system (Linux and other unixes).</li>
<li>The portaudio library for Falcon microphone recording support</li>
</ul>
<p>
The versions available in your Linux distribution will be sufficient
in most cases, but make sure you have also the header files installed
for the libraries as well! Typically they're in a corresponding -dev
package.
</p>
<p>
After you've verified that you have the required libraries and their
development files, change to the <span class="file">hatari/</span>
directory. Create a <span class="file">build/</span> directory under
it and configure the build system for your environment:
<pre>
mkdir -p build
cd build
cmake ..
</pre>
<p>
Then compile Hatari by typing <span class="commandline">make</span>.
If all works fine, you'll get the executable <span class="commandline">hatari</span>
in the src/ subdirectory.
</p>
<p>
Note: Instead of calling CMake directly, you can also use the supplied
configure script to run CMake and to give the arguments (like install
prefix) in a format familiar from GNU Autotools using programs. Type
"<span class="commandline">./configure --help</span>"
to see all the options supported by this script.
</p>
<h3>Installation of a TOS ROM</h3>
<p>
Before you can start Hatari, you have to copy a TOS ROM image to the data
directory (<span class="file">&lt;prefix&gt;/share/hatari/</span>, by
default <span class="file">/usr/local/share/hatari/</span>) and
rename it to <span class="commandline">tos.img</span>, or use the
<span class="commandline">--tos</span> command line option to tell
Hatari where to find a TOS ROM.
Hatari needs a TOS ROM image because this contains the operating system
of the emulated Atari.
</p>
<p>
Unfortunately it is not possible to ship an original ROM
image with the Hatari package since these images are still copyrighted.
But you can easily create an image with a real ST and one of those various
ROM-image programs for the ST (search for "TOSDUMP" with your
favourite internet search engine). If your old ST does not work anymore, you
can also try to search the internet directly for corresponding TOS ROM image,
but don't ask the Hatari team where to get one. </p>
<p> Another solution is EmuTOS, which is also shipped with the official
release versions of Hatari. EmuTOS is an open-source TOS clone. You can find
it at:
<a href="http://emutos.sourceforge.net/">http://emutos.sourceforge.net/</a>.
It is not the best solution for playing games or running other old software
due to compatibility issues (see <span class="file">emutos.txt</span> for
more details), but it's free and compatible with Hatari.</p>
<p>If you do not specify a TOS image on the commandline nor can Hatari
find a suitable TOS image in the default dir, you'll get the chance to
select a TOS image file from the GUI. </p>
<h3>Installation of the binary</h3>
<p> Type <span class="commandline">make install</span> as "root" user to
do a systemwide installation.</p>
<p>Assuming you didn't change the default installation prefix and that
<span class="file">/usr/local/bin/</span> is in your PATH, you should
be now able to start the Hatari executable from anywhere.</p>
<p> When you finally have got a TOS image, try starting Hatari with the
option <span class="commandline">--help</span> to find out more about
its command line parameters. </p>
<h3>Running Hatari for the first time</h3>
<p> Now type <span class="commandline">hatari</span> to run the
emulator for the first time. If all goes
well, you should now be presented with a window showing you the
familiar
little green desktop of the Atari ST. Press <span class="key">F12</span>
to turn on the GUI to
configure Hatari to suit your needs, press <span class="key">F11</span>
to toggle windowed and fullscreen mode. </p>
<h3>Configuration options precedence</h3>
<p>Hatari settings can come from several sources, with later ones
overriding the earlier given ones:
<ul>
<li>Builtin Hatari default options (which are different for old UAE and WinUAE
CPU core builds, former defaults to ST, latter to Falcon)</li>
<li>Global <span class="commandline">/etc/hatari.cfg</span>
(or <span class="commandline">/usr/local/etc/hatari.cfg</span>)
configuration file</li>
<li>User specific <span class="commandline">~/.hatari/hatari.cfg</span>
configuration file</li>
<li>Command line arguments
<li>Option changes done at run-time in Hatari options GUI, with debugger "setopt"
command or through the (optionally enabled) Hatari control socket.
</ul>
<p>Some of the run-time changes require emulation to be reset for them
to take effect.</p>
<h2>Command line options and arguments</h2>
<p>Usage:</p>
<pre>
hatari [options] [disk image | directory | Atari program ]
</pre>
<p>As an argument one can give either a name of:</p>
<ul>
<li>A floppy disk image,
<li>A directory that should be emulated as a virtual GEMDOS HD, or</li>
<li>An Atari program that should be autostarted. In this case
the program's directory will be used as the C: drive from
where this program will be started.
(Note that autostarting a program might not work if you've also
specified a floppy image for drive A: on command line or in config
file which contains a desktop.inf/newdesk.inf/emutos.inf file on
it.)</li>
</ul>
<p>Booting will be done from the disk image or directory that's given
last on the command line as an option or the argument (and which
corresponds to A: or C:).</p>
<p>Hatari command line options are split into several categories:</p>
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<h3>General options</h3>
<p class="parameter">-h,
--help</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Print command line options and
terminate</p>
<p class="parameter">-v,
--version</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Print version information and
terminate</p>
<p class="parameter">--confirm-quit
&lt;bool&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Whether Hatari confirms quitting</p>
<p class="parameter">-c, --configfile
&lt;filename&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Read additional configuration values from
&lt;file&gt;, these override values read from the global and
user configuration files
</p>
<p class="parameter">-k, --keymap
&lt;file&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">load keyboard mapping from
&lt;file&gt;</p>
<p class="parameter">--fast-forward
&lt;bool&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">On fast machine helps skipping (fast
forwarding) Hatari output</p>
<h3>Common display options</h3>
<p class="parameter">-m,
--mono</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Start in monochrome mode instead of
color</p>
<p class="parameter">--monitor
&lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Select monitor type (x =
mono/rgb/vga/tv)</p>
<p class="parameter">-f,
--fullscreen</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Start the emulator in fullscreen
mode</p>
<p class="parameter">-w, --window</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Start the emulator in windowed mode</p>
<p class="parameter">--grab</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Grab mouse (also) in windowed mode</p>
<p class="parameter">--borders &lt;bool&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Show ST/STE/Falcon screen borders
(for low/med resolution overscan demos)</p>
<p class="parameter">--frameskips
&lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Skip &lt;x&gt; frames after each
displayed frame to accelerate emulation (0=disabled, &gt;4 uses
automatic frameskip with given value as maximum)</p>
<p class="parameter">--slowdown &lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Slow down emulation by factor of x
(used as multiplier for VBL wait time)</p>
<p class="parameter">--statusbar
&lt;bool&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Show statusbar (with floppy leds etc
etc)</p>
<p class="parameter">--drive-led
&lt;bool&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Show overlay drive led when statusbar
isn&rsquo;t shown</p>
<p class="parameter">--max-width
&lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Preferred / maximum window width
for borders / zooming</p>
<p class="parameter">--max-height
&lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Preferred / maximum window height
for borders / zooming</p>
<p class="parameter">--bpp
&lt;bool&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Force internal bitdepth (x =
8/15/16/32, 0=disable)</p>
<h3>ST/STE specific display options</h3>
<p class="parameter">--desktop-st
&lt;bool&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Whether fullscreen mode uses desktop
resolution to avoid: messing multi-screen setups, several seconds
delay needed by LCD monitors resolution switching and the resulting
sound break. As Hatari ST/E display code doesn&rsquo;t support
zooming (except low-rez doubling), it doesn&rsquo;t get scaled (by
Hatari or monitor) when this is enabled. Therefore this is mainly
useful only if you suffer from the described effects, but still
want to grab mouse and remove other distractions from the screen
just by toggling fullscreen mode. (disabled by default)</p>
<p class="parameter">--spec512
&lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Hatari uses this threshold to decide
when to render a screen with the slower but more accurate
Spectrum512 screen conversion functions (0 &lt;= x &lt;= 512,
0=disable)</p>
<p class="parameter">-z, --zoom
&lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Zoom (double) low resolution (1=no,
2=yes)</p>
<h3>TT/Falcon specific display options</h3>
<p>
Zooming to sizes specified below is internally done using integer scaling
factors. This means that different Atari resolutions may show up with
different sizes, but they are never blurry.
<p class="parameter">--desktop &lt;bool&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Whether to use desktop resolution on
fullscreen to avoid issues related to resolution switching.
Otherwise fullscreen will use a resolution that is closest to the
Hatari window size. (enabled by default)</p>
<p class="parameter">--force-max
&lt;bool&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Hatari window size is forced to
specified maximum size and black borders used when Atari resolution
doesn&rsquo;t scale evenly to it. This is most useful when
recording videos of Falcon demos that change their resolution.
(disabled by default)</p>
<p class="parameter">--aspect
&lt;bool&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Whether to do monitor aspect ratio
correction (enabled by default)</p>
<h3>VDI options</h3>
<p class="parameter">--vdi
&lt;bool&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Whether to use VDI screen mode</p>
<p class="parameter">--vdi-planes
&lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Use extended VDI resolution with bit
depth &lt;x&gt; (x = 1, 2 or 4)</p>
<p class="parameter">--vdi-width
&lt;w&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Use extended VDI resolution with width
&lt;w&gt; (320 &lt; w &lt;= 1280)</p>
<p class="parameter">--vdi-height
&lt;h&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Use extended VDI resolution with height
&lt;h&gt; (200 &lt; h &lt;= 960)</p>
<h3>Screen capture options</h3>
<p class="parameter">--crop
&lt;bool&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Remove statusbar from the screen
captures</p>
<p class="parameter">--avirecord</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Start AVI recording. Note: recording will
automatically stop when emulation resolution changes.</p>
<p class="parameter">--avi-vcodec &lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Select AVI video codec (x = bmp/png).
PNG compression can be <em>much</em> slower than using the uncompressed BMP
format, but uncompressed video content takes huge amount of space.</p>
<p class="parameter">--png-level &lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Select PNG compression level for AVI video (x = 0-9).
Both compression efficiency and speed depend on the compressed
screen content. Highest compression level (9) can be <em>really</em>
slow with some content. Levels 3-6 should compress nearly as well
with clearly smaller CPU overhead.</p>
<p class="parameter">--avi-fps &lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Force AVI frame rate (x = 50/60/71/...)</p>
<p class="parameter">--avi-file &lt;file&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Use &lt;file&gt; to record AVI</p>
<h3>Devices options</h3>
<p class="parameter">-j,
--joystick &lt;port&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Emulate joystick with cursor keys in
given port (0-5)</p>
<p class="parameter">--joy&lt;port&gt;
&lt;type&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Set joystick type (none/keys/real) for
given port</p>
<p class="parameter">--printer
&lt;file&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Enable printer support and write data
to &lt;file&gt;</p>
<p class="parameter">--midi-in
&lt;filename&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Enable MIDI support and write MIDI data
to &lt;file&gt;</p>
<p class="parameter">--midi-out
&lt;filename&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Enable MIDI support and read MIDI data
from &lt;file&gt;</p>
<p class="parameter">--rs232-in
&lt;filename&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Enable serial port support and use
&lt;file&gt; as the input device</p>
<p class="parameter">--rs232-out
&lt;filename&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Enable serial port support and use
&lt;file&gt; as the output device</p>
<h3>Disk options</h3>
<p class="parameter">--drive-a
&lt;bool&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Enable/disable drive A (default is on)</p>
<p class="parameter">--drive-b
&lt;bool&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Enable/disable drive B (default is on)</p>
<p class="parameter">--drive-a-heads
&lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Set number of heads for drive A (1=single sided, 2=double sided)</p>
<p class="parameter">--drive-b-heads
&lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Set number of heads for drive B (1=single sided, 2=double sided)</p>
<p class="parameter">--disk-a
&lt;file&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Set disk image for floppy drive A</p>
<p class="parameter">--disk-b
&lt;file&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Set disk image for floppy drive B</p>
<p class="parameter">--protect-floppy
&lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Write protect floppy image contents
(on/off/auto). With "auto" option write protection is according to
the disk image file attributes</p>
<p class="parameter">--protect-hd
&lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Write protect hard drive &lt;dir&gt;
contents (on/off/auto). With "auto" option the protection can be
controlled by setting individual files attributes as it disables
the file attribute modifications for the GEMDOS HD
emulation</p>
<p class="parameter">--gemdos-case &lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Specify whether new dir/filenames are forced to be
in upper or lower case with the GEMDOS HD emulation. Off/upper/lower, off by default
</p>
<p class="parameter">-d, --harddrive
&lt;dir&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Emulate hard disk partition(s) with
&lt;dir&gt; contents. If directory contains only single letter
(C-Z) subdirectories, each of these subdirectories will be treated
as a separate partition, otherwise the given directory itself will
be assigned to drive "C:". In the multiple partition case, the
letters used as the subdirectory names will determine to which
drives/partitions they&rsquo;re assigned. If &lt;dir&gt; is
an empty string, then harddrive's emulation is disabled</p>
<p class="parameter">--acsi
&lt;file&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Emulate an ACSI hard drive with an image
&lt;file&gt;</p>
<p class="parameter">--ide-master
&lt;file&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Emulate an IDE master hard drive with an
image &lt;file&gt;</p>
<p class="parameter">--ide-slave
&lt;file&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Emulate an IDE slave hard drive with an
image &lt;file&gt;</p>
<p class="parameter">--fastfdc
&lt;bool&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Speed up FDC emulation (can cause
incompatibilities)</p>
<h3>Memory options</h3>
<p class="parameter">
--memstate &lt;file&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Load memory snap-shot &lt;file&gt;</p>
<p class="parameter">-s, --memsize
&lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Set amount of emulated RAM, x = 1 to 14
MiB, or 0 for 512 KiB</p>
<h3>ROM options</h3>
<p class="parameter">-t,
--tos &lt;imagefile&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Specify TOS ROM image to use</p>
<p class="parameter">--patch-tos
&lt;bool&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Use this option to enable/disable TOS
ROM patching. Experts only! Leave this enabled unless you know what
you are doing!</p>
<p class="parameter">--cartridge
&lt;imagefile&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Use ROM cartridge image &lt;file&gt;
(only works if GEMDOS HD emulation and extended VDI resolution are
disabled)</p>
<h3>CPU options</h3>
<p class="parameter">
--cpulevel &lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Specify CPU (680x0) to use (use x &gt;=
1 with EmuTOS or TOS &gt;= 2.06 only!)</p>
<p class="parameter">--cpuclock
&lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Set the CPU clock (8, 16 or 32 Mhz)</p>
<p class="parameter">--compatible
&lt;bool&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Use a more compatible, but slower 68000
CPU mode with better prefetch accuracy and cycle counting</p>
<h3>Misc system options</h3>
<p class="parameter">
--machine &lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Select machine type (x = st, ste, tt or
falcon)</p>
<p class="parameter">--blitter
&lt;bool&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Enable blitter emulation (ST only)</p>
<p class="parameter">--dsp &lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Falcon DSP emulation (x = none, dummy
or emu, Falcon only)</p>
<p class="parameter">--timer-d
&lt;bool&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Patch redundantly high Timer-D
frequency set by TOS. This about doubles Hatari speed (for ST/e
emulation) as the original Timer-D frequency causes most of the
interrupts.</p>
<p class="parameter">--fast-boot
&lt;bool&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Patch TOS and initialize the so-called
"memvalid" system variables to by-pass the memory test of TOS, so
that the system boots faster.</p>
<p class="parameter">--rtc
&lt;bool&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Enable real-time clock</p>
<h3>Sound options</h3>
<p class="parameter">--mic
&lt;bool&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Enable/disable (Falcon only)
microphone</p>
<p class="parameter">--sound
&lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Sound frequency: 6000-50066. "off"
disables the sound and speeds up the emulation. To prevent extra
sound artifacts, the frequency should be selected so that it either
matches evenly with the STE/TT/Falcon sound DMA (6258, 12517,
250033, 50066 Hz) or your sound card frequencies (11025, 22050,
44100 or 6000...48000 Hz). Check what your sound card supports.</p>
<p class="parameter">--sound-buffer-size
&lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">SDL&rsquo;s sound buffer size: 10-100,
or 0 to use default buffer size. By default Hatari uses an SDL
buffer size of 1024 samples, which gives approximatively 20-30 ms
of sound depending on the chosen sound frequency. Under some OS or
with not fully supported sound card, this default setting can cause
a bigger delay at lower frequency (nearly 0.5 sec). In that case,
you can use this option to force the size of the sound buffer to a
fixed number of milliseconds of sound (using 20 is often a good
choice if you have such problems). Most users will not need this
option.</p>
<p class="parameter">--sound-sync
&lt;bool&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">The emulation rate is nudged by +100 or
0 or -100 micro-seconds on occasion. This prevents the sound buffer
from overflowing (long latency and lost samples) or underflowing
(short latency and repeated samples). The emulation rate smoothly
deviates by a maximum of 0.58% until synchronized, while the
emulator continuously generates every sound sample and the crystal
controlled sound system consumes every sample.<br />
(on|off, off=default)</p>
<p class="parameter">--ym-mixing
&lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Select a method for mixing the three
YM2149 voice volumes together. "model" uses a mathematical model of
the YM voices, "table" uses a lookup table of audio output voltage
values measured on STF and "linear" just averages the 3 YM
voices.</p>
<h3>Debug options</h3>
<p class="parameter">-W, --wincon</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Open console window (Windows only)</p>
<p class="parameter">-D,
--debug</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Toggle whether CPU exceptions invoke
the debugger</p>
<p class="parameter">--debug-except &lt;flags&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Specify which exceptions invoke debugger, see
"--debug-except help" for available (comma separated) exception
flags.</p>
<p class="parameter">--bios-intercept</p>
<p class="paramdesc">
Toggle XBios command parsing. Allows Atari programs to use all Hatari
functionality and change Hatari state through Hatari specifit
XBios(255) calls. XBios(20) printscreen calls produce also Hatari
screenshots.</p>
<p class="parameter">--conout &lt;device&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Enable console (xconout vector functions) output
redirection for given &lt;device&gt; to host terminal. Device 2 is for
the (CON:) VT52 console, which vector function catches also EmuTOS panic
messages and MiNT console output, not just normal BIOS console output.</p>
<p class="parameter">--disasm &lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Set disassembly options. 'uae' and 'ext' select
the dissasembly engine to use, bitmask sets output options for the
external disassembly engine and 'help' lists them.</p>
<p class="parameter">--natfeats &lt;bool&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Enable/disable (basic) Native Features support.
E.g. EmuTOS uses it for debug output.</p>
<p class="parameter">--trace
&lt;flags&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Activate debug traces, see
"--trace help" for available tracing flags</p>
<p class="parameter">--trace-file
&lt;file&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Save trace output to &lt;file&gt;
(default=stderr)</p>
<p class="parameter">--parse
&lt;file&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Parse/execute debugger commands from
&lt;file&gt;</p>
<p class="parameter">--saveconfig</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Save Hatari configuration and exit.
Hatari UI needs Hatari configuration file to start, this can be
used to create it automatically.</p>
<p class="parameter">--no-parachute</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Disable SDL parachute to get Hatari
core dumps. SDL parachute is enabled by default to restore video
mode in case Hatari terminates abnormally while using non-standard
screen resolution.</p>
<p class="parameter">--control-socket
&lt;file&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Hatari reads options from given socket
at run-time</p>
<p class="parameter">--log-file
&lt;file&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Save log output to &lt;file&gt;
(default=stderr)</p>
<p class="parameter">--log-level
&lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Log output level
(x=debug/todo/info/warn/error/fatal)</p>
<p class="parameter">--alert-level
&lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Show dialog for log messages above
given level</p>
<p class="parameter">--run-vbls
&lt;x&gt;</p>
<p class="paramdesc">Exit after X VBLs</p>
<p>Type <span class="commandline">hatari --help</span> to list all
the command line options supported by a given version of Hatari.</p>
<h2>Using the emulated system</h2>
<p> Once you've started Hatari successfully, you can use the emulator as
an almost complete Atari ST computer system. </p>
<h3>The GUI</h3>
<p>Press <span class="key">F12</span> to enter the GUI. Navigate it
with the mouse.
The GUI is rather self explanatory.</p>
<h4 class="gui">The Main Menu</h4>
<div class="floatimage">
<img src="images/main.png" width="500" height="304"
alt="Hatari's GUI - the main menu" />
</div>
<p>
You can reach the other setup dialogs from the main menu by clicking on
the appropriate buttons.
</p>
<p>
You can load the current settings from a configuration file by clicking
on <span class="button">Load&nbsp;config.</span> and you can save
the current settings to a configuration file by clicking on
<span class="button">Save&nbsp;config.</span>.
</p>
<p>
Click <span class="button">OK</span> to go back and continue the emulation.
All changed options will be applied.
</p>
<p>
Select the <span class="button">Reset&nbsp;machine</span> option if you
want the emulated machine to perform a cold reset. This is equal to
switching the power off and on again on a real Atari machine.
</p>
<p>
Click <span class="button">Quit</span> to terminate Hatari
and return to the host OS.
</p>
<p>
Click <span class="button">Cancel</span> to abandon any
changes that you have made.
</p>
<h4 class="gui">The File Selector Dialog</h4>
<div class="floatimage">
<img src="images/fileselector.png" width="640" height="400"
alt="Hatari's GUI - the fileselector" />
</div>
<p>
The file selector dialog appears whenever you are prompted to choose a file
or folder.
</p>
<p>
To enter a folder or choose a file, simply click on the entry in the
main box of the dialog. To navigate in the file list, you can use the
scrollbar on the right with mouse, or use keyboard up + down arrow,
page up + down, Home and End keys.
</p>
<p>
You can use the three buttons in the upper right corner for additional folder
navigation. Click the <span class="button">..</span> button to go up one level
in the directory tree. Click the <span class="button">~</span> button to return
to your home directory. The <span class="button">/</span> button can be clicked
to go to the root directory of the file system.
</p>
<h4 class="gui">The System Dialog</h4>
<div class="floatimage">
<img src="images/system.png" width="600" height="400"
alt="Hatari's GUI - the system dialog" />
</div>
<p>
The system dialog can be used to define the basic hardware attributes of
the machine that should be emulated.
</p>
<p>
The machine type option is used to select the type of Atari computer to
be emulated. The ST was the very first 16/32-bit computer from Atari.
Most older games and demos require an ST. The STE was introduced some years
later and had some more advanced hardware features. There are not that many
demos or games that really require an STE but since most normal ST games/demos
also work with an STE, it's normally safe to always work in STE mode.
<br />
TT and Falcon are more advanced, but they are not as compatible to the ST as
the STE was. Therefore many old games and demos do not work with these machine
types anymore. There were only very few programs that were made for the TT
exclusively, while there were some interesting games and demos specially made
for the Falcon.
<br />
<em>Note:</em> Falcon and especially TT emulation are still considered as
experimental and incomplete.
Quite a bunch of programs do not work very well yet.
</p>
<p>
For STE emulation a STE compatible TOS image, e.q. version 1.06, 1.62 or
2.x, is strongly recommended. For TT emulation you need TOS 3.0x and for Falcon
emulation you need TOS 4.0x. EmuTOS can be used on all machine types.
</p>
<p>
The CPU type option can be used to select the level of the central processing
unit. If you are not sure what to use, simply select 68000 for ST and STE
machines and 68030 for TT and Falcon emulation, since this were the original
configurations used in the Atari computers. In case you want to vary
the CPU type, you have got to be aware of some constraints:
</p>
<ul>
<li>
Atari ST and STE have only been shipped with a 68000 CPU, so for best
compatibility with old programs, you should choose this CPU type.
</li>
<li>
If you are going to use TOS 1.0x, you also have to select the 68000 CPU,
since these TOS versions are not aware of the higher CPU levels yet.
If you want to use a higher CPU level with the ST or STE machine type,
you've got to use TOS 2.0x instead.
</li>
<li>
Atari TT and Falcon computers were using the 68030 CPU, so you should select
the 68030 CPU type for these machines.
</li>
<li>
TOS 3.0x and 4.0x also only work with a CPU &gt;= 68020.
</li>
<li>
68010 and 68040, 68060 have never been used in official Atari computers,
so don't use these CPU types unless you've got some good reasons.
</li>
<li>
The 68060 option is only available in the &quot;WinUAE&quot; builds of
Hatari, and is currently also considered as experimental, so do not use
this option unless you know what you are doing.
</li>
</ul>
<p>
The CPU clock option can be used to select the frequency that is used
to clock the CPU. 8 Mhz is the standard for ST and STE and the most
compatible frequency for old software.
Use 16 MHz for Mega STE and Falcon emulation.
The CPU in the TT was clocked with 32 MHz.
</p>
<p>
For Falcon mode, you can choose whether you want to disable DSP emulation,
fake it or enable full emulation. Most Falcon programs only play sound or work
correctly when you enable the DSP emulation, but it needs a lot of host CPU
power (more than 2 GHz) for full emulation. So if you have a slow host CPU,
you can try if your Falcon program also runs with DSP disabled or in
the &quot;dummy&quot; fake mode.
Note that you can not change this option while the DSP based program already
runs.
</p>
<p>
The check boxes in the &quot;CPU and system parameters&quot; section can
be used to fine-tune the machine and CPU types.
</p>
<p>
If you enable the "Real time clock emulation" switch, a RTC (like the ones
that could be found in the Mega-ST and Mega-STE computers) will be emulated
based on the time of the host computer.
This option is only affects the emulation of ST and STE machines. TT and
Falcon used a different kind of RTC (which is not optional and thus always
enabled in Hatari).
Note: You need at least TOS 1.02 for proper RTC emulation, TOS 1.00 does
not support this.
</p>
<p>
The next check box can be used to enable/disable Blitter emulation.
The Blitter is a custom chip that accelerates some graphical operations.
This switch only toggles the Blitter in plain ST mode. In STE and Falcon mode,
the Blitter is always enabled (since these machines have always been sold
with a Blitter chip). The TT was always shipped without the Blitter chip.
</p>
<p>
The &quot;Patch Timer-D&quot; option changes the Timer-D initialization from
TOS. TOS uses the MFP timer D as a baudrate generator for RS232. However, the
TOS default value slows down the emulation. The patch gives you a better
performance. It is normally safe to enable the patch, but if you encounter a
program that does not work, you can try to disable the patch to see if it
works better.
</p>
<p>
With the &quot;Boot faster&quot; option, Hatari patches the TOS ROM and some
system variables, to speed up the boot process of the emulated system, e.g.
by simulating a warm reset. This is a convenient option, but some very few old
programs rely on an unmodified boot process, so in rare cases this option has
to be switched off to get those programs running.
</p>
<p>
The &quot;Prefetch mode&quot; option is used to enable the emulation of 68k
address errors and the so-called CPU prefetch buffer. This is needed for best
compatibility, but it slows down emulation a little bit so you can disable it
if you don't need it and if you have a slow host system.
</p>
<p>
The &quot;Cycle exact&quot;, the &quot;MMU emulation&quot; and
&quot;24-bit addressing&quot; option are only available in the
&quot;WinUAE&quot; builds
of Hatari. They are considered as experimental and should be switched off
unless you know what you are doing.
</p>
<p>
The FPU settings are also only available with the &quot;WinUAE&quot; builds
of Hatari. They can be used to select the type of floating point unit of CPUs
&gt;= 68020. In the normal builds of Hatari, the FPU is always enabled for
68030 and 68040 CPUs.
</p>
<p>
<em>NOTE:</em> The emulated Atari system is very very sensitive to all of
these options and it is strongly recommended to reset the emulation after
changing them (for most things that's done automatically).
The correct CPU type and clock are automatically selected when one uses the
<span class="commandline">--machine</span> command line option.
</p>
<h4 class="gui">The Floppy Disks Dialog</h4>
<div class="floatimage">
<img src="images/floppydisks.png" width="640" height="320"
alt="Hatari's GUI - the floppy disks dialog" />
</div>
<p>
This dialog can be used to choose which floppy disks should be emulated
in the disk drives. You can use most standard Atari ST disk image files.
You may select and browse also zipped disk images. See the chapter
<a href="#Floppy_disk_images">"Floppy disk images"</a> for details.
</p>
<p>
Each drive can be enabled or disabled (as if it was not connected or turned
off). You can also choose to emulate a single sided drive instead of a double
sided one (some games or demos will have a different behaviour in single sided
mode).
</p>
<p>
Click on the button <span class="button">Browse</span> next to the
A: and B: option to go to the fileselector to choose a disk image for the
corresponding drive.
</p>
<p>Click on <span class="button">Eject</span> to eject a disk image
from the emulated drive. The emulated ST will act as if had no floppy
disk in its drive.</p>
<p>You can specify a default directory where Hatari will start to
browse the filesystem.</p>
<p>
Check the "Auto insert B" option if you want Hatari to be smart and
insert the second disk of a two disk game automatically.
Some games then use the second drive automatically.
In the case that a game is not able to find the disk in the second drive,
you have to insert the second disk in drive A: manually when prompted.
<br />
<em>NOTE:</em> This option only works properly if the file name of the
first disks ends with an 'a' before the extension and the second disk name
ends with a 'b'.
</p>
<p>
Select if you want to use fast FDC (Floppy Disk Controller) emulation.
"Fast floppy access" option will speed up disk accesses, but this can
cause incompatibilities with programs that expect correct delays
(some games/demos don't expect data to be read too fast from the
disk). For example, when using STX images, most protections will fail
if fast floppy access is enabled.
</p>
<p>
If you want, you can set Hatari to write-protect your disks. Atari ST
virii can spread on disk images, so that can be a good idea. However,
note that some programs won't work correctly (or at all) with write
protected disks, and things like saving highscores in games will fail.
</p>
<div class="floatimage">
<img src="images/newfloppy.png" width="290" height="224"
alt="Hatari's GUI - the new floppy dialog" />
</div>
<p>
If you need to create a new blank disk image, click on
<span class="button">Create&nbsp;blank&nbsp;image</span>.
Parameters for the new image can be set in the following dialog. HD
and ED disk sector counts are for larger, non-Atari disk sizes, they
can be useful with programs that don't work from hard drive, or with
with GEMDOS HD emulation.
Click on <span class="button">Create</span> to save the new image or on
<span class="button">Back</span> to return to the disk dialog.
</p>
<p>
After clicking <span class="button">Create</span>, a fileselector
appears. You can browse the filesystem now. Select the target directory,
click beside "File:" and type in a name for the new disk image.
The name should terminate with .st or .msa.
</p>
<p>
Hatari can currently create plain .ST and .MSA disk images exclusively.
<span class="commandline">hmsa</span> command line utility can be used
to convert disk images between .ST and .MSA formats.
</p>
<h4 class="gui">The Hard Disks Dialog</h4>
<div class="floatimage">
<img src="images/harddisks.png" width="640" height="304"
alt="Hatari's GUI - the hard disks dialog" />
</div>
<p>
This dialog can be used to change the hard disk settings.
</p>
<p>
Here you can select a hard disk image file for ACSI, IDE master or
slave hard drive emulation, or you can select a host directory to be
emulated as the Atari hard drive.
</p>
<p>
Check "Boot from HD" if you want Hatari to execute the AUTO folder on
the hard disk. This option is checked by default if you specify a
hard disk image or a directory via the command line.
</p>
<p>
Removing the check from the "Allow GEMDOS drive modification" option
will prevent Atari programs from modifying the files in GEMDOS HD
emulation directory or creating new files under it.
</p>
<p>
Note that you need TOS version &gt;= 2.05 to boot from IDE hard drive.
And ACSI hard drive emulation does not work with TOS 4.0x in Falcon mode.
</p>
<h4 class="gui">The Memory Dialog</h4>
<div class="floatimage">
<img src="images/memory.png" width="398" height="349"
alt="Hatari's GUI - the memory dialog" />
</div>
<p>You can select the amount of RAM for the emulated ST here. Only
amounts that were valid on a real unmodified STFM can be selected.</p>
<p><em>Note:</em> This option is critical and you are strongly advised
to reset the emulated ST
when changing this option.</p>
<p>Here you will find the options to save memory snapshots as well.</p>
<p>Click on <span class="button">Save</span> to save a memory snapshot
to file. You can select a new filename here.</p>
<p>Click on <span class="button">Restore</span> to restore a memory
snapshot from a file. Use the fileselector to select the snapshot to be
restored.</p>
<p><em>NOTE:</em> Memory snapshots are not interchangeable between
different versions of Hatari. E.q. if you compile a newer Hatari, you
cannot load your old memory snapshots back.</p>
<h4 class="gui">The ROM Dialog</h4>
<div class="floatimage">
<img src="images/tos.png" width="519" height="367"
alt="Hatari's GUI - the ROM dialog" />
</div>
<p>Here you can select the TOS image to use. Click on <span
class="button">Browse</span> to select it via the fileselector.
You can also select an optional cartridge image to use. Click on <span
class="button">Browse</span> to select one via the fileselector. Click on <span
class="button">Eject</span> to disconnect the custom cartridge image.
</p>
<p>
For ST mode, use TOS 1.00, 1.02, 1.04 or 2.06.
For STE mode, use TOS 1.06, 1.62, 2.05 or 2.06.
If you want to use the TT mode, you must specify a TOS 3.06 image here.
And in Falcon mode, you have to use either TOS 4.00, 4.02, 4.04 or 4.92.
However, you should always use TOS 4.04 for Falcon mode, it's the most common one.
Also note that TOS 4.92 can not be booted from a boot disk (like it's done on a
real Falcon), you have to specify it directly in the TOS ROM setup dialog here.
</p>
<p>
Keep in mind that any custom cartridge image will not work together with
GEMDOS HD emulation or the VDI extended resolution emulation
since some additional driver code will be used in the cartridge memory
space for these emulations.
</p>
<p>
<em>Note:</em> These options are critical and you are strongly
advised to reset the emulated ST
when changing one of these option.
</p>
<h4 class="gui">The Joystick Dialog</h4>
<div class="floatimage">
<img src="images/joystick.png" width="320" height="288"
alt="Hatari's GUI - the joystick dialog" />
</div>
<p>In this dialog, you can configure the emulated joysticks.
With the upper two arrows, you can choose the joystick which you want to
configure.</p>
<p>Joystick 1 is the normal ST joystick port and 99.9% of all ST games
use this port.
Joystick 0 emulates a joystick plugged into the ST mouse port
and is often used in games for two players.</p>
<p>With STE joypad A and B, you can enable the emulation of Jaguar joypads
which are plugged in the enhanced joystick ports of the Atari STE.
Only very few STE games support these joypads, so you often won't need this.</p>
<p>Finally, Hatari also emulates joysticks which were plugged on the parallel
port with a special adapter on a real ST. These were used in some few
multi-player games like "Gauntlet 2".</p>
<p>For each ST joystick, choose whether you want to disable it,
use the keyboard for emulation or use a real PC joystick.</p>
<p>For keyboard emulation, you can select the keys by pressing the
<span class="button">Define&nbsp;keys</span> button. You will be prompted to press
the keys for up, down, left, right and fire.</p>
<p>If you want to use a real PC joystick for the emulation, you should connect
it to your PC before you start Hatari. Then you can choose the joystick with
the two lower arrows.</p>
<p>Check the "Enable autofire" option if you are too lazy to pound
on the fire button in shoot'em-up games. However, this option only works with
certain games. In some other games, it gets worse if you enable this option.</p>
<p>See also the chapter "Emulated Joystick" for details.</p>
<h4 class="gui">The Atari Monitor Dialog</h4>
<div class="floatimage">
<img src="images/monitor.png" width="340" height="304"
alt="Hatari's GUI - the Atari monitor dialog" />
</div>
<p>
Here you control the video output of the emulated Atari.
</p>
<p>
You can select which sort of monitor to use. This option depends on
the machine type which you have selected in the "System options"
dialog. In ST and STE mode, you can choose between monochrome mode
(select "Mono") and color mode (select one of the other monitor types).
Note that when you select "TV" and use zoomed low resolution or
switch to ST medium resolution, you will get a TV-like screen rendering
which is a little bit faster but darker compared to the normal "RGB"
monitor mode. Switching between mono and a color monitor acts like a monitor
switch on a real ST - so beware, this will reboot your emulated system!<br />
In TT mode, you can only choose between TT-high resolution ("Mono")
and normal modes (select one of the other monitor types).
Finally the Falcon mode supports all four types of monitors. Note that most
Falcon demos/games require a RGB or TV mode, and do not work with
VGA, although there are also few VGA-only games and demos.
</p>
<p>
"Show ST/STE borders" toggles the displaying of the borders around the ST /
STE. Some demos and games use the screen borders for displaying
additional graphics. As enabling this option increases CPU computing time,
don't enable it if you have a very slow computer.
Borders are shown also in Falcon emulation, but Videl emulation doesn't
yet support palette effects.
This option doesn't affect TT screen mode or extended VDI resolutions.
</p>
<p>
Extended VDI resolutions will emulate a sort of extended graphics card
in the emulated machine, which gives you larger (2-16 color)
resolutions for GEM. Select a resolution and color depth. Check to
activate. This mode isn't affect by the other video options mentioned
above. Uncheck to get back to a normal ST behaviour.<br />
</p>
<p><em>Note that there are several gotches with extended VDI
resolutions:</em></p>
<ul>
<li>Only GEM conformant applications work with them, 99% of all games
and demos don't.</li>
<li>Several GEM programs accessing screen directly (like NVDI) crash
with large enough screen sizes.</li>
<li>Memory reserved for (larger) extended resolutions breaks TOS v3 memory
detection, so you need to interrupt boot up memory detection.</li>
<li>TOS v4 isn't compatible with them. In Falcon emulation you need to
use EmuTOS with extended resolutions.</li>
</ul>
<p>
Because TT and Falcon support natively larger resolutions,
VDI mode is most useful with ST / STE emulation.
</p>
<h4 class="gui">The Hatari Screen Dialog</h4>
<div class="floatimage">
<img src="images/screen.png" width="520" height="320"
alt="Hatari's GUI - the Hatari screen dialog" />
</div>
<p>
Here you control how the video output of the emulated Atari appears
on your screen.
</p>
<p>
Check "Fullscreen" to run Hatari in fullscreen. By default Hatari
runs in windowed mode.
</p>
<p>
The "Frame Skip" option can be used to speed up the emulator
if it is running too slow on your system. Disable frame-skip if you have
a fast computer. When selecting 1, 2 or 4, drawing of corresponding number
of frames will be skipped after each frame actually shown by Hatari.
Select "Auto" to let the emulator to decide whether, and
how many frames will be skipped.<br />
<em>Note:</em> The frameskip option also affects the frame rate of the
screen animation recording!
</p>
<p>
Indicators that you can have on the Hatari window:
</p>
<ul>
<li>"Statusbar" at the bottom of the screen.
The statusbar shows the floppy drive LEDs, the current frameskip value,
the machine type including TOS version and memory size, and whether
recording is currently active.</li>
<li>"Drive led" is a colored rectangle shown on top of the Hatari window
contents. It will show any disk (floppy or hard drive) activity.</li>
<li>"None" turns both of above options off.</li>
</ul>
<p>
"Keep desktop resolution" option will use your desktop resolution
for fullscreen to avoid issues related to resolution switching,
especially on LCD monitors (they're slow). If this isn't enabled,
values from the "Max zoomed win" option are used in selecting
a suitable resolution.
<p>
"Max zoomed win" option controls up to which size Hatari tries to scale
the Atari resolutions and how much of the borders (enabled in Atari
Monitor dialog) will be shown. Note that there are several limitations
in this and the "Keep desktop resolution" option, partly because Hatari
has different implementations for different video modes:
</p>
<ul>
<li>VDI resolutions (selectable in Atari Monitor dialog) aren't scaled.</li>
<li>ST and STE video emulation supports only doubling of the ST-low
resolution.</li>
<li>Hatari doesn't support downscaling. If the original Atari resolution
is larger than the specified size (e.g. TT-high), the Hatari screen
size will also be larger than requested. Hatari Falcon/TT window size
will be limited to the Desktop size though.</li>
<li>TT and Falcon resolutions support only <em>integer</em> scaling ratios.
If the scaling ratio cannot match the requested size exactly, Hatari
will use a ratio that will produce smaller size closest to the
requested one.</li>
</ul>
<p>
You should set these values to a size that suits best your monitor
resolution. It's intended to help in getting Hatari to best use your
monitor space on a windowed mode and in fullscreen avoiding "fuzzy"
scaling done by your LCD monitor.
</p>
<p>
Giving "-z 2" option on command line will reset max zoomed size to
default values and "-z 1" will disable all zooming.
Note that zooming takes additional CPU computing time and should
not be enabled on very slow computers.
</p>
<p>Click the <span class="button">Screenshot</span> button to create
a screenshot in PNG (or BMP) format to the current working directory
or click the <span class="button">Record&nbsp;AVI</span> button to
record an AVI format video of Hatari screen (and audio) output.
</p>
<p>
Selecting "Crop statusbar" option will leave statusbar out from
the screenshots and recorded videos.
</p>
<h4 class="gui">The Keyboard Dialog</h4>
<div class="floatimage">
<img src="images/keyboard.png" width="459" height="223"
alt="Hatari's GUI - the keyboard dialog" />
</div>
<p>Here you can select the keyboard mapping to use. Two different mappings
called "Symbolic" and "Scancode" are predefined.</p>
<p>"Symbolic" tries to map the symbolic values of your PC keys
to the ST keys. It should be working pretty good on all systems as long
as your keyboard layout looks close to the standard english keyboard
layout. However, you might experience some problems with special keys like
brackets etc.</p>
<p>"Scancode" uses the scancode values of your PC keys for keyboard
mapping. This only works on certain architectures like Linux where the
scancodes are similar to the ST scancodes (e.g. it does not work on Mac OS X).
If it works on your system, this often gives better results than the symbolic
mapping. Note that you also need a TOS version with the right language
(e.g. use a French TOS if you are using a French keyboard).</p>
<p>You can also load a custom keyboard mapping file here if you wish. Please
note that the custom keyboard mapping will use the "symbolic"
mapping for all keys that are not defined by your map file. Have a look
at the supplied example mapfile (keymap-sample.txt) to see how to create
your own keyboard mapping.</p>
<p>
When the emulator runs in fast forward mode, and you want to type text,
it can be annoying that the emulated system detects multiple key events
due to the key repetition of the emulated system. To avoid this you can
disable the key repetition in fast forward mode here.
</p>
<h4 class="gui">The Sound Dialog</h4>
<div class="floatimage">
<img src="images/sound.png" width="400" height="400"
alt="Hatari's GUI - the sound dialog" />
</div>
<p>Here you can control the sound subsystem.</p>
<p>Check "Enabled" if you want emulated sound at all. Emulation is faster if
sound emulation is turned off.</p>
<p>If you experiment latency issues with your OS audio's output, you
can check the "Synchronize" option to adjust Hatari's video emulation to match
your OS audio.</p>
<p>
Nine frequencies from low to high quality are available. Experiment a
little bit to find out which fits best for your setup.
For most modern computers, 44100 Hz or 48000 Hz should be fine.
For older or slower host systems, you should use a lower frequency.
12517, 250033 and 50066 Hz are frequencies supported by
the STE/TT/Falcon sound DMA.
</p>
<p>
YM voices volume mixing "ST table" method uses a lookup table of audio output
voltage values measured on STF, "Math model" uses a complex model to mix the
3 YM voices and "Linear" just averages the 3 YM voices. Use "ST table" or "Math model"
for accurate sound's emulation.
</p>
<p>
You can select to record a piece of sound here.
Use the <span class="button">Browse</span> button to choose a file.
The file name extension that you use (.WAV or .YM) determines in which format
the sound is recorded in. The <span class="button">Record&nbsp;sound</span> button
is a toggle so you will need to return to the GUI to switch sound recording off
again (or to use the keyboard shortcut for that).
</p>
<h4 class="gui">The Devices Dialog</h4>
<div class="floatimage">
<img src="images/devices.png" width="520" height="383"
alt="Hatari's GUI - the device dialog" />
</div>
<p>Check the first checkmark to enable printer support.
See the <a href="#Emulated_printer">Emulated printer</a> section for
details.</p>
<p>As Hatari currently only supports printing to file, click on <span
class="button">Browse</span> to select the file to print to. You can
enter a new filename as well.</p>
<p>Check the second checkmark to enable RS232 support.
The RS232 device is configured according to the settings of
the emulated RS232 of the Atari ST. This means Hatari will
automatically use baudrate and handshaking as configured for the
emulated ST.</p>
<p>Click on <span class="button">Browse</span> to select suitable
device files for serial input and output. On Linux a good choice is
/dev/ttyS0 or /dev/ttyS1.
</p>
<p>Check the third checkmark to enable MIDI support.
Click on <span class="button">Browse</span> to select a suitable
MIDI device files for MIDI input and output.</p>
<p><span class="file">midi-linux.txt</span> file explains how to
select the correct MIDI device file, how to set up software sound
synthetizing on Linux (using Alsa) if your sound card/driver doesn't
support MIDI, and how to set up MIDI networking e.g. between multiple
Hatari instances.
</p>
<h3 class="clearboth">Keyboard shortcuts for the SDL GUI</h3>
<p>There are multiple ways to interact with the SDL GUI.</p>
<p>TAB and cursor keys change focus between UI elements. Additionally
Home key moves focus to first item, End key to last one. Initially
focus is on default UI element, but focus changes are remembered
between dialog invocations. Enter and Space invoke focused item. UI
elements with underlined characters can be invoked directly with Alt +
key with that character. Alt + arrow keys will act on arrow
buttons.</p>
<p>Most importantly:</p>
<ul>
<li><em>Options GUI main view</em>: Enter accepts configuration, ESC
cancels it.</li>
<li><em>Options GUI dialogs</em>: Enter (or End+Enter if focus was moved)
returns back to main view.</li>
<li><em>Fileselector</em>: Page up and down keys scroll the file list.
Enter on focused file name selects it. Enter on OK button accepts
the selected file. ESC cancels the dialog/selection.</li>
<li><em>Alert dialogs</em>: Enter accepts and ESC cancels the dialog.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Keyboard shortcuts during emulation</h3>
<p> While the emulator is running, you can activate or toggle various
features via Hatari keyboard shortcuts. Below are listed the default
shortcut key bindings:</p>
<table class="keytable">
<thead>
<tr class="backdropped">
<th>Shortcut</th>
<th>Purpose</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">ALTGR+a</span></td>
<td>record animation</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">ALTGR+g</span></td>
<td>grab a screenshot</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">ALTGR+i</span></td>
<td>boss key: leave full screen mode, pause Hatari
and iconify its window</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">ALTGR+m</span></td>
<td>(un-)lock the mouse into the window</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">ALTGR+r</span></td>
<td>(warm) reset the ST</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">ALTGR+c</span></td>
<td>coldreset the ST (same as the original power switch)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">ALTGR+d</span></td>
<td>open dialog to select/change disk A</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">ALTGR+s</span></td>
<td>enable/disable sound</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">ALTGR+q</span></td>
<td>quit the emulator</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">ALTGR+x</span></td>
<td>toggle normal speed/fast forward</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">ALTGR+y</span></td>
<td>enable/disable sound recording</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">ALTGR+k</span></td>
<td>save memory snapshot</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">ALTGR+l</span></td>
<td>load memory snapshot</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">ALTGR+j</span></td>
<td>toggle joystick emulation via cursor keys
on/off between ports 0 and 1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">ALTGR+F1</span></td>
<td>switch joystick type on joy port 0</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">ALTGR+F2</span></td>
<td>switch joystick type on joy port 1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">ALTGR+F3</span></td>
<td>switch joystick type for joypad A</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">ALTGR+F4</span></td>
<td>switch joystick type for joypad B</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">ALTGR+f or F11</span></td>
<td>toggle between fullscreen and windowed mode</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">ALTGR+o or F12</span></td>
<td>activate the options GUI</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">PAUSE</span></td>
<td>pause emulation</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">AltGr+PAUSE</span></td>
<td>invoke the internal Hatari debugger</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>You can change the key bindings from the Hatari configuration file.
See keymap-sample.txt file for instructions.</p>
<h3>Emulated Atari ST keyboard</h3>
<p> All other keys on the keyboard act as the normal Atari ST keys so
pressing SPACE on your PC will result in an emulated press of the SPACE
key on the ST. The following keys have special meanings: </p>
<table class="keytable">
<thead>
<tr class="backdropped">
<th>Key</th>
<th>Meaning</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">Alt</span></td>
<td>will act as the ST's ALTERNATE key</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">left CTRL</span></td>
<td>will act as the ST's CONTROL key</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">Print Screen</span></td>
<td>will emulate the ST's HELP key</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">Scroll Lock</span></td>
<td>will emulate the ST's UNDO key</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">Page Up</span></td>
<td>will emulate the ST's ( key in the keypad</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="key">Page Down</span></td>
<td>will emulate the ST's ) in the keypad</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>If joystick emulation via keyboard is enabled, by default cursor keys
are used for the directions and <span class="key">right CTRL</span> key
as the fire button. Otherwise they act as corresponding keys of the emulated
Atari ST.</p>
<p>NOTE: Problems with simultenous keypresses most likely aren't an
issue in Hatari as many modern keyboards report/support only three
simultenous key presses (or even just two depending on which keys
are in question). Expensive gaming keyboards support more.</p>
<h3>Emulated mouse</h3>
<p>For obvious reasons your PC mouse will act as the emulated Atari ST
mouse. In fullscreen mode it will act as expected, directly controlling
the ST mouse pointer. </p>
<p>However it is a little bit different in windowed mode as
mouse cursor positions between host and emulated Atari can get
out of sync. This can be worked around by constraining the mouse
to the Hatari window. Pressing the <span class="key">ALTGR+m</span>
hotkey combination or starting Hatari with the
<span class="commandline">--grab</span> command line option
grabs the mouse i.e. locks its movements to the Hatari window.
Press the shortcut key (again) to go back to normal mouse behaviour
which allows you to move mouse outside outside the Hatari window while
Hatari is up and running. Note: pausing the emulation will also
(temporarily) release the mouse grab.</p>
<p>Middle button click emulates double click, which is very useful
in Fast Forward mode (where normal double clicking is nearly
impossible).</p>
<p>Mouse scrollwheel will act as cursor up and down keys. </p>
<h3>Emulated joystick</h3>
<p>The Atari ST joysticks are emulated ofcourse allowing you to play
your favourite games with Hatari. </p>
<p>The default mode is to use a connected PC joystick. You can use any
joystick that is supported by your kernel / SDL library. If your joystick works
with other applications, it will likely work with Hatari as well. Make sure
it is calibrated and then off you go. Move the stick to point into the
desired direction. Please note that Hatari will not detect analogue
movement as the Atari ST only had digital joysticks. The first
firebutton will act as the normal firebutton on the Atari ST while the
second
firebutton will emulate a keypress of the <span class="key">SPACE</span>
key on the ST as many ST
games utilize the SPACE bar for secondary game functions. (Xenon for
example)</p>
<p>If you do not have a PC joystick or joypad, then you do not need to
desperate. You can emulate one of the two Atari ST joysticks via the
cursor keys. Just activate it in the GUI. Then the cursor keys will act
as the joystick directions, the right CTRL key will act as the
firebutton. You can still use the cursor keys as the ST's
cursorkeys in this mode as long as you press <span class="key">SHIFT</span>
along with the cursorkeys. You can also configure these keys from the
joystick options.</p>
<h3>Emulated video</h3>
<p>Hatari emulates all screen modes of the original machine.</p>
<p>
ST/STE shifter overscan effects are emulated, but due to the fact
that these effects are achieved by using quirks and glitches in the
original chips to do things beyond their specification, emulation is
a bit tricky for these effects. As a result, some demos using these
techniques might not be displayed correctly in Hatari, known ones are
listed in the <span class="file">compatibility.html</span> file.
</p>
<p>Beside that you can setup extended VDI modes. These only work with
GEM-compliant applications and they are equal to fitting a videocard
into your Mega ST.</p>
<p>Make sure to disable extended VDI modes for playing games as 99% of
all ST games will not be able to make use of higher resolutions.</p>
<h3 id="Emulated_printer">Emulated printer</h3>
<p>Due to the fact that printer handling is different on Atari and
current machines, emulation of the printer is achieved by writing all
printer output to a file.</p>
<p>The file will contain a sequence of data, the same that would appear
on the data pins of the Atari ST printer port.
That would include control characters and commands for graphic
printing. Clicking "Print desktop" on the GEM desktop would result
in a messy data dump in the printer output.</p>
<p>Printer emulation works best for plain text files or programs that
do not format the output for a specific printer.
The file contents can be used with your favourite text editor for
further processing and printing to a real printer.</p>
<p>To get real direct printing out of Hatari you may set up a suitable
(e.g. PostScript) GDOS or NVDI printer driver on the emulated Atari and
set your printer device file as Hatari's printer output.<br />
<em>NOTE:</em> If the driver doesn't match or there's some other problem,
this can cause your printer to print out hundreds of pages of garbage.</p>
<h3>Emulated RS232</h3>
<p>Serial communications in Hatari is designed to directly use a serial
port on your PC.</p>
<p>Communications parameters are set automatically upon the settings of
the emulated ST. This means all you do is to set
the communication parameters like baudrate from your ST communications
software. Hatari will do the rest and handle
the serial input and output for you.</p>
<h2 id="Floppy_disk_images">Floppy disk images</h2>
<p>Hatari does not use floppy disks directly but disk images due to
differences between the floppy disk controllers of the ST and the PC.
Several types of disk images are currently supported :
</p>
<ul>
<li>
the raw "ST" type
</li>
<li>
the similar "DIM" type (not widely used)
</li>
<li>
the compressed "MSA" (Magic-Shadow-Archiver) type
</li>
<li>
the "STX" type that can store low level disk layout. This format is mainly
used to dump original games with their protection. Those images are created
on a real ST using pasti.prg
</li>
<li>
the "IPF", "RAW" and "CTR" types require the caps library. Similar to STX, they
record disk layout, but at a much precise level by storing MFM data. Most of
these dumps are made with the Kryoflux board
</li>
</ul>
<p> The raw type (file suffix should be "*.st") is simply a sector by
sector image of a real floppy disk. You can easily create such an image
with the <span class="commandline">dd</span> program which should
normally be pre-installed on every
Unix-like system. Simply type something like <span class="commandline">dd
if=/dev/fd0 of=myimage.st</span> to create a disk image. Of course you
need access to
/dev/fd0, and depending on your system and the type of floppy disk you
might have to use another device name here (for example I use
/dev/fd0u720 for 720kB disks). However, if the disk is copy-protected
or
doesn't use a MSDOS compatible file system, this might fail. So be very
careful if you are not sure about the disk format. </p>
<p> The other possibility is to image the disk on a real Atari ST.
For non-protected disk, there
are programs like the Magic Shadow Archiver for this task. Hatari
supports this slightly compressed MSA disk images, too. Note that
Hatari
only supports the "old" MSA format, there are some Magic Shadow
Archiver
clones (like Jay-MSA) that create better compressed but
Hatari-incompatible disk images. However, if you have got such a MSA
disk and want to use it with Hatari, you can still run the
corresponding
MSA program within Hatari to extract the incompatible disk image to a
normal floppy disk image.
<p>
For protected disk, the most widely used method is to run pasti.prg on
a real Atari ST and get a .STX image.
<br>
For more complex protections or altered disk, one can use *.IPF or *.CTR
which include tools to check MFM data and possible problems when dumping a disk.
</p>
<p> While *.ST, *.MSA and *.STX are more or less the "standard" types of Atari
disk images, you might sometimes also find STT or ADF images on the
internet. These currently do not work with Hatari. </p>
<p>Hatari can now also utilize *.DIM images just as *.ST ones without
any problems.
Note that DIM images are nearly the same as the raw ST images
(they only have an additional 32 bytes header), so you can easily
transform
the DIM images into ST images by stripping the header from the files.
For example try something like:
<span class="commandline">dd if=input.dim of=output.st bs=32 skip=1</span>
</p>
<p> If you've got a disk image that has been created with the old ST
emulator PaCifiST (for DOS) or with early versions of the program
Makedisk, and the disk image does not work with Hatari, then the disk
probably suffers from the "PaCifiST bootsector bug" (Hatari will
display a
warning message then). In this case, the bootsector of the disk
contains some illegal data, so that the disk even does not work on a
real ST any more. However, if it is a .ST and not a .MSA disk, you can
easily fix it by using a hex-editor to change the byte at offset $D
(13)
from 0 to 1 (don't forget to backup your disk image first, since you
can also easily destroy your disk image when changing a wrong byte
there). If the disk contains a bootsector program, you probably have to
adjust the boot sector check sum, too (it can be found at offset $1FE +
$1FF). </p>
<p>Hatari supports disk images that are compressed with (Pk-)ZIP
(file suffix must be ".zip") or GZip (file suffix must be ".st.gz" or
".msa.gz"), so you can archive your disk images into zip archives.
You can also directly run the zip archives you may download from the
net as long as the archive contains a disk image in .ST or .MSA format.</p>
<p><em>Note:</em> Hatari does not save disk images back to *.ZIP files
so
your highscores and savegames are lost if you load the game from such
a zipped disk image.</p>
<h2>Hard disk support</h2>
<p>
Hatari supports three ways of emulating Atari hard drives: The
low-level ACSI and IDE hard drive emulation and a GEMDOS based HD
emulation. In most cases the GEMDOS HD emulation is best as it allows
exchanging files easily between the emulated and the host environment.
</p>
<p>
Please note that changing the HD-image or the GEMDOS HD-folder will reset
the emulated Atari since it is not possible to switch the hard drive
while the emulator is running.
</p>
<p>
On a 32-bit host system, the size of a hard disk image is limited to 2 GB.
On 64-bit host systems, bigger images might be possible but the support
for bigger images is not tested very well yet.
</p>
<p>
The maximum size of partitions inside the hard disk (images) depends on the
TOS version. TOS 1.00 and 1.02 support up to 256 MB, TOS 1.04 to 3.06 up to
512 MB and TOS 4.0x supports up to 1 GB partitions.
</p>
<p>
NOTE: you need to be careful when mounting device files. Depending on
the system setup (e.g. udev settings) partitions on memory cards etc.
can be mounted automatically. When Hatari is started and uses a device
file with partitions that are already mounted, data can be destroyed
(when several programs independently write to the same device).
Disable your desktop automount, or remember to manually unmount
devices before giving them to Hatari.
</p>
<h3>GEMDOS based hard drive emulation</h3>
<p>
With the GEMDOS HD emulation, you can easily "mount" a folder from the
host file system to a drive of the emulated Atari.
</p>
<p>
If you provide Hatari a directory containing only single letter (C-Z)
subdirectories, each of these subdirectories will be treated as a
separate partition, otherwise the given directory itself will be
assigned to drive "C:". In the multiple partition case, the letters
used as the subdirectory names will determine to which
drives/partitions they're assigned. For example following
directory setup:
</p>
<pre>
partitions/
+ C/
+ D/
</pre>
<p>
That is given to Hatari as "hatari -d partitions", will give you
GEMDOS HD emulated C: and D: drives.
</p>
<p>
GEMDOS HD emulation is an easy way to share files between the
host system and the emulated Atari, but there are also some known
limitations which are due to the way the GEMDOS HD emulation is
implemented:
</p>
<ul>
<li>Directory entries are returned in a (case-insensitively) sorted
order, for consistency. E.g. moving files to a different directory and
back (without changing their names) like AUTOSORT does, doesn't change
that order. You need to rename the files.</li>
<li>Names which aren't valid TOS directory or file names, are converted
to a valid format. If there are multiple files which converted
names are identical in TOS-format, you see only one of those.</li>
<li>It is not possible to use a cartridge image at the same time
with the GEMDOS HD emulation (Hatari has its own cartridge code
that is used for GEMDOS HD emulation).</li>
<li>Anything that installs its own GEMDOS handler, like MiNT, doesn't work
with the GEMDOS HD emulation. Such things need to be run from a real
hard disk image.</li>
<li>GEMDOS HD C: drive conflicts with the ACSI and IDE hard drives.
If you want to use GEMDOS HD directory and ACSI/IDE disk images together,
either use the GEMDOS HD option for skipping ACSI & IDE partitions, or
use a multiple partition GEMDOS HD emulation setup and select the partition
subdirectories (see above) so that they don't conflict with the ACSI/IDE
partitions (drive letters). With HD Driver you have also another option,
see <a href="#Using_HD_Driver_with_GEMDOS_partitions">Using HD Driver
with GEMDOS HD partitions</a>.</li>
<li><em>The GEMDOS HD emulation does not work (very well) with TOS
1.00 and 1.02</em>. Use at least TOS 1.04 if you want the GEMDOS HD
emulation to work properly.</li>
</ul>
<p>
If your programs complain that they could not find/read/write
files on the GEMDOS emulated drive, you can copy and use them
from a floppy disk image or a real hard disk image instead.
</p>
<h3>ACSI &amp; IDE hard drive emulation with EmuTOS</h3>
<p>
Accessing HD image files is easiest with EmuTOS. It supports both
ASCI and IDE interfaces, regardless of emulated machine type, and
understands DOS partition tables without additional drivers.
<span class="commandline">atari-hd-image.sh</span> script coming
with Hatari can be used to create such image files and to copy
initial data to them.
</p>
<p>
If you have an hard drive (image) with Atari format partition table,
that should already have hard disk driver on it and work fine.
Partitioning/formatting them is the problem. Creating such images
from scratch is described in following sections.
</p>
<h3 id="ACSI_hard_drive_emulation">ACSI hard drive emulation</h3>
<p>
To use the ACSI hard drive emulation, you need a hard disk image file
with a pre-installed HD driver in it. You can try to get an image of
your old ST hard disk or grab one from the internet (e.g. from the
Hatari website).
Please note that the size of ACSI hard drive is normally limited to 1 GB
due to some addressing constraints of the ACSI bus. Bigger disks were only
possible with certain host adapters &ndash; this behaviour is emulated by
Hatari, too, but you need a hard disk driver that supports these extensions.
</p>
<p>
To create a <em>new</em> ACSI hard disk image, you can start with an empty
image that you have created for example with the following command:
<span class="commandline">dd if=/dev/zero of=hd.img bs=512 count=xxx</span>
(where 'xxx' is size in 512 byte blocks). Copy the complete AHDI 5.0
package to a floppy disk image, then boot Hatari with this floppy disk
image and the fresh hard disk image like this:
<span class="commandline">--acsi hd.img ahdi.st</span>.
Then start HDX.PRG from the floppy disk and format + partition the hard
disk image with it.
</p>
<p>
Formatting and partitioning works currently only with AHDI 5, but you
can install the AHDI 6 driver to the hard disk after it's formatted.
Restart the emulated system, run AHDI.PRG from the floppy disk to access
the hard disk image from the emulated Atari and then run HINSTALL.PRG.
After installing the hard disk driver to the fresh HD image with
HINSTALL.PRG, you can boot directly from the hard disk image.
</p>
<p>
HD Driver (v9) partitioning is also compatible with Hatari ACSI
emulation. CBHD and ICDPro AdSCSI drivers work on images which have
been partitioned elsewhere.
</p>
<h3>IDE hard drive emulation</h3>
<p>
<p>
As the IDE disk format (little endian) differs from the ACSI disk format
(big endian), you need separate disk images for them. Hatari doesn't
currently support partitioning IDE disks with AHDI, but you can do it with
<em>Cecile</em>.
</p>
<p>
First create an empty image file with the size of your choice with:
<span class="commandline">dd if=/dev/zero of=hd.img bs=1k count=xxx</span>.
Then get the Cecile hard disk driver from
<a href="http://centek.free.fr/atari/softs/s_cecile.htm">http://centek.free.fr/atari/softs/s_cecile.htm</a>
and put it on a floppy disk image (e.g. to one named "cecile.st" using:
<span class="commandline">zip2st.sh cecile.zip</span>).
</p>
<p>
Run Hatari with
<span class="commandline">hatari --machine falcon --tos tos404.rom
--ide-master hd.img cecile.st</span>, switch to larger color resolution
and warm up your French language skills. Then start the Cecile hard
disk driver CECILE.PRG and run CC_TOOLS.APP to partition your hard
disk image. Click the "Partition" button, select "Hatari IDE disk" and set
suitable partition size with the arrows (below type field). Then click
"Valider".
</p>
<p>
If you only want to use your HD image in Falcon mode, you can install
the Cecile hard disk driver to the image from the Cecile CC_TOOLS.APP:
Click the "Installer" button and save the Cecile driver to the
1st partition on "Hatari IDE disk". If you want to also use your HD
image in ST/STE mode, you need to get and install either HD Driver or
AHDI 6 driver on it instead (see <a href="#ACSI_hard_drive_emulation">ASCI
hard drive emulation</a> section).
</p>
<p>
Then you can boot from your hard disk image by simply specifying it
with the <span class="commandline">--ide-master</span> parameter.
</p>
<h2>Moving files to/from hard disk images</h2>
<p>Moving files to and from Atari hard disk images can be done
either through GEMDOS HD partitions (host directories mounted inside
Hatari emulation) or accessing the images directly on the host
(outside the emulation). Both have their own limitations.</p>
<p>If it's fine for the IDE/ACSI partitions to be first, you can
either use ACSI/IDE partition skip option, or a multipartition GEMDOS
HD setup as described in above sections.
</p>
<p>If you want to boot from a GEMDOS HD partition i.e. such to be
before hard disk image partitions, and still to be able to access all
the IDE/ACSI partitions, you need to use HD Driver. Note: this is the
preferred method with EmuTOS (v0.9.x), because it doesn't run/use
driver installed to the IDE/ACSI image directly although its own
partition table/type support is very limited.</p>
<h3 id="Using_HD_Driver_with_GEMDOS_partitions">Using HD Driver with GEMDOS partitions</h3>
<p>Uwe Seimet's <a href="http://www.seimet.de/atari/en/hddriver.html">HD
Driver</a> works fine with both the Hatari GEMDOS HD partitions and normal
hard disk images.
</p>
<p>First copy the HDDRIVER.PRG binary into your GEMDOS HD emulation
directory AUTO folder. Then start the HDDRUTIL.APP configuration utility,
locate HDDRIVER.PRG, open the
<a href="http://www.seimet.de/atari/en/hddriverscreenshots.html">"Devices
and Partitions" dialog</a> and select the "Preserve Existing Partitions"
option. Then you can just start Hatari with your hard disk image and
this GEMDOS HD directory, for example like this:
"<span class="commandline">hatari --harddrive gemdos-hd/ --ide-master
ide-hd.image</span>".</p>
<p>If you're using
the <a href="http://hddriver.seimet.de/en/downloads.html">demo version
of HD Driver</a>, you can write files only to the C: partition, i.e. in
above case only copy files from the hard disk image partition to the
GEMDOS HD partition (with some write slowndowns included into the demo
version). If you want to copy files to the hard disk image with
the <em>demo</em> version of the HD Driver, you need to set the hard disk
image as drive C:.</p>
<p>To accomplish this, set the GEMDOS HD partitions to be from D: forward,
i.e. have a directory which contains only single letter subdirectories,
starting from "D" like in "<span class="commandline">mkdir gemdos-hd;
mkdir gemdos-hd/D</span>". Then give Hatari (as the last parameter)
a boot floppy image containing the demo version of HDDRIVER.PRG in
its AUTO folder, like this: "<span class="commandline">hatari
--ide-master ide-hd.image --harddrive gemdos-hd/ hd-driver-floppy.st</span>".
You can convert HD Driver ZIP package to floppy image with the
<span class="commandline">zip2st</span> utility.</p>
<h3>Accessing HDD image partitions outside of Hatari</h3>
<p>
If you want to access the hard disk image partitions also outside
the emulation, the disk image needs to have a DOS partition table.
The <span class="commandline">atari-hd-image</span> script included
with Hatari can be used to create such an image.
</p>
<p>
Inside the Hatari emulator, EmuTOS can access partition(s) on these
kind of images directly without any driver software. Of the Atari HD
drivers mentioned above, Centek's Cecile and Uwe Seimet's HD Driver
(demo) work fine with these partitions. E.g. AHDI and CBHD don't.
Cecile works only with TT or Falcon.
</p>
<p>
To summarise; if EmuTOS is enough, use that. Otherwise, if you want to
use TT or Falcon emulation, use Cecile (or full HD Driver version if
you have it), otherwise use HD Driver (demo).
</p>
<p>
To access the content of the partitions on Linux host, there are two
possibilities:
<h4>Using Mtools</h4>
<p>
For this you need to add an entry for the hard disk
image to your <span class="commandline">~/.mtoolsrc</span> and
specify which partition you want to access from the image. For
an image created with the above mentioned script, the line in
the configuration file should look something like this:
</p>
<pre>
MTOOLS_NO_VFAT=1
drive c: file="/home/user/hatari/hd.img" partition=1
</pre>
<p>
Note that Mtools is instructed to use FAT compatibility mode because
EmuTOS cannot deal properly with VFAT file information. If you don't
want this setting for all your Mtools drives, you can set it also via
the environment like this ("::" refers to the drive image given with
the "-i" option):
</p>
<pre>
MTOOLS_NO_VFAT=1 mcopy -spmv -i hd.img files/* ::
</pre>
<h4>Using a loopback device</h4>
<p>
This is recommended even by Mtools documentation, but it's less
convenient as it requires root rights. First you need to "loop"
mount the image:
</p>
<pre>
$ su
# image="hd.img"; mountdir="hd"
# start=$(parted $image unit s print | awk '/ 1 /{print $2}' | tr -d s)
# losetup -f $image -o $((512*$start))
# loop=$(losetup -a | tail -1 | cut -d: -f1)
# mkdir -p $mountdir
# mount -t msdos $loop $mountdir
</pre>
<p>
This uses <span class="commandline">parted</span> to find out the first
partition offset in sectors and then tells <span class="commandline">losetup</span>
to bind the first free loop device to a corresponding offset from
the <span class="commandline">hd.img</span> image.
<span class="commandline">mount</span> is then used to mount the file system
from the loop device on top of the "hd" directory.
</p>
<p>
After you've copied the relevant files to the "hd" directory, you need
unmount the file system and remove the loop device binding before using
the disk image from Hatari:
</p>
<pre>
# umount $mountdir
# losetup -d $loop
</pre>
<h2 id="The_debugger">The debugger</h2>
<p>
Hatari has a built-in debugging interface which can be used for
analyzing code that runs in the emulated system.
</p>
<p>
On Unix (Linux / OSX) debugger uses Hatari's parent console window, so
make sure you run Hatari from the command line when you want to use
the debugger. On Windows you need to use "-W" option to get console
window. You can add an icon to your desktop that does it. On Linux
it should do something like this (replace "xterm" with your favorite
terminal program):
</p>
<pre>
xterm -T "Hatari debug window" -e hatari
</pre>
<p>
To run debugger commands at Hatari startup, one can use the "--parse
&lt;file&gt;" command line option. This is useful e.g. for debugging
TOS or some demo startup code, or if you always want to use some
specific debugger setup (breakpoints etc).
</p>
<h3>Invoking the debugger</h3>
<p>
You can invoke the debugger manually by pressing the
<span class="key">AltGr + Pause</span> key combination.
</p>
<p>
With the "-D" command line option, you can toggle whether m68k
exceptions will also invoke the debugger. Which exceptions cause
this, can be controlled with the "--debug-except" option.
</p>
<p>
Giving "-D" option at Hatari startup is not advised because TOS HW
checks generate some exceptions at every TOS boot. It's better to
toggle exception catching later from the debugger with the "setopt -D"
command.
</p>
<p>
Alternatively, you can give "--debug-except" option "autostart" flag
(e.g. "--debug-except all,autostart"). This will enable catching of
(specified) exceptions after TOS boot, when Atari program given on
Hatari command line is <em>autostarted</em>.
</p>
<h3>General debugger use</h3>
<p>
At the debugger prompt, type "help" to get a list of all
the available commands and their shortcuts:
</p>
<pre>
Generic commands:
cd ( ) : change directory
evaluate ( e) : evaluate an expression
help ( h) : print help
history (hi) : show last CPU & DSP PC values & executed instructions
info ( i) : show machine/OS information
lock ( ) : specify information to show on entering the debugger
logfile ( f) : open or close log file
parse ( p) : get debugger commands from file
setopt ( o) : set Hatari command line and debugger options
stateload ( ) : restore emulation state
statesave ( ) : save emulation state
trace ( t) : select Hatari tracing settings
quit ( q) : quit emulator
CPU commands:
address ( a) : set CPU PC address breakpoints
breakpoint ( b) : set/remove/list conditional CPU breakpoints
disasm ( d) : disassemble from PC, or given address
profile ( ) : profile CPU code
cpureg ( r) : dump register values or set register to value
memdump ( m) : dump memory
memwrite ( w) : write bytes to memory
loadbin ( l) : load a file into memory
savebin ( ) : save memory to a file
symbols ( ) : load CPU symbols & their addresses
step ( s) : single-step CPU
next ( n) : step CPU, proceeding through subroutine calls
cont ( c) : continue emulation / CPU single-stepping
DSP commands:
dspaddress (da) : set DSP PC address breakpoints
dspbreak (db) : set/remove/list conditional DSP breakpoints
dspdisasm (dd) : disassemble DSP code
dspmemdump (dm) : dump DSP memory
dspsymbols ( ) : load DSP symbols & their addresses
dspprofile (dp) : profile DSP code
dspreg (dr) : read/write DSP registers
dspstep (ds) : single-step DSP
dspnext (dn) : step DSP, proceeding through subroutine calls
dspcont (dc) : continue emulation / DSP single-stepping
</pre>
<h4 id="Entering_arguments_to_debugger_commands">Entering arguments to debugger commands</h4>
<p>
After writing (with TAB completion) one of the above command names,
pressing TAB will (for most commands) show all the available subcommands.
</p>
<p>
If you want to give numbers in other number bases
than the default/selected one, they need to be prefixed with a
character indicating this. For decimals this prefix is "#" (#15),
for hexadecimals "$" ($F), and for binary values it's "%" (%1111).
</p>
<p>
By default debugger expects all numbers without a prefix to be
decimals, but you can change the default number base with the "setopt"
command, just give it the desired default number base (bin/dec/hex).
<em>When using the hexadecimal number base, remember still to prefix
hexadecimal numbers with '$' if they could be confused with register
names (a0-7, d0-7)!</em> Otherwise results from expressions and
conditional breakpoints can be unexpected.
</p>
<h4>Calculations and immediate evaluation</h4>
<p>
Instead of a number, you can also use an arithmetic expression, by
surrounding it with quotes (""). An expression can contain
calculations with CPU and DSP register, symbol and Hatari variable
values in addition to numbers. For example to give a sum of A0 and
D0 register values to a command, use "a0+d0".
</p>
<p>
Within arithmetic expressions parenthesis are used both to change
the order of precendence <em>and</em> to indicate indirect addressing.
Unlike with conditional breakpoint expressions (explained below), you
cannot give size for the indirect addressing, a long value is always
read from the RAM address given within parenthesis. For example to
get a long value pointed by stack pointer + 2, use "(a7+2)".
</p>
<p>
Values of arithmetic expressions are always evaluated before being
given to a command. Except for "evaluate" and "address" commands,
they always need to be marked with quotes (""). Besides arithmetics,
this can be used also to give symbol/register/variable values to
commands that don't otherwise interpret them. If command complains
that it didn't recognize e.g. a register name, just put it to quotes
and it will be "evaluated" before being given to the command.
</p>
<p>
With command argument completion (see <a href="#Build_notes">build
notes</a>), result from the last "evaluate" command can be inserted
by typing '$' and pressing TAB.
</p>
<h3 id="Inspecting_emulation_state">Inspecting emulation state</h3>
<p>
In the beginning, probably the most interesting commands are "m" and "d"
for dumping and disassembling memory regions. You can use "dm" and "dd"
commands to do the same for the DSP.
</p>
<pre>
&gt; help memdump
'memdump' or 'm' - dump memory
Usage: m [start address-[end address]]
dump memory at address or continue dump from previous address.
</pre>
<pre>
&gt; help disasm
'disasm' or 'd' - disassemble from PC, or given address
Usage: d [start address-[end address]]
If no address is given, this command disassembles from the last
position or from current PC if no last position is available.
</pre>
<pre>
&gt; disasm pc
$00aa6e : 2f08 move.l a0,-(sp)
$00aa70 : 0241 0fff andi.w #$fff,d1
$00aa74 : 207c 00fe 78c0 movea.l #$fe78c0,a0
$00aa7a : 2070 1000 movea.l (a0,d1.w),a0
$00aa7e : 4ed0 jmp (a0)
</pre>
<p>
Both commands accept in addition to numeric addresses also register
and symbol names, like in above example. If you don't specify an
address, the commands continue showing from an address that comes
after the previously shown data. "disasm" command default address
will be reset to PC address every time you re-enter the debugger.
</p>
<p>
Use "setopt --disasm help" if you want to set options controlling
the disassembly output.
</p>
<p>
You can use the "info" command to see state of specific sets of HW
registers (e.g. "info videl") and Atari OS structures (e.g. "info gemdos").
</p>
<h4>Selecting what information is shown on entering the debugger</h4>
<p>
By using the "lock" command, you can ask Hatari to show specific
information whenever you enter the debugger / hit a breakpoint. For
example to see disassembly from current PC address, use "lock disasm".
</p>
<p>
With the "regaddr" subcommand, you see disassembly or memory
dump of an address pointed by a given register ("lock regaddr disasm
a0"). Of the DSP registers, only Rx ones are valid for this
subcommand.
</p>
<p>
"file" subcommand can be used to get (arbitrary number of) commands
parsed and executed from a given debugger input file whenever debugger
is entered. With this you can output any information you need:
</p>
<pre>
lock file debugger.ini
</pre>
<p>
To disable showing of this extra information, use "lock default".
Without arguments "lock" command will show the available options
(like the "info" command does).
</p>
<h3>Debug symbols</h3>
<p>
You can load debugging symbols to the debugger with the "symbols"
command (and with "dspsymbols" for DSP). These symbolic names can be
used in arithmetic expressions and conditional breakpoint expressions.
They also show up in the "disasm" command output and you can trace
calls to them with "trace cpu_symbols" (and DSP symbols with "trace
dsp_symbols").
</p>
<h4>For a program under GEMDOS HD emulation</h4>
<p>
If currently running program contains symbol table in DRI/GST format,
and it's started from GEMDOS HD emulated drive, its symbol names /
addresses are automatically loaded when debugger is entered, and
removed when program terminates.</p>
<p>
Above happens only if there are no symbols loaded when the program
starts. If there are, you can load program symbol data manually with
the following command, after program has been loaded to the memory by
TOS (see <a href="#Breakpoint_variables">setting breakpoint at program
startup</a>):
</p>
<pre>
symbols prg
</pre>
<p>
<p>
The options you need to add suitable symbol table to your programs,
depend on which toolchain you use to build it:
</p>
<dl>
<dt><em>Devpac</em>:</dt>
<dd>"OPT D+,X+"</dd>
<dt><em>AHCC</em>:</dt>
<dd>"-g", and "-l" option for local symbols, both for linking</dd>
<dt><em>GCC</em>:</dt>
<dd>"-Wl,--traditional-format" option for linking,
and "-g" for compilation to get local symbols</dd>
<dt><em>VBCC</em>:</dt>
<dd>"-g" (can only be used at linking phase), <em>when VBCC
configuration file uses "-bataritos" option for
the linker</em></dd>
</dl>
<p>You can view the generated symbols (and convert them to debugger
ASCII format) with tool installed with Hatari:</p>
<pre>
$ gst2ascii -l -o program.tos &gt; program.sym
</pre>
(Options -l and -o are used to exclude useless symbols from the output.)
<h4>For a program on a (disk) image</h4>
<p>
If the program isn't run from a GEMDOS HD emulated drive, but from a
cartridge, floppy or HD image, you need to have the corresponding
program also as normal host file which location you can give to the
debugger:
</p>
<pre>
symbols /path/to/the/program.tos
</pre>
<h4>ASCII debug symbol files</h4>
<p>
If Hatari complains that your program doesn't have DRI/GST format
symbol table, or its symbols are in some other format, and you
cannot re-compile it to have them, you have two options:
</p>
<ul>
<li>Convert the symbols to ASCII format understood by the Hatari debugger.
Writing converters for other ASCII formats is easy, and Hatari already
contains covertors for DSP LOD files, <span class="commandline">nm</span>
output for MiNT/a.out binaries and AHCC map files.
<li>Create the ASCII symbols file by hand while you're debugging a program.
</ul>
<p>ASCII symbols file format is following:</p>
<pre>
e01034 T random
e01076 T kbdvbase
e0107e T supexec
</pre>
<p>
Where 'T' means text (code), 'D' means data and 'B' means BSS section
type of address. The hexadecimal address, address type letter and the
symbol name are separated by white space. Empty lines and lines
starting with '#' (comments) are ignored.
</p>
<p>
Debugger will automatically "relocate" the symbol addresses when it
loads them from a program binary, but with ASCII symbol files you need
to give the relocation offset(s) separately, unless the symbol names
are for fixed adresses (like is the case e.g. with EmuTOS):
</p>
<pre>
symbols program.sym TEXT DATA BSS
</pre>
<p>
If you're interested only about code symbols, you can leave DATA and
BSS offsets out (the values of the above virtual debugger variables
like TEXT come from the currently loaded program's basepage, they're
set after the program is loaded by TOS, see "info basepage" output).
</p>
<h3>Breakpoints</h3>
<p>
There are two ways to specify breakpoints for Hatari. First, there are
the simple address breakpoints which trigger when the CPU (or DSP)
program counter hits a given address. Use "a" (or "da" for the DSP)
to create them, for example:
</p>
<pre>
a $e01034
a some_symbol
</pre>
<p>
Note that address breakpoints are just wrappers for conditional
breakpoints so you need to use "b" command to remove or list them.
</p>
<p>
Then there are the conditional breakpoints which can handle much more
complex break condition expressions; they can track changes to
register and memory values with bitmasks, include multiple conditions
for triggering a breakpoint and so on. Use "b" (or "db" for the DSP)
to manage them.
</p>
<p>Help explains the general syntax:</p>
<pre>
&gt; help b
'breakpoint' or 'b' - set/remove/list conditional CPU breakpoints
Usage: b &lt;condition&gt; [&amp;&amp; &lt;condition&gt; ...] [:&lt;option&gt;] | &lt;index&gt; | help | all
Set breakpoint with given &lt;conditions&gt;, remove breakpoint with
given &lt;index&gt;, remove all breakpoints with 'all' or output
breakpoint condition syntax with 'help'. Without arguments,
lists currently active breakpoints.
</pre>
<p>
Unless you give breakpoint one of the pre-defined subcommands ('all',
'help'), index for a breakpoint to remove or no arguments (to list
breakpoints), the arguments are interpreted as a new breakpoint
definition.
</p>
<p>
Each conditional breakpoint can have (currently up to 4) conditions
which are separated by "&amp;&amp;". All of the breakpoint's
conditions need to be true for a breakpoint to trigger.
</p>
<h4 id="Breakpoint_options">Breakpoint options</h4>
<p>
Normally when a breakpoint is triggered, emulation is stopped and you
get to the debugger. Breakpoint options can be used to affect what
happens when a breakpoint is triggered. These options are given after
the conditions and are prefixed with ':'.
</p>
<dl>
<dt><em>&lt;count&gt;</em></dt>
<dd>Break only on every &lt;count&gt; hit. For example, to stop
on every other time PC is at given address, use:
<pre>
a $1234 :2
</pre>
</dd>
<dt><em>once</em></dt>
<dd>
Delete the breakpoint when it's hit i.e. trigger it only once. It may
be useful if you just want to get a specific address. Or if you're on
an instruction that jumps back to a start of the loop and you want to
finish the loop, you could use:
<pre>
b pc &gt; "pc" :once
continue
</pre>
</dd>
<dt><em>trace</em></dt>
<dd>
Continue emulation without stopping after printing the value that
triggered the breakpoint and doing other possible option actions.
This is most useful when investigating memory or register value
changes (explained below).
</dd>
<dt><em>lock</em></dt>
<dd>
Show the same information on breakpoint hit as you see when entering
the debugger (see the "lock" command in
<a href="#Inspecting_emulation_state">Inspecting emulation state</a>
above). This enables also trace option as you would anyway see this
information if debugger would be entered.
</dd>
<dt><em>file &lt;file&gt;</em></dt>
<dd>
Execute debugger commands from given &lt;file&gt; when this breakpoint
is hit. With this you have complete control over what information is
show when the debugger is hit, you can even chain breakpoints (as
explained in
<a href="#Chaining_breakpoints">Chaining breakpoints</a> later on)
etc. Use this if "lock" option isn't enough or you want different
information show on breakpoints and when entering the debugger.
</dd>
<dt><em>noinit</em></dt>
<dd>
Hitting breakpoint doesn't re-initialize debugger which would e.g.
cause profiling data to be reset. This implies trace option as
entering debugger would also re-initialize debugger state. This option
is mainly intended for breakpoints that use :file option to show
backtraces with "profile stack" command during
<a href="#Profiling">profiling</a>. See
<a href="#Usage_examples">Usage examples</a> section for an example.
</dd>
</dl>
<p>
Note: you can give multiple options for conditional breakpoints, but
for address breakpoints you can give only one these options. And
"file" option is supported only for conditional breakpoints.
</p>
<h4>Breakpoint conditions</h4>
<p>
"b help" explains very briefly the breakpoint condition syntax:
</p>
<pre>
&gt; b help
condition = &lt;value&gt;[.mode] [&amp; &lt;mask&gt;] &lt;comparison&gt; &lt;value&gt;[.mode]
where:
value = [(] &lt;register/symbol/variable name | number&gt; [)]
number/mask = [#|$|%]&lt;digits&gt;
comparison = '&lt;' | '&gt;' | '=' | '!'
addressing mode (width) = 'b' | 'w' | 'l'
addressing mode (space) = 'p' | 'x' | 'y'
</pre>
<p>
For CPU breakpoints, mode is the address width; it can be byte ("b"),
word ("w") or long ("l", default). For DSP breakpoints, mode specifies
the address space: "P", "X" or "Y". Note that on DSP only R0-R7
registers can be used for memory addressing. For example;
<pre>
db (r0).x = 1 &amp;&amp; (r0).y = 2
</pre>
<p>
If the value is in parenthesis like in '($ff820)' or '(a0)', then the
used value will be read from the memory address pointed by it. Note
that this conditional breakpoint expression value is checked at
run-time whereas quoted arithmetic expressions (mentioned in
<a href="#Entering_arguments_to_debugger_commands">Entering arguments
to debugger commands</a> above) are evaluated already when
adding a breakpoint. For example, to break when a value in an address
(later) pointed by A0 matches the value <em>currently</em> in D0, one
would use:
</p>
<pre>
b (a0) = "d0"
</pre>
<p>
If you're interested only on certain bits in the value, you can use
'&amp;' and a numeric mask on either side of comparison operator to
mask the coresponding value, like this:
<pre>
b ($ff820).w &amp; 3 = (a0) &amp;&amp; (a1) = d0 &amp; %1100
</pre>
<p>
Comparison operators should be familiar and obvious, except for '!'
which indicates inequality ("is not") comparison. For example:
</p>
<pre>
b d0 &gt; $20 &amp;&amp; d0 &lt; $40 &amp;&amp; d0 ! $30
</pre>
<h5>Tracking breakpoint conditions</h5>
<p>
As a convenience, if the both sides of the comparison are exactly the
same (i.e. condition is redundant as it's always either true or
false), the <em>right side</em> of the comparison is replaced with
its current value. This way you can give something like this:
</p>
<pre>
b pc &gt; "pc"
</pre>
<p>As:</p>
<pre>
b pc &gt; pc
</pre>
<p>
That in itself isn't so useful, but for inequality ('!') comparison,
conditional breakpoint will additionally track and output all further
changes for the given address/register expression. This can be used
for example to find out all value changes in a given memory address,
like this:
</p>
<pre>
b ($ffff9202).w ! ($ffff9202).w :trace
</pre>
<p>
Because tracking breakpoint conditions will print the evaluated
value when it changes, they're typically used with the trace option
to track changes e.g. to some IO register.
</p>
<h5>Breakpoint condition notes</h5>
<ul>
<li>
Any '!' condition should be given as the first condition. Because
breakpoint evaluation is stopped ("short-circuited") when any of the
conditions fails, the tracked value would not be updated correctly
unless tracking condition is given as the first one.
</li>
<li>
Hatari will internally update some register values without immediately
updating the corresponding IO address range memory addresses. For
example the Busy bit for the internal Blitter control register is
(internally) cleared when Blitter activity stops, but the actual IO
address for that control register gets updated only when something
actually writes or reads that IO address. Many HW registers behave
like this (status registers in FDC, ACIA, MFP, Blitter...).
<br>
For breakpoints that track just a single IO register memory address, or
multiple ones of which <strong>none</strong> are modified by Hatari,
only by emulated code, this is not a problem, they get triggered as
expected.
<br>
However, if you have a breakpoint that tracks multiple IO registers
where some of them are updated by Hatari, for example to check that
other Blitter registers aren't updated while control register
indicates Blitter to be active (busy), things don't work as expected!
</li>
</ul>
<h4>Breakpoint variables</h4>
<p>
In addition to loaded symbols, the debugger supports also setting
conditional breakpoints on values of some "virtual" variables listed
by "b help". For example:
</p>
<ul>
<li>If you want the emulation to stop on the first instruction of
next program; after TOS desktop is up, set a breakpoint on
the TEXT segment address given in a program basepage:
<pre>
b pc = TEXT :once
</pre>
Note1: It's better to trigger it only once because if you'd leave it on,
during reboot you would get a warning for every instruction until TOS sets
a valid basepage.
<br />
Note2: you cannot use an address breakpoint for this because value of
a variable given to address breakpoint is evaluated when it's set, not
at run-time, so it cannot get the new value that the TEXT variable
gets when you start a program.
</li>
<li>To view current program DATA and BSS segment contents,
use the corresponding variables:
<pre>
m DATA
m BSS
</pre>
</li>
<li>If you want to stop at a specific cycle within a frame (that is,
PC relative to the current VBL/HBL in cycles), set breakpoints to
specific "HBL" and "FrameCycles" variable values. If you for
example want to break after 20 HBLs, use:
<pre>
b HBL = "HBL+20"
</pre>
</li>
<li>Aes/Bios/Gemdos/LineA/LineF/Vdi/XbiosOpcode variables can be used
to catch AES, BIOS, GEMDOS, Line-A, Line-F, VDI and XBIOS OS-calls.
By default they contain the 0xffff value, so to trace e.g. all AES
calls, instead of a specific one, one needs to use something like this:
<pre>
b AesOpcode ! AesOpcode &amp;&amp; AesOpcode &lt; 0xffff :trace
</pre>
</li>
</ul>
<p>
Hint: "info" command "aes", "bios", "gemdos", "vdi" and "xbios"
subcommands for can be used to list the corresponding OS-call opcodes.
For example, to see the GEMDOS opcodes, use:</p>
<pre>
info gemdos 1
</pre>
<h4 id="Chaining_breakpoints">Chaining breakpoints and other actions</h4>
<p>
As the file pointed by the breakpoint ":file" option (see
<a href="#Breakpoint_options">Breakpoint options</a>) can contain any
debugger commands, it can also be used to do automatic "chaining" of
debugger and breakpoint actions so that after one breakpoint is hit,
another one is set.
</p>
<p>For example if you have these input files:</p>
<ul>
<li>"break.ini":
<pre>
b GemdosOpcode = 0x3D :trace :once :file program.ini
</pre>
</li>
<li>"program.ini":
<pre>
b pc = TEXT :trace :once :file trace.ini
</pre>
</li>
<li>"trace.ini":
<pre>
symbols prg
trace gemdos,cpu_symbols
b VBL = "VBL+4" :trace :once :file disable.ini
</pre>
</li>
<li>"disable.ini":
<pre>
trace none
b all
</pre>
</li>
</ul>
<p>
And then start Hatari with the first debugger input file and a GEMDOS
HD directory containing "desktop.inf" file:
</p>
<pre>
hatari --parse break.ini /path/to/your/program.tos
</pre>
<ol>
<li>"break.ini" input file will break when TOS opens
the "desktop.inf" file (it's the first Fopen() i.e. GEMDOS call
0x3D done by TOS at boot) and the breakpoint will run
the debugger commands from the "symbols.ini" file
<li>"program.ini" will setup breakpoint to program startup
(because TEXT variable cannot be used before TOS has booted)
<li>"trace.ini" input file loads symbols for the run program, sets Hatari
to trace several things (see <a href="#Tracing">Tracing</a> section
below) in the emulated system for few VBLs until breakpoint runs
commands from the "disable.ini" file
<li>"disable.ini" input file will disable tracing and remove
all (remaining) breakpoints
</ol>
<p><em>Note:</em></p>
<ul>
<li>Because debugger input files cannot "continue"
emulation, ":trace" option needs to be used for the breakpoint(s)
if you want emulation to continue after the breakpoint action(s).</li>
<li>In simpler breakpoint chain (like above), new breakpoint just
replaces the previous one, ":once" option tells that breakpoint
isn't needed after it's hit.
</li>
</ul>
<p>
Hint: It's better to test each input file separate before testing the
whole chain. Besides the ":file" breakpoint option, these debugger
input files can be also read with the debugger "file" command, "lock"
command "file" option and with the Hatari "--parse" command line
option.
</p>
<h3>Stepping through code</h3>
<p>
After analyzing the emulation state and/or setting new breakpoints,
you can continue the emulation with the "c" command. You can continue
for a given number of CPU instructions (or DSP instructions when "dc"
is used), or you can continue forever (until a non-tracing breakpoint
triggers) if you omit the instruction count.
</p>
<p>
If you want to continue just to the next instruction, use "s" (step)
command to continue for exactly one instruction, or "n" (next), if you
want to skip subroutine and exception calls. "ds" and "dn" commands
do the same for DSP.
</p>
<p>
You can also continue with the "n" until instruction of certain
type is encountered, by giving it the instruction type:
<ul>
<li>"branch" matches branch instructions: BCC, BRA, DBCC, JMP</li>
<li>"subcall" matches subroutine calls: BSR, JSR</li>
<li>"subreturn" matches return from subroutine: RTD, RTR, RTS</li>
<li>"exception" matches exceptions: BKPT, ILLG, STOP, TRAP, TRAPV</li>
<li>"exreturn" matches return from exception: RTE</li>
<li>"return" matches both subroutine and exception returns</li>
</ul>
<p>
For example: "n branch", or "dn branch".
</p>
<p>
(Note: CHK, CHK2, FBCC, FDBCC, &amp; FTRAPCC exception / branch CPU
instructions aren't supported currently.)
</p>
<h3>Tracing</h3>
<p>
If you want e.g. to continue with real-time disassembling, you can
enable it with "trace cpu_disasm" (or "trace dsp_disasm" for DSP) at
the debugger prompt before continuing.
</p>
<p>
Disable tracing with "trace none" when you enter the debugger again.
"trace help" (or TAB) can be used to list all the (over 40) supported
traceable things, from HW events to OS functions.
</p>
<p>
Notes:
</p>
<ul>
<li>
If GEMDOS HD emulation isn't enabled, GEMDOS call tracing needs to be
enabled at Hatari command line, it's not possible to enable it after
TOS has initialized GEMDOS.
</li>
<li>
AES, BIOS, GEMDOS and XBIOS traces show arguments for (most of) the
calls, VDI trace shows only function calls (parsing the arguments
would be too complicated).
</li>
<li>
Tracing options can be set even from a program within the emulation,
if you enable the Hatari "--bios-intercept" option and call XBios 255
from the program with a suitable trace options string.
</li>
<li>
Note that the trace output file can be set only when Hatari starts,
it cannot be changed from within the debugger (or emulation).
</li>
</ul>
<p>
If there isn't a trace option for something you'd like to track,
you may be able to use tracing breakpoints, explained above.
For example, following tracks Line-A calls:
</p>
<pre>
b LineAOpcode ! LineAOpcode &amp;&amp; LineAOpcode &lt; 0xffff :trace
</pre>
<h3>Profiling</h3>
<p>
Profiling tells where the emulated code spends most of its (emulated)
time. It can be used to find out where a program is (apparently)
stuck, or what are the largest performance bottlenecks for a program.
</p>
<h4>Collecting the profile data</h4>
<p>
Profiling is used by first enabling the profiler (use "dp" for DSP):
</p>
<pre>
&gt; profile on
Profiling enabled.
</pre>
<p>
And profiling will start once you continue the emulation:
</p>
<pre>
&gt; c
Returning to emulation...
Allocated CPU profile buffer (27 MB).
</pre>
<p>
When you get back to the debugger, the collected profiling information
is processed and a summary of in which parts of memory the execution
happened, and how long it took, is shown:
</p>
<pre>
Allocated CPU profile address buffer (57 KB).
ROM TOS (0xE00000-0xE80000):
- active address range:
0xe00030-0xe611a4
- active instruction addresses:
14240 (100.00% of all)
- executed instructions:
4589668 (100.00% of all)
- used cycles:
56898472 (100.00% of all)
= 7.09347s
Cartridge ROM (0xFA0000-0xFC0000):
- no activity
= 7.09347s
</pre>
<p>
(DSP RAM will be shown only as single area in profile information.)
</p>
<h4>Investigating the profile data</h4>
<p>
When you're back in debugger, you can inspect the collected profile data:
</p>
<pre>
&gt; h profile
'profile' - profile CPU code
Usage: profile &lt;subcommand&gt; [parameter]
Subcommands:
- on
- off
- counts [count]
- cycles [count]
- misses [count]
- symbols [count]
- addresses [address]
- callers
- stack
- stats
- save &lt;file&gt;
- loops &lt;file&gt; [CPU limit] [DSP limit]
'on' & 'off' enable and disable profiling. Data is collected
until debugger is entered again at which point you get profiling
statistics ('stats') summary.
Then you can ask for list of the PC addresses, sorted either by
execution 'counts', used 'cycles' or cache 'misses'. First can
be limited just to named addresses with 'symbols'. Optional
count will limit how many items will be shown.
'addresses' lists the profiled addresses in order, with the
instructions (currently) residing at them. By default this
starts from the first executed instruction, or you can
specify the starting address.
'callers' shows (raw) caller information for addresses which
had symbol(s) associated with them. 'stack' shows the current
profile stack (this is useful only with :noinit breakpoints).
Profile address and callers information can be saved with
'save' command.
Detailed (spin) looping information can be collected by
specifying to which file it should be saved, with optional
limit(s) on how many bytes first and last instruction
address of the loop can differ (0 = no limit).
</pre>
<p>For example, to see which memory addresses were executed most
and what instructions those have at the end of profiling, use:</p>
<pre>
&gt; profile counts 8
addr: count:
0xe06f10 12.11% 555724 move.l $4ba,d1
0xe06f16 12.11% 555724 cmp.l d1,d0
0xe06f18 12.11% 555724 bgt.s $e06f06
0xe06f06 12.11% 555708 move.b $fffffa01.w,d1
0xe06f0a 12.11% 555708 btst #5,d1
0xe06f0e 12.11% 555708 beq.s $e06f1e
0xe00ed8 1.66% 76001 subq.l #1,d0
0xe00eda 1.66% 76001 bpl.s $e00ed8
8 CPU addresses listed.
</pre>
<p>
Then, to see what the executed code and its costs look like
around top addresses:
<pre>
&gt; profile addresses 0xe06f04
# disassembly with profile data:
# &lt;instructions percentage&gt;% (&lt;sum of instructions&gt;, &lt;sum of cycles&gt;, &lt;sum of i-cache misses&gt;)
$e06f04 : bra.s $e06f10 0.00% (48, 576, 0)
$e06f06 : move.b $fffffa01.w,d1 12.11% (555708, 8902068, 0)
$e06f0a : btst #5,d1 12.11% (555708, 6685268, 0)
$e06f0e : beq.s $e06f1e 12.11% (555708, 4457312, 0)
$e06f10 : move.l $4ba,d1 12.11% (555724, 11125668, 0)
$e06f16 : cmp.l d1,d0 12.11% (555724, 4461708, 0)
$e06f18 : bgt.s $e06f06 12.11% (555724, 4455040, 0)
$e06f1a : moveq #1,d0 0.00% (16, 64, 0)
Disassembled 8 (of active 14240) CPU addresses.
</pre>
<p>
Unlike normal disassembly, "profile addresses" command shows only
memory addresses which instructions were executed during profiling.
You get instruction cache misses only when using cycle-accurate 030
emulation with a Hatari version configured to use WinUAE CPU core.
<p>
If you have loaded symbol information, symbol names are shown above
the corresponding addresses. With the "profile symbols" command you
get a list of how many times the code execution passed through the
defined symbol addresses.
</p>
<h4>Profile data accuracy</h4>
<p>Profile data accuracy depends on Hatari emulation accuracy.
Profile data accuracy from most to least accurate when Hatari's
default emulation options are used is following:</p>
<ul>
<li>Executed CPU and DSP instruction counts are accurate.</li>
<li>DSP cycles counts (and their variance information) should be accurate.
</li>
<li>030 CPU instruction cache miss information (provided by WinUAE CPU core)
is assumed to be accurate.</li>
<li>Cycles used by a given CPU instruction depend to some extent on what
instruction(s), and data in case of 030, was processed before it.
While Hatari has some (instruction pairing) heuristics to take
that into account for 68000, in general instruction cycles are
averages. For 68000, cycles (provided by OldUAE CPU core) should
be fairly accurate, for 68030 they aren't (yet) not very accurate.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Caller information</h4>
<p>
If you have loaded symbols (see <a href="#Debug_symbols">Debug symbols</a>)
before continuing emulation/profiling, additional caller information
will be collected for all the code symbol addresses which are called
as subroutines. This information includes callstack, call counts,
calling instruction type (subroutine call, branch, return etc), and
costs for those calls, both including costs for further subroutine
calls and without them.
</p>
<p>When debugger is re-entered, current callstack is output before
profiling information:</p>
<pre>
&gt; a <em>_P_LineAttack</em>
CPU condition breakpoint 1 with 1 condition(s) added:
pc = $30f44
$030f44 : 48e7 3820 movem.l d2-d4/a2,-(sp)
&gt; c
...
CPU breakpoint condition(s) matched 1 times.
pc = $30f44
Finalizing costs for 12 non-returned functions:
- 0x32a3c: _P_GunShot (return = 0x32b7e)
- 0x32b18: _A_FireShotgun (return = 0x3229a)
- 0x3223a: _P_SetPsprite (return = 0x32e86)
- 0x32e4e: _P_MovePsprites (return = 0x38070)
- 0x37f44: _P_PlayerThink (return = 0x36ea0)
- 0x36e44: _P_Ticker (return = 0x260e0)
- 0x25dcc: _G_Ticker (return = 0x1e4c6)
- 0x1e29e: _TryRunTics (return = 0x239fa)
- 0x238e8: _D_DoomLoop (return = 0x2556a)
- 0x24d7a: _D_DoomMain (return = 0x44346)
...
</pre>
<p>("profile stack" command can be used in breakpoints with :noinit
option to show backtraces during caller profiling.)</p>
<p>Other information collected during profiling is shown with
following command:</p>
<pre>
&gt; profile callers
# &lt;callee&gt;: &lt;caller1&gt; = &lt;calls&gt; &lt;types&gt;[ &lt;inclusive/totals&gt;[ &lt;exclusive/totals&gt;]], &lt;caller2&gt; ..., &lt;callee name&gt;
# types: s = subroutine call, r = return from subroutine, e = exception, x = return from exception,
# b = branch/jump, n = PC moved to next instruction, u = unknown PC change
# totals: calls/instructions/cycles/misses
0xe00030: 0xffffff = 1 e, _main
0xe000fe: 0xe00a0c = 1 b, memdone
0xe0010a: 0xe04e34 = 1 s 1/5/72 1/5/72, _run_cartridge_applications
0xe00144: 0xe04dbe = 1 s 4/118/1512 1/27/444, _init_acia_vecs
0xe001ea: 0xe00ec6 = 1 b, _int_acia
0xe0038c: 0xe04c28 = 1 s 1/191/2052 1/191/2052, _init_exc_vec
0xe003a6: 0xe04c2e = 1 s 1/388/4656 1/388/4656, _init_user_vec
...
</pre>
<p>
For example, if you don't know all the places from which a certain
function is called, or in what context a certain interrupt handler can
be called during the period you're profiling, profile caller
information will tell you:
</p>
<pre>
callee: caller: calls: calltype:
| | | /
0x379: 0x155 = 144 r, 0x283 = 112 b, 0x2ef = 112 b, 0x378 = 72 s
583236/359708265/1631189180 72/4419020/19123430, dsp_interrupt
| | |
inclusive costs exclusive costs callee name
(of calls from 0x378)
Calltypes:
- b: jump/branch
- n: PC just moved to next address
- r: subroutine return
- s: subroutine call
</pre>
<p>
(Most "calls" to "dsp_interrupt" were subroutine call returns (=r)
to it from address 0x155.)
</p>
<p>
With the execution counts in normal profiling data, caller information
can actually be used to have complete picture of what exactly the code
did during profiling. Main/overview work for this analysis is best done
automatically, by the profiler data post-processor (documented below).
</p>
<h4>Caller data accuracy</h4>
<p>Everything about profile data accuracy applies also to caller costs,
but there are additional things to take into account, mainly because
profiler cannot determine when exceptions are being handled:</p>
<ul>
<li>If there are exception(s) during a subroutine call, costs for
the exception handling will also be accounted for that subroutine.
This shouldn't be a problem unless those costs are very large,
i.e. check how much CPU your exception handlers take.</li>
<li>Indicated exception handler call type can be incorrect.</li>
<li>Profiled code doing return address related stack manipulations
confuses call tracking and produces incorrect results (profiler
has special code to handle EmuTOS AES switcher because of this).
Typically this produces large list of functions that are finalized
at profile end, so it should be easy to detect.</li>
<li>Compilicated recursive calls seem to sometimes cause inclusive
costs (ones including costs of further subroutine calls) to be
incorrect. Sometimes this can be noticed by them being even
&gt;100%.</li>
<li>On DSP, profiler heuristics assume (for speed reasons) that
<em>conditional</em> subroutine calls never call the very next
instruction (as that would be very bad/inefficient code).</li>
</ul>
<h4>Saving profile data to a file</h4>
<p>It's useful to save the profile data to a file:
<pre>
&gt; profile save program-profile.txt
</pre>
<p>With the saved profile disassembly (and optional caller information)
you can more easily investigate what your program did during
profiling, search symbols &amp; addresses in it, and compare the
results to profiles you've saved from earlier versions of your code.</p>
<p>You may even create your own post-processing tools for
investigating the profiling data more closely, e.g. to
<a href="http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=68&amp;t=24561&amp;start=75#p226505">find
CPU/DSP communication bottlenecks</a>.</p>
<h3>Profile data post-processing</h3>
<p>Saved profile data can be post-processed with (Python) script
installed by Hatari, to:</p>
<ul>
<li>Get lists of functions/symbols with highest costs.</li>
<li>Get callgraphs of what functions/symbols cause those
costs and what kind of call hierarchy the profiled code
has.</li>
<li>Export profile data in Valgrind's
<a href="http://valgrind.org/docs/manual/cl-format.html">Callgrind format</a>
for viewing it in
<a href="http://kcachegrind.sourceforge.net/">Kcachegrind</a>
GUI.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Providing symbols for the post-processor</h4>
<p>When the data is post-processed, you should always provide
the post-processor symbols for the profile code! Relying just on the
symbol in the profile data can cause costs to be asssigned to wrong
symbol, if symbol's code wasn't called through symbol's own address,
but by jumping inside its code.</p>
<p>If your code is in fixed location, you should tell
post-processor to handle symbol addresses as absolute (-a):</p>
<pre>
$ hatari_profile.py <b>-a</b> etos512k.sym emutos-profile.txt
</pre>
<p>Normal programs are relocated and you should instead give
the symbols as TEXT (code) section relative ones (-r):</p>
<pre>
$ hatari_profile.py <b>-r</b> program.sym program-profile.txt
</pre>
<p>If symbols are included to your binary in DRI/GST format, first they
need to be extracted to <a href="#Debug_symbols">the ASCII format</a>
understood by the post-processor:</p>
<pre>
$ gst2ascii -l -o program.prg &gt; program.sym
</pre>
<p>If there are some extra symbols that you don't want to see
separately in profiles, because they aren't real functions,
but e.g. loop labels, you can either remove them manually
from the ASCII *.sym file, or filter them out with grep:
</p>
<pre>
$ gst2ascii -l -o program.prg | grep -v -e useless1 -e useless2 &gt; program.sym
</pre>
<h4>Post-processor provided statistics</h4>
<p>Above post-processor examples just parse + verify the given data
and produce output like this:</p>
<pre>
Hatari profile data processor
Parsing TEXT relative symbol address information from program.sym...
[...]
3237 lines with 1550 code symbols/addresses parsed, 0 unknown.
Parsing profile information from program-profile.txt...
[...]
9575 lines processed with 368 functions.
CPU profile information from 'program-profile.txt':
- Hatari v1.6.2+ (May 4 2013), WinUAE CPU core
</pre>
<p>To get statistics (-s) and list of top (-t) CPU users in profile,
add "-st" option:</p>
<pre>
$ hatari_profile.py <b>-st</b> -r program.sym program-profile.txt
[...]
CPU profile information from 'program-profile.txt':
- Hatari v1.6.2+ (May 4 2013), WinUAE CPU core
Time spent in profile = 34.49539s.
Calls:
- max = 187738, in __toupper at 0x52b88, on line 8286
- 1585901 in total
Executed instructions:
- max = 1900544, in flat_remap_mips+14 at 0x47654, on line 7020
- 64499351 in total
Used cycles:
- max = 15224620, in flat_remap_mips+18 at 0x47658, on line 7022
- 553392132 in total
Instruction cache misses:
- max = 184308, in _BM_T_GetTicks at 0x43b90, on line 4772
- 4941307 in total
Calls:
11.84% 187698 __toupper
11.48% 182105 _BM_T_GetTicks
11.48% 182019 _I_GetTime
[...]
Executed instructions:
34.83% 22462729 flat_generate_mips
14.08% 9080215 flat_remap_mips
8.55% 5515945 render_patch_direct
5.09% 3283328 _TryRunTics
[...]
Used cycles:
23.62% 130702768 flat_generate_mips
12.42% 68735832 flat_remap_mips
9.77% 54041148 _TryRunTics
5.80% 32111536 correct_element
[...]
Instruction cache misses:
37.03% 1829764 _TryRunTics
11.20% 553314 _BM_T_GetTicks
9.44% 466319 _NetUpdate
9.27% 457899 _HGetPacket
[...]
</pre>
<p>If you want to see also symbol addresses and what is per call
cost, add -i option:<p>
<pre>
$ hatari_profile.py -st <b>-i</b> -r program.sym program-profile.txt
[...]
Executed instructions:
34.83% 22462729 flat_generate_mips (0x04778a, 774576 / call)
14.08% 9080215 flat_remap_mips (0x047646, 313110 / call)
8.55% 5515945 render_patch_direct (0x047382, 29977 / call)
5.09% 3283328 _TryRunTics (0x042356, 19660 / call)
[...]
Used cycles:
23.62% 8.14728s 130702768 flat_generate_mips (0x04778a, 0.28094s / call)
12.42% 4.28461s 68735832 flat_remap_mips (0x047646, 0.14775s / call)
9.77% 3.36863s 54041148 _TryRunTics (0x042356, 0.02017s / call)
5.80% 2.00165s 32111536 correct_element (0x04a658, 0.00001s / call)
[...]
Instruction cache misses:
37.03% 1829764 _TryRunTics (0x042356, 10956 / call)
11.20% 553314 _BM_T_GetTicks (0x043b90, 3 / call)
9.44% 466319 _NetUpdate (0x041bcc, 5 / call)
9.27% 457899 _HGetPacket (0x041754, 5 / call)
[...]
</pre>
<p>(For cycles the "per call" information is in seconds, not as
a cost count.)</p>
<p>If your profile file contains caller information, you should
add -p option to see it, as that will also help in detecting symbol
issues (see <a href="#Interpreting_the_numbers">Interpreting
the numbers</a>):<p>
<pre>
$ hatari_profile.py -st <b>-p</b> -r program.sym program-profile.txt
[...]
9575 lines processed with 368 functions.
[...]
Of all 1570498 switches, ignored 581 for type(s) ['r', 'u', 'x'].
CPU profile information from 'badmood-level-load-CPU.txt':
- Hatari v1.6.2+ (May 4 2013), WinUAE CPU core
[...]
Calls:
11.84% 11.84% 187698 187698 __toupper
11.48% 11.48% 182105 182105 _BM_T_GetTicks
11.48% 22.95% 182019 364038 _I_GetTime
[...]
Executed instructions:
34.83% 34.86% 34.86% 22462729 22484024 22484024 flat_generate_mips
14.08% 14.10% 14.10% 9080215 9091270 9091676 flat_remap_mips
8.55% 5515945 render_patch_direct
5.09% 5.11% 94.96% 3283328 3294022 61247717 _TryRunTics
[...]
Used cycles:
23.62% 23.69% 23.69% 130702768 131100604 131100604 flat_generate_mips
12.42% 12.46% 12.46% 68735832 68928816 68930904 flat_remap_mips
9.77% 9.80% 95.66% 54041148 54238744 529368824 _TryRunTics
5.80% 5.82% 5.82% 32111536 32193664 32193664 correct_element
[...]
Instruction cache misses:
37.03% 37.14% 98.57% 1829764 1835261 4870573 _TryRunTics
11.20% 11.24% 11.24% 553314 555191 555191 _BM_T_GetTicks
9.44% 9.49% 29.13% 466319 468782 1439340 _NetUpdate
9.27% 9.29% 9.37% 457899 459197 463217 _HGetPacket
[...]
</pre>
<p>Now there's a message telling that some of the calls were ignored
because according to their "call type", they were actually returns from
exceptions, not real calls (this is mainly important for callgraph
generation, discussed below).</p>
<h4>Interpreting the results</h4>
<p>In addition to accuracy issues mentioned in previous Profiling
sections, function/symbol level costs have gotchas of their own.</p>
<p>The first cost percentage and count columns are <em>sums for all
the instructions</em> that were in profile data file <em>between
the indicated symbol's address and the address of the next symbol</em>
(= "between-symbols" cost).</p>
<p><strong>NOTE:</strong> If your symbol file doesn't contain addresses
for all the relevant symbols, results from this can be misleading because
instructions costs get assigned to <em>whatever</em> symbol's address
happened to precede those instructions. And you don't see which
caller is causing it from caller info or callgraph either, as entry
point for that time sink lacking a symbol means profiler hadn't
tracked calls to it...</p>
<p>The next two cost percentage and count columns are for <em>subroutine
calls costs</em>, first one for exclusive and latter for inclusive cost
i.e. including costs for further subroutine calls. Values are based on
caller information documented above.</p>
<p>Reasons why between-symbol costs, and subroutine call costs can
differ, are following:</p>
<ul>
<li>Subroutine terminates before next symbol address: exclusive
cost is smaller than in-between cost <em>because of missing
symbol information</em>
(these are indicated with '*' in statistics).</li>
<li>Subroutine is called more through jumps/branches than through
subroutine calls: inclusive call count may be smaller than
in-between call count which includes branches/jumps.</li>
<li>Subroutine jumps/branches to another function instead of
using subroutine call, or function contains additional
(non-function) labels: exclusive cost is larger than
in-between cost.</li>
<li>Exception happening during subroutine call: exclusive cost is
(slightly) larger than in-between cost.</li>
</ul>
<p>In the first case, you should check the profile data to find out
whether there are missing symbols for executed function entry points.
You can notice function entry points as address gap and/or code
retrieving arguments from stack. Exit points can be seen from RTS
instructions.</p>
<p>Second case can also be seen from the profile data. Call count
is same as count for how many times first instruction is executed
(worst case: large loop on subroutine's first instruction).</p>
<p>While subroutine costs should be more accurate and relevant, due to
code optimizations many of the functions are not called as subroutines
(on m68k, using JSR/BSR), but just jumped or branced to. Because of
this, it's useful to compare both subroutine and between-symbols
costs. One should be able to see from the profile disassembly which
of the above cases is cause for the discrepancy in the values.</p>
<p><strong>NOTE:</strong> Before starting to do any serious source
level optimizations, you should <em>always</em> verify from profile
data (disassembly) where exactly the costs are in a function, to make
sure your optimization efforts can actually help the performance.</p>
<h4>Generating and viewing callgraphs</h4>
<p>Callgraphs require that saved profile data contains caller
function address information, i.e. symbols for the code should
be loaded before starting profiling it (see
<a href="#Debug_symbols">loading symbol data</a>).</p>
<p>Separate callgraphs will be created for each of the costs
(0=calls, 1=instructions, 2=cycles) with the -g option:</p>
<pre>
$ hatari_profile.py <b>-p -g</b> -r program.sym program-profile.txt
[...]
Generating 'program-profile-0.dot' DOT callgraph file...
Generating 'program-profile-1.dot' DOT callgraph file...
Generating 'program-profile-2.dot' DOT callgraph file...
[...]
</pre>
<p>Callgraphs are saved in <a href="http://www.graphviz.org/">GraphViz</a>
"dot" format. Dot files can be viewed:</p>
<ul>
<li>With "dotty" program included with GraphViz</li>
<li>With <a href="http://code.google.com/p/jrfonseca/wiki/XDot">XDot</a>
Python GUI (best option on Linux), or some platform specific viewer</li>
<li>By converting dot file to PostScript or SVG format before
viewing it with viewers for those:
<pre>
$ dot -Tsvg program-profile-1.dot &gt; program-profile-1.svg
</pre>
(problem with most PS/PDF and SVG viewers is that either they
don't allow zooming large callgraphs enough or they use huge
amounts of memory and get very slow)
</li>
</ul>
<p>Produced callgraph will look like this:</p>
<div style="text-align:center">
<a href="images/callgraph.svg">
<img src="images/callgraph.png" width="953" height="589"
alt="Part of callgraph" />
</a>
</div>
<p>Interpreting the callgraph:</p>
<ul>
<li>Diamond shaped nodes are symbols called as subroutines.
Values listed in them are subroutine call costs; inclusive
(total) cost with exclusive (own) cost in parenthesis,
followed by inclusive cost count. Exclusive cost is
shown only if it differs from inclusive one.</li>
<li>Ellipse shaped nodes are for other symbols (functions
called using jumps/branches, loop labels etc). Values
listed in them are between-symbols costs, i.e. normally
they're included to inclusive (total) costs shown in
subroutine call node somewhere higher in call hierarchy.</li>
<li>Nodes which exclusive (own) or between-symbols costs
exceed default or explicitly given threshold value,
have gray background.</li>
<li>Both nodes, which inclusive or between-symbols cost exceeds
the threshold value, and the arrows to &amp; from them,
are marked red.
<li>Arrow types indicate call types; normal arrows subroutine
calls, circles branches/jumps, backarrows returns.
Exception calls and returns are indicated with dashed lines,
unknown calls with dotted lines.</li>
<li>Arrow text tells from which address (within the caller)
the call originated. If symbol had multiple callers, text
includes count of calls from that particular address, and its
percentage is of all calls done to that symbol.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Making large callgraphs readable</h4>
<p>If profile is for larger and more varied amount of code
(e.g. program startup), the resulting callgraph can be so
huge it's unreadable.</p>
<p>If your code has interrupt handlers, they can get called
at any point, which can show in callgraph as "explicit" calls
from the interrupted functions. To get rid of such incorrect
calls, give interrupt handler names to --ignore-to option:</p>
<pre>
$ hatari_profile.py -p -g <b>--ignore-to handler1,handler2</b> -r program.sym program-profile.txt
</pre>
<p>In large callgraph most of the functions aren't really interesting,
because their contribution to the cost is insignificant. You can
remove large number of them with --no-leafs and --no-intermediate
options, those options act <em>only</em> on on nodes which costs are below
given threshold. Leaf nodes are ones which don't have any parents
and/or children. Intermediate ones have only single parent and
children (node calling itself is not taken into account).
<p>Threshold for this is given with the --limit (-l) option. With
that it typically makes also sense to change the node emphasis
threshold with --emph-limit (-e) option:</p>
<pre>
$ hatari_profile.py -p -g <b>-l 0.5 -e 2.0</b> -r program.sym program-profile.txt
</pre>
<p>If you're not interested in from how many different addresses
a given function calls another function, use --compact option. If you
still see multiple calls between two nodes with it, the reason is that
they happened through different call paths which were removed from
the callgraph after --compact option was applied:</p>
<pre>
$ hatari_profile.py -p -g -l 1.0 -e 2.0 <b>--no-leafs --no-intermediate --compact</b> -r program.sym program-profile.txt
</pre>
<p>If even this doesn't help, you can remove all nodes below
the given cost threshold limit with --no-limited option, but this
often doesn't leave much of a call hierarchy. Instead you may
consider removing all nodes except for subroutine call ones, with the
--only-subroutines option.</p>
<p>If you have trouble locating nodes you're specially interested
about, you can either color them differently with the --mark option,
or exclude everything else from the callgraph except those nodes and
their immediate callers &amp; callees, with the --only option:</p>
<pre>
$ hatari_profile.py -p -g <b>--only func1,func2</b> -r program.sym program-profile.txt
</pre>
<p>Last option for reading the callgraph is using -k option to
export the data for use in (Linux) Kcachegrind UI. Kcachegrind generates
callgraphs on the fly, and just for the area around the function
you selected, so navigating in callgraph may be easier. It also
shows the related profile disassembly, which can make verifying
matters easier:</p>
<pre>
$ hatari_profile.py <b>-p -k</b> -r program.sym program-profile.txt
[...]
Generating callgrind file 'program-profile.cg'...
[...]
$ kcachegrind program-profile.cg
</pre>
<div style="text-align:center">
<img src="images/kcachegrind.png" width="887" height="442"
alt="Kcachegrind screenshot" />
</div>
<h3>Usage examples</h3>
<p>
Here's a list of some common debugging tasks and how to do them
with the Hatari debugger:
</p>
<dl>
<dt><em>Stopping on program startup and examining its data</em></dt>
<dd>Please see <a href="#Breakpoint_variables">Breakpoint variables</a>
and <a href="#Inspecting_emulation_state">Inspecting emulation state</a>
sections.
</dd>
<dt><em>Tracing specific things in the system</em></dt>
<dd>To trace e.g. all GEMDOS calls and IO operations, use:
<pre>
trace gemdos,io_all
</pre>
Please see <a href="#Tracing">Tracing</a> section for more information
on tracing, what's possible with it and what are its limitations.
</dd>
<dt><em>Stopping when certain PC address is passed Nth time</em></dt>
<dd>To stop e.g. after function/subroutine at $12345 is called for
the 6th time:
<pre>
a $12345 :6
</pre>
</dd>
<dt><em>Stopping when specific exception happens</em></dt>
<dd>Hatari's -D option doesn't invoke debugger on all exceptions and
doesn't allow invoking debugger just for specific exceptions. To
stop at specific exception, one can check when it's called.
At the start of memory is the CPU exception table for exception
handler addresses, so to stop e.g. at bus error with some extra
information, one can use following:
<pre>
history on
b pc=($8)
</pre>
After bus error invokes debugger, 'history' command can then be used
to see (executed memory addresses with their current) instructions
leading to the error. The most interesting vector addresses are:
$8 (Bus error), $C (Address error), $10 (Illegal instruction),
$14 (Division by zero). See also --debug-except option.
</dd>
<dt><em>Stopping when register has a specific value</em></dt>
<dd>To stop when e.g. D1 register contains value 5, set a breakpoint on:
<pre>
b d1 = 5
</pre>
</dd>
<dt><em>Stopping when a register value changes</em></dt>
<dd>To stop when e.g. D1 register value changes, set a breakpoint on:
<pre>
b d1 ! d1
</pre>
</dd>
<dt><em>Stopping when register value is within some range</em></dt>
<dd>To stop when e.g. D1 register value is within range of 10-30,
set a breakpoint on:
<pre>
b d1 &gt; 9 &amp;&amp; d1 &lt; 31
</pre>
</dd>
<dt><em>Stopping when memory location has a specific value</em></dt>
<dd>To stop when e.g. bit 1 of the Video Shifter Sync Mode byte at
IO address $ff820a is set i.e. video frequency is 60Hz, set
a breakpoint on:
<pre>
b ($ff820a).b & 2 = 2
</pre>
</dd>
<dt><em>Stopping when a memory value changes</em></dt>
<dd>To stop when above bit changes, set a breakpoint on its value
being different from the current value ('!' compares for inequality):
<pre>
b ($ff820a).b & 2 ! ($ff820a).b & 2
</pre>
</dd>
<dt><em>Tracing all changes in specific memory location</em></dt>
<dd>To see the new values and continue without stopping, add
the ":trace" breakpoint option:
<pre>
b ($ff820a).b & 2 ! ($ff820a).b & 2 :trace
</pre>
</dd>
<dt><em>Stopping at specific screen position</em></dt>
<dd>To stop e.g. when VBL is 100, HBL is 40 and line cycles is 5,
use the corresponding debugger variables:
<pre>
b VBL = 100 &amp;&amp; HBL = 40 &amp;&amp; FrameCycles = 5
</pre>
</dd>
<dt><em>Stopping after value increases/decreases by certain amount</em></dt>
<dd>To stop e.g. after D0 value has increased by 10, set breakpoint on:
<pre>
b d0 = "d0 + 10"
</pre>
</dd>
<dt><em>Examining specific system call return value</em></dt>
<dd>To check e.g. what's the Fopen() GEMDOS call return value,
check with "info gemdos 1" its opcode, set a breakpoint for that
and step to next (n) instruction from the trap call when breakpoint
is hit. GEMDOS call return value is then in register D0:
<pre>
&gt; trace gemdos
&gt; b GemdosOpcode = $3D
&gt; c
[...continue until breakpoint...]
1. CPU breakpoint condition(s) matched 1 times.
GemdosOpcode = $3D
&gt; n
GEMDOS 0x3D Fopen("TEST.TXT", read-only)
&gt; e d0
= %1000000 (bin), #64 (dec), $40 (hex)
</pre>
</dd>
<dt><em>Seeing code leading to a breakpoint</em></dt>
<dd>To see CPU instructions executed before debugger was entered,
you need to enabled history tracking <em>before</em> it. Whenever
debugger is entered, you can then request given number (here 16) of
past instructions to be shown:
<pre>
history cpu
c
[breakpoint is hit and debugger entered]
history 16
</pre>
</dd>
<dt><em>Getting instruction execution history for every breakpoint</em></dt>
<dd>
To see last 16 instructions for both CPU and DSP whenever
(a normal or tracing) breakpoint is hit:
<pre>
history on
lock history 16
c
</pre>
</dd>
<dt><em>Single stepping so that new register values are shown after each step</em></dt>
<dd>
<pre>
lock registers
s
[new register values]
s
[new register values]
...
</pre>
</dd>
<dt><em>Showing current stack contents</em></dt>
<dd>To see first 64 bytes on top of the stack, use:
<pre>
m "a7-64"-a7
</pre>
</dd>
<dt><em>Seeing specific information each time debugger is entered</em></dt>
<dd>To see above information whenever some breakpoint is hit,
you enter debugger manually etc, write that command to e.g.
<span class="file">stack.ini</span> file and then use:
<pre>
lock file stack.ini
</pre>
Please see also <a href="#Chaining_breakpoints">Chaining breakpoints</a>
section for more examples on what you can do with the debugger input files.
</dd>
<dt><em>Finding where a program or the OS is stuck</em></dt>
<dd>Profiling tells from which addresses CPU is executing the instructions:
<pre>
profile on
c
[after a while, use AltGr+Pause to get back to debugger]
profile counts
</pre>
Please see <a href="#Profiling">Profiling</a> section for more info.
</dd>
<dt><em>Seeing program callstack when breakpoint is hit</em></dt>
<dd><a href="#Caller_information">Profiler caller data</a> includes
callstack information (with some limitations).
</dd>
<dt><em>Seeing call backtraces whenever given function is called</em></dt>
<dd>Enable profiling, load symbols for the program and set breakpoint
for the function you're interested about, in the following way:
<pre>
profile on
symbols prg
b pc = _my_function :quiet :noinit :file showstack.ini
</pre>
I.e. whenever 'my_function' address is called, quietly trigger a
breakpoint without reseting profiling (callstack) information and run
debugger command(s) from the 'showstack.ini' debugger script file,
which contains following command:
<pre>
profile stack
</pre>
</dd>
<dt><em>Seeing how program functions/symbols call each other</em></dt>
<dd><a href="#Profile_data_post-processing">Profile data
post-processing</a> can provide execution callgraphs.
</dd>
</dl>
<p>
Hint: for most of the above commands, one just needs to prefix them with
"d" (or "dsp" when using full command names) to do similar operation on
the DSP.
</p>
<h3 id="Build_notes">Build notes</h3>
<p>
Lastly, the debugger is much nicer to use with the command line
history, editing and especially the completion support for the
command, command argument and symbol names.
</p>
<p>
If you're building Hatari yourself, please make sure that you have the
GNU readline development files installed (on Debian / Ubuntu these
come from the libreadline5-dev package). Otherwise the name completion
and other features don't get enabled when you configure Hatari.
</p>
<p>
ENABLE_TRACING define needs to be set for tracing to work.
By default it should be enabled.
</p>
<h2 id="Performance">Performance</h2>
<p>Hatari performance varies between Atari programs, depending on what
features Hatari needs to emulate for them. Less accurate Atari
emulators may be faster as emulation accuracy has a performance
overhead.</p>
<p>The operating system and libraries below Hatari can also sometimes
have a noticeable effect on performance.</p>
<h3>Improving Hatari performance</h3>
<p>
Hatari currently runs best in 16 or 32 bits per pixel color depth
mode, so try to avoid 24 bits per pixel display modes if possible.
16-bit mode is fastest.
</p>
<p>
<em>On OSX, frame skipping, zooming and drive LED options (listed below)
seem to have a large effect on performance in the windowed mode</em>.
This is apparently due to issues in the SDL OSX backend and how OSX
itself composites non-fullscreen window contents. OSX uses always
32-bit mode.
</p>
<p>
Unless you've disabled compiler optimizations (like GCC's -O2 or -O3
options) in the Hatari build, the extra optimization flags (like GCC's
"-mtune=i686") don't seem to have very large effect on Hatari
performance. Using GCC -O3 option instead of -O2 can give minor
(5-10%) performance improvements for things (demos) that use very
heavily interrupts.
</p>
<p>
However, Hatari can be sped up considerably by giving up some
emulation or emulator accuracy. Except for DSP, these options
should be needed only on very slow devices like handhelds. See below.
</p>
<p>
If nothing else helps, try an earlier Hatari version. More accurate
emulation or emulator output in newer Hatari versions means that they
can be slower despite optimizations.
</p>
<h3>Emulation options</h3>
<p>
Emulation options have the largest impact on performance.
These options can be changed from the Hatari GUI System dialog and
the emulation needs to be rebooted for any of these changes to take
an effect! They're enabled by default.
</p>
<h4>DSP</h4>
<p>
Emulating the Falcon DSP is performance-wise several times more demanding
than emulating the m68k; DSP runs at higher frequency, executes many
instructions for each m68k instruction and emulation isn't as mature
and optimized. Unless some Falcon program needs DSP, <em>none</em> or
<em>dummy</em> DSP emulation mode could be used. Even of the programs
that do use DSP, many use it only for background music and work
fine without the real DSP emulation.
</p>
<h4>Timer-D</h4>
<p>
The single largest factor contributing to general Hatari emulation
performance is the handling of interrupts. Enabling Timer-D patching
option (about) doubles Hatari ST/STE emulation performance as it
significantly reduces the number of interrupts generated by the emulated
Atari machine. Using this has adverse effect only for very rare programs.
</p>
<h4>FDC</h4>
<p>
While accurate FDC emulation doesn't take that much CPU, it slows down
floppy image accesses (and Hatari startup) a lot. Only <em>very</em>
few demos and games require accurate FDC emulation for their copy protection,
so enabling fast floppy access is fairly safe.
</p>
<h4>Compatible CPU</h4>
<p>
After the DSP and interrupts, m68k emulation takes most time.
Disabling the "Slower but more compatible CPU" option will speed up
the emulation a lot, but it won't anymore be cycle accurate. This can
be fine for many games and other programs, but won't work e.g. for demos
using overscan or rasters.
</p>
<p>
Roughly speaking, for DSP emulation, one needs at least 2Ghz machine.
For normal (unpatched) Timer-D frequency on some specific cases (like
demos with overscan 512 color animations) one may need over 1GHz
machine, but some rare ST/STE demos may require over 1GHz machine even
with Timer-D patching. For "Compatible CPU" one needs at least 1/2Ghz
machine.
</p>
<p>
<strong>NOTE</strong>: Above options may cause some programs to work in correctly.
The <a href="compatibility.html">Hatari Software Compatibility List</a>
lists programs known to need real real Falcon DSP emulation, Timer-D
frequency or accurate FDC timings. Disabling "Compatible CPU" option
is recommended only as a last resort.
</p>
<h3>Emulator options</h3>
<p>
Emulator options don't usually have as large effect on performance as
emulation options, but they don't affect the emulated programs at all,
just the quality of the emulation "output". These options can also
be toggled at run-time without rebooting the emulation.
</p>
<h4>Sound</h4>
<p>
Internal Hatari sound handling and the SDL_mixer sound thread
libALSA sound processing can account up to 1/3 of the Hatari CPU usage
in normal ST/STE emulation. Disabling sound will get rid of that.
Using low sound frequency or one matching your sound card may also help.
Best is if you disable also background music from the programs you run
in Hatari as this can significantly reduce the number of generated
interrupts.
</p>
<h4>Frame skipping</h4>
<p>
Screen rendering can take noticeable amount of CPU time. The default
Hatari "auto" frame skipping should be used unless there's a good
reason not to. It will skip converting and showing some of the frames
if there's not enough time for them.
</p>
<p>
Also, if your monitor refresh frequency is lower than the selected
Hatari monitor frequency (e.g. LCD monitors usually use 60Hz whereas
Atari monochrome monitor uses 71Hz), you should use frameskip of one.
The reason is that if your SDL library uses VSync to synchronize the
output to screen (like OSX one?), with zero frame skip that forces the
emulation to run slower than a real Atari. If SDL doesn't use VSync,
Hatari does redundant work to convert frames you can't see.
</p>
<h4>Zooming</h4>
<p>
If you are not using frame skip, disabling zooming can have
noticeable improvement on performance. You can do this by specifying
suitably low "Max zoomed" resolution (<span class="commandline">--zoom
1</span> command line option sets it to 320x200). If you still want to
have a nice fullscreen mode, you should rather add the right resolution
mode-lines (e.g. "320x200") to your xorg.conf file. If you still want
to use zooming, disabling borders may help a bit.
</p>
<h4>Spec512 color handling</h4>
<p>
Handling Spec512 color modes which change the ST/e palette constantly
takes some extra CPU. If you have problems with CPU usage in such
screens and you care more e.g. from the sound quality than visuals, you
can either increase the threshold or disable the Spec512 mode handling
completely by zeroing the threshold for that with the
<span class="commandline">--spec512 0</span> option.
</p>
<h4>Statusbar and drive LED</h4>
<p>
If your version of the SDL library uses VSync to synchronize the screen
output, drawing of the statusbar or the drive LED may have some minor
impact on performance too. Normally they shouldn't.
</p>
<h3>Measuring the performance</h3>
<p>
There are a couple of ways to monitor and measure Hatari performance.
</p>
<p>
By default Hatari has Statusbar visible and automatic frameskip
enabled. When Hatari has enough time that it can sleep a little each
frame, the statusbar frame skip ("FS") value keeps at zero. If Hatari
is completely busy, it will increase to the maximum specified
(automatic) frame skip value.
</p>
<p>
Hatari has also a facility to measure FPS i.e. Frames Per Second.
Just enable the <span class="commandline">--fast-forward</span> option
on command line (or use the corresponding keyboard shortcut), and
after a while, press the "Pause" key. Whenever Hatari emulation is
paused, Hatari will output on console how many VBLs it could show per
second along with some other numbers.
</p>
<p>
It depends on what you want to measure, but usually it's best to
disable sound and set high frame skip like
<span class="commandline">--sound off --frameskips 60</span> so that
the associated external overheads are minimized. E.g. video output
can on some platforms do VSync and measurements would then show your
monitor refresh frequency instead of the actual Hatari performance.
</p>
<p>
On Unix systems with <span class="commandline">times()</span> function
call, only the time spent by the Hatari process itself is measured.
On other systems, much less accurate SDL "wall clock" timings are
used. To make latter more accurate you could use also
<span class="commandline">--run-vbls</span> option to specify how many
VBLs Hatari should run before it exits. In this case it's best to
either have the test-case run automatically from the AUTO-folder or
given as memory snapshot to Hatari with the frame skip set equal to
the VBL count.
</p>
<p>
Note that these numbers can fluctuate quite a bit, <em>especially</em>
when the SDL timings are used, so for (statistically) reliable numbers
you may need to repeat the measurement several times. You should of
course make also sure that the system doesn't have any other activity
at the same time you're making the measurements.
</p>
<h2>Appendix</h2>
<h3>Copying</h3>
<div class="backdropped">
<p>This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the
Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your
option) any later version. </p>
<p>This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but <em>WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY</em>; without even the implied warranty of <em>MERCHANTABILITY</em>
or <em>FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE</em>. See the GNU General
Public License for more details. </p>
<p>
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,
Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA
</p>
</div>
<p><a href="http://www.gnu.org/">The GNU Project and the Free Software
Foundation</a> | <a href="http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl.html">The
GNU General Public License</a></p>
<h3>Introduction to Emulation</h3>
<p>Emulation via software is an art and Hatari is an example of this.</p>
<p>Emulation is to make a computer behave like a (probably) completely
different machine on the lowest possible niveau.
This includes CPU and custom chip emulation allowing software written
for the emulated machine to be run without notice.
A good emulator will run most of the software intended for the emulated
platform without trouble.
</p>
<p>
The key to emulation is to simply do those things with a software
program, the emulator, that normally chips would perform.
So you have an CPU emulator that basically consists of a large loop
that does exactly what the real thing would do:
</p>
<ul>
<li>fetch an instruction from virtual memory</li>
<li>interpret this instruction</li>
<li>fetch operands from the emulated registers and memory</li>
<li>perform the operation like addition or changing the program
counter on a jump instruction</li>
<li>writes results back into the intended registers or memory
locations</li>
<li>increment of the program counter and loop</li>
</ul>
<p>
The typical von-Neumann CPU can be emulated very fast, stable and
error-free using such a simple loop system.
</p>
<p>
But in most cases the CPU emulation is the simplest part. Correct
emulation of the various custom chips and hardware
parts of the emulated system is much trickier.
</p>
<hr>
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</html>