[General Topics] Menneisyys:
The Atari ST, a remarkable 16-bit home computer, was a direct competitor of other 16-bit systems; most importantly, the Commodore Amiga.

To emulate the platform, you’ll need the free (!) CastCE. As opposed to, say, PocketUAE (the Amiga emulator for Windows Mobile), it offers almost flawless (except for some minor glitches like the lack of hi-res support on VGA Pocket PC’s) emulation.

Is it worth at all?

I’d say yes! While the Amiga is definitely better suited for gaming (particularly when it comes to audio), its emulation on Windows Mobile is pretty bad, particularly sound-wise. Therefore, if you’re looking for playing an Amiga classic not (necessarily) existing on other, emulable platforms (or, at a much lower quality – see for example Stunt Car Racer, which had the best port on the Amiga and the Atari ST), giving a try to the ST isn’t a bad idea. It might offer the best emulation capabilities and/or gaming experience.

Of course, with most multiplatform titles, always try preferring console ports (most importantly, 16 bit (!) consoles of the late eighties: Sega’s Genesis / Mega Drive or NEC’s TurboGrafx-16 / PC Engine) for superior emulation & gaming quality.

Download, usage

Download the emulator from HERE. Unzip the ZIP file to, for example, a storage card (making sure you also transfer the, by default, empty subdirectories – it’s there that you’ll need to put ROM and floppy images).

In order to run the emulator, you’ll also need a TOS ROM; for example, version 1.00, which is available HERE. Note that there are other ROM versions; for example, 2.06. You will, however, not necessarily need it, mostly because many games are incompatible with newer ROM’s.

UnZIP the ROM(s) and transfer it (them) to the Tos subdirectory.

Copy your disk image files (*.msa or *.st; they may be ZIPped to save space) into the Disks subdirectory. (I’ll later elaborate on where you can download them from.)

Start Castce1.2.exe and click OK in the dialog (“are you sure...”).

Go to Prefs / Tos rom and select the TOS ROM image. You’ll need to do this once.

Go to Prefs / Input / Configure, click Up and press Up on the D-pad. Do the same with all D-pad directions, the fire button and, finally, at least the two mouse buttons. Note that, during this, after setting “Fire” or the labels in the mouse button section, you may encounter problems when trying to select any other button. Then, just press another button (it’ll be assigned to Fire) and come back to Fire later (even after pressing the big OK button and, then, coming immediately back to individually set the Fire button).

There aren’t many other settings to set. In Prefs / Sound, you will want to keep both Sound and Sample in the ON state to have sound. (If you – rarely, for example, with Populous or Xenon 2 – do encounter sound problems, just click Sample OFF to disable sound and/or set the Frameskip, which is 0 by default, to a higher value.)

Unlike with most other emulators, Prefs / Frameskip, which is set to 0 by default, don’t need to be touched with many games. It’s only when you do encounter messed-up music that you will ever want to touch it and raise it. Otherwise, you can safely leave it at 0, which, again, will work the best with most games (unlike with almost ALL other emulators under Windows Mobile)

You, in general, don’t need to touch Prefs / Monitor either. Only switch it to Monochrome if you plan to use a monochrome-only program. However, as mono apps are, generally, high-resolution (which CastCE doesn’t support, not even on VGA Pocket PC’s), in general, you’ll want to avoid them because of the downscaled, ugly, hard-to-read images.

Now, you can load a disk into drive A. To do this, go to Disk / Load Disk A and click the game disk you’re like to load.

Now, click File / Reset and the game will start.

Most games start without having to mess around in the operating systems. Most notable exceptions are, for example, Turrican. With it, you’ll be taken to the GEM (operating system) screen and shown the TURRICAN.PRG icon. Just double left-click it to load (remember which hardware button you’ve assigned the left mouse button to? If you don’t, you can still click the two mouse button icons in the lover right corner.) The situation is the same with Populous: then, you’ll need to (after scrolling down) double click Populous.prg from the file list you’re presented.

Should you need to access the keyboard, click the Keyboard icon at the bottom (to the right of the leftmost Exit; in this screenshot, I also hover the Windows mouse cursor over it so that you can quickly identify it). You’ll be shown the top of the keyboard. To maximize it, just click it the left edge of the screen (to the left of the mouse cursor in the above screenshot). Should you want to return it to its original size, click the left edge of the screen again (also see how n0p's DOSBox port handled keyboard maximizing requests using the upper left corner.) Alternatively, if you don't want to maximize it, just scroll down, click the rightmost part of the screen (again, at the edge).

Note that there are other buttons at the bottom of the screen; for example, a button to enable autofire, two buttons to quickly change screen orientation (it also supports Portrait mode as can be seen in here; note that, in this mode, upon trying to access the toolbar (which, then, will be repositioned at the top), you may encounter problems like bringing up the system-level Start menu in the background), to hide the taskbar (Hide), quickly switching off and on the sound emulation and switching between the color and the mono monitor emulation.

Should you want to exit to the main menu any time, just click Exit (again, the leftmost icon). To return to the game, then, select Emulator / Continue (NOT Emulator / Reset – it’ll reboot the disk image!)

(Note that the emulator also has a manual but it’s VERY outdated and far less verbose than mine.)

Mouse emulation

Note that the emulator uses the “touchpad” emulation mode known from, say, n0p’s DOSBox port (see THIS for more info). This means you’ll need to drag the mouse on the screen to make the original mouse cursor move.

Saving state

As with all decent emulators, you’re offered the ability to save / reload states under Emulator / Load and Save State. You can use five slots.