Virtual 2600 README
===================

$Id: README,v 1.2 1998/02/12 23:50:25 ahornby Exp ahornby $

Virtual 2600 is BETA software, please report any bugs.

Introduction
------------
Welcome to V2600, an Atari 2600 Emulator for UN*X/X, Linux/SVGAlib 
and now DOS and Amiga. 

The DOS and Amiga ports are currently distributed separately, this
document applies to the X11 and SVGAlib versions.

You can now experience all the fun of old 2600 games on your high powered 
workstation. Thrill to the blocky graphics! Get headaches from the flicker! 
Wallow in nostalgia!

Using the Emulator
------------------
See the man page.

Why?  
---- 
V2600 is the the result on my 3rd year university project
plus my copious free time. I aimed to preserve old computer games that
would otherwise be lost to the world.

Platforms 
--------- 

I have tested V2600 on my home x86 Linux 2.x system and on a Sparc 2
running SunOS 4.3. It _should_ work on any UNIX/X11 system, if you
compile it on anything other OS or architecture please send me an
email

Performance
-----------
The 2600 is notoriously difficult to emulate, especially in C. So I would 
recommend at least a Pentium level processor. The frame buffer speed also 
matters.

On my Pentium 100 it is just nice with frame skipping set to 2 with
sound support enabled. Without sound I don't need fram skipping
anymore.

Note that enabling sound support slows down the emulation.
Better performance has and will come in later releases.
It also produces quite a bit of debugging output. Redirecting this to
/dev/null speeds things up.

Known Bugs/Limitations
----------------------

The SVGAlib version can lock up your machine. (In common with a lot of
SVGAlib stuff!). I'll do a GGI target when the drivers for the S3-868
are available (No time to do it myself!).

Not all games work. (Spy hunter looks nice though:)

Copyright
---------
Virtual 2600 is free software distributed under the terms of the GNU General 
Public License. See the file COPYING for details.

No warranty etc. etc.

Credits
-------
A full list of contributors can be found in the file CREDITS. 

Latest versions 
--------------- 
To get the latest versions look at
http://www.plasma.ddns.org/. 

--
Alex Hornby 13.2.1998