Atari
Although Atari is better known for their historic game consoles, they also sometimes made computers. The Atari ST line of computers were capable of running ST Hack, a port of PC HACK 3.51.
The first official NetHack distribution to support the Atari ST was NetHack 3.0.0 in 1989. Support was dropped in version 3.3.0[1], but was "resurrected" in version 3.3.1 by Marvin.
The Atari ST continued to be supported all the way to 3.4.3. However the DevTeam doesn't know if NetHack 3.6.5 can compile or run on the Atari.[2]
Running under emulation
Hatari provides a usable emulation of various Atari ST models. It requires a ROM to run, but EmuTOS provides legal ROM images sufficient to run NetHack.
The built-in video modes don't produce a good user experience. The color modes do not have sufficient resolution, and only show a tiny portion of the map. The monochrome mode refuses to load the tileset. A usable screen results with these options:
hatari --memsize 8 --harddrive disk --vdi true --vdi-planes 4 --vdi-width 640 --vdi-height 480
where the "disk" directory becomes an emulated file system, and contains an unpacked NetHack distribution. You will need an LHA-capable archive program to unpack the official distributions.
You can specify --mono instead of the VDI options, and enable TTY mode in NETHACK.CNF. The result emulates a video mode that would be possible on a real Atari ST. It produces the usual TTY output, with black text on a white background. It has no support for color, and supports ASCII only; the DECgraphics option is present, but produces an unreadable map.
TTY output in a color mode produces a chunky but readable font, and shows more of the map than the tileset, though still not all of the map.
These function keys are meaningful:
- F2 toggles between the tiled and ASCII modes. You may need to use control-R to redraw the map after using F2.
- F3 toggles the visibility of the cursor on the map.
- F4 looks like it selects a font, but produces only an error "Fontselector not available!"
F11 and F12 are meaningful to Hatari; F11 toggles full screen mode, while F12 pops up a configuration menu (which seems to have some bugs; using command line options is recommended).
