Spectre's Working So What Can I Do With It?        Granted, Dave Small posted an extensive list of what works and what didn't, and we hope to have the archieve of the "Gadget's News Herald" available one day (when I find them and scan them) in our "Spectre - The Atari Side" page.        However, here at JYBOLAC we like to be unique and offer the internet something new.  So rather than a simple reprint, how about the results of our (and other contributors who will we acknowledge) experiences with the Spectre? Applications GifCoverter 2.3.7.  - Says my setup lacks the required hardware or software to make it go. MacMikMod 68K -  Didn't like me. MacWWW          - System 7 saavy.  :( Super Studio Session -  My favorite music program.  It works to a certain degree under                           System 6.05 or less. Word    -            Not bad.  Tried out 4.0 and all I can say is, stable.  It is also a great way to                           work on multiple documents when Multifinder is not turned on. -DC Winshade 1.1  -   Highly suggested.  A great way to mimimize windows for system 6! Z-Term -            Works great!  To matter the fact, I have a special null modem setup with my                          Atari 800.  I type on the Atari 800 and see the output on the Macintosh                           screen for ANSI interpretation.  :) - DC Emulators         (This is just wrong, having an ST emulating a Mac emulating a whatever....           ... but Spectre can hack it.)  :) SoftPC              -  Works.  Haven't played with this too much yet.                              Used Entry-Level SoftPC 2.5. ][ In a Mac        -  Works.  Haven't found how to import new images into the emulator                             and I'm afraid ][ in a Mac is about as obscure to find information                             as Spectre is. Games Ancient Art of War  - Crashes BIGTIME.  (6.05) Arkanoid 1.00          - Says it is unable to allocate the audio and screen buffers. (6.05) Beyond Dark Castle  - No luck. Dark Castle              - No Luck. Dungeon of Doom    - Works. Dungeon Revealed.   - Works. Cap'N Magneto  - Haven't been able to get it to work right.  Only tried on                           System 6.05 - System 6.08 though. Continuum        - This early Mac shoot em up didn't like it under system 6 at least. Creepy Castle    -  Works!  What a cool game!   Runs sluggish on a regular 1040ST                            but ran better with AdSpeed ST activated.  1040STE/TT runs                            it much better. Joust                -  Get a Fatal Error as it asks for color quick draw.  Heheh... Since                            Spectre is just black and white.... Orion 14           -  This space flight simulator does not draw the graphics correctly  (6.05) SimEarth BW    -  Works. Spectre             -  Ironic playing Spectre on a Spectre setup.  :)  But this classic                            tank game plods along great!! Star Wars         -  Works for the most part.  Sound has some trouble but the gameplay                            is there.  Strangely the soundfiles of the movie clips work.  :) Systems System 6.04     - Earliest System tried.  Worked fairly good.  Sound works. System 6.05     - Perhaps the happy medium of the Spectre world.  Sound works fairly                          well, and all the gadgets. System 6.08     - Works.  Used it originally since it had the ability to switch programs                          by the icon in the upper corner.  But then you find out Multifinder                          does a crude version of that on earlier systems.                                Sound emulation is barely availale since this system emerged onto                          the scene about the time Small, Inc was having difficulties. System 7.1  -     True what they say, doesn't work.  Complained of lack of memory. Experiences           - The Spectre in both mono color and color monitor modes!  So there was nothing stranger than seeing the "happy Mac" appear on my TV screen when I hooked that up for giggles.  In color/TV mode the emulation runs at about 40% regular speed and everything is ghostly.  But it is there non-the less.           - JYBOLAC currently have three members with Spectre carts that we use from time to time.                 - My first experience with the Spectre was with a "Transverter 1" midi interface for the drive emulation.  Never could get that thing to work.           - Even with the GCR cart, the Atari SF 314 drives are not very crazy about being ran at Mac drive speeds.  :)  If the disks aren't perfect or a bit worn they can really throw a bit of a fit sometimes reading disk information.           - I don't believe CD Rom drive emulation was ever written.  Never tried this one.           - While I have had loads of success getting a hard drive working, getting one to work in addition to that has not been met with much success.  Tried an additional hard drive and a zip drive.  But we'll keep trying.           - The manual swears up and down that SM 605 SM 804 Atari Laser Printers can be used with Spectre to act as Imagewriter printers... Ha!           -  Another thing they say that is true, the Spectre does in fact move quite a bit quicker than it's Macintosh Plus/Mac II counterparts, which is eirie!  Not only that, but certain applications will make use of monitor space that exceeds what was originally there with the Mac Plus 13" screen (or whatever it was.) Rumors / Facts The Various Spectre Macs           (you've heard of Quadra, Performa, and other lines of Macs?  Meet the Atari line!) Spectre Atari 1040 ST  (8 mhz)         This (and the 520ST) were only possible with upgrades that would boost the ram from 512K and 1 meg factory settings to 2 meg and 4 meg in most cases.  There are mentions of 6 meg and 10 meg upgrades, but those reports were from looney people and we ignore them.  :)         Seriously, there are rare reportings of 6 meg upgrades and such since mornally the ST architecture can only acknolwedge up to four meg.  Normally.         Under these ST's, Spectre tends to work fairly well.  But up till the STE the lack of a Blitter chip does make for a noticable slow down in performance. Spectre Atari Mega/2 ST  (8 mhz)         Dave Small reported some hardware faults of the Mega 2 and gave advice in his Spectre manual on how to fix them.  We tried this out on a Mega 2 and sure enough...  :) Spectre Atari Mega/4 ST  (8 mhz)         No reports on this model. Spectre Atari 1040 STE  (8 mhz)         This is the model I decided to stay with.  Of course it comes with 1 meg from the factory but Mac simms can be easily inserted to upgrade memory.  (The STE line they started using simm slots over ram chips soddered on the board).  When my Mac Plus motherboard died, I took the Mac OS chips and put them in the GCR cartridge.  The simms were used in the STE, so in essense, parts of the Mac Plus live on!        Noticable increase in performance that is almost as fast as the 1040ST with a AdSpeed (double clock) chip. Spectre Atari Mega 2 STE  (16 mhz)        No reports on this model. Spectre Atari Mega 4 STE  (16 mhz)        No reports on this model. Spectre Atari STacy 2 & 4   (8 mhz)        While no recent reports on this, there is a humorous story to go along with it.  It was at a computer demonstration that Dave Small worked like mad to get his code working so it would work with a STacy laptop.    A person who was watching him said he was amazed at how Dave would write lines and lines of code on the fly.        When the demo time came up, they showed the Spectre with various other additions, and then amongst it all, slapped the Spectre cart into a STacy and then said "Check it out!  A Mac portable!"  and it was at that time the STacy became the first laptop running Mac software.  For quite a while it was a less expensive, and quicker laptop than the other Macintosh portables that would be released into the market. Spectre Atari 030 TT  (33 mhz)        With the advent of version 3.0 it was made possible to work on the TT030.  With the usual VGA screen, and 33 mhz of speed, it feels like a beefed up Mac II.  The speed is there, and the extra screen space is nice.  Blazingly fast.  Unfortunately, though powered by a 68030 you don't get to run the programs of the 68030 Macintosh world.  Darn! Spectre Atari 030 Falcon  (16 mhz)         Sadly this bird flew away.  The Falcon of course was a Atari computer capible of great color, but the Spectre program was never released.  It was said they were working on a color version for the Falcon, but this never saw the light of day. Last Known Gadget's Small Projects         Spectre GCR/Falcon - Only heard rumors on this one.  No idea how far they got.         Spectre GCR 3.1 - Dave Small mentioned to me that he had would send the source code for 3.1 to put on this website when he found it.  From what I gathered, he was not able to get System 7 to work when he was working on Spectre so we can cross that one out.  But apparently there were some improvement to established bugs and errors they had run into. Spectre Volunteers         At this time, I have not confirmed, one way or the other from current Atari users wiether Spectre will work on the Falcon, Hades, Medusa or other Atari clones (as well as the unconfirmed ones above).  If you would like to try this, I have a extra Spectre cart I can mail to you to try this out.  Just write to Doctor Clu to volunteer.              Feel free to contact the WebOp for any questions or Spectre contributions. Last updated November 9, 2001