Documentation

The documentation files of Hatari:

Note that the above documentation files have been taken from the latest release of Hatari. If you are interested in the documentation of the development version of Hatari, please have a look at work in progress documentation files instead.

For developers there are also Source code documentation files available that have been generated with the Doxygen tool.

Frequently asked questions:

Q: I can't compile Hatari!?

A: You should check if you have installed all the tools needed for compiling Hatari: The GNU C compiler (GCC), CMake (see cmake.org), development files for the SDL library and optionally the ZLib compression library. Our Download page lists few additional optional libraries that allow Hatari to be built with some extra features.

Q: Why is Hatari so slow? Are there any possibilities to speed it up?

A: Have a look at the “Performance” section of the manual.

Q: Game XY does not work, what can I do?

A: There can be many reasons why a game does not work immediately. Changing one of the following configuration settings often helps:

Many ST games often need a certain TOS version to run right. Old games often only work with TOS 1.00 or TOS 1.02, so you should try these TOS versions first. If the game still does not work, you should also try TOS 1.04 and 2.06. Some games also either need a NTSC (US American) or a PAL (European) TOS, so it might be useful to test these different types, too.
There are also some games which do not work in STE mode - but there are also some few games which only work in STE mode and not in ST mode. So changing the machine type might be worth a try, too.
Some games also need certain RAM sizes, for example some games do not work with 4 MB memory size!
And finally, try to enable the "Slower but more compatible CPU" and/or disable the "Patch Timer-D" in the system options dialog. This slightly increases compatibility with the real ST. In some few cases you also have to enable the "Slow floppy access" option in the floppy options dialog to mimic the speed of the original floppy disk drive.

Q: How can I use MIDI on Mac OS X or Windows?

A: On MacOS and Windows, MIDI support requires building Hatari with PortMidi library. Whatever that supports, should work also with Hatari.

On Linux, if Hatari is built without PortMidi library, it uses raw access to the MIDI devices. This allows using MIDI ports also for other things than MIDI events, such as debugging and network connectivity.

Q: Why is the 68k CPU speed limited to so few MHz?

A: The development goal of Hatari is to provide a good emulator for running old games and demos, so we focus on a cycle accurate emulator. If you rather want to run GEM applications as fast as possible, you should better use another emulator that better suits this goal.