Atari800MacX Help
Preferences Window
Display Tab



The Display Tab is the heart of the graphics control of the emulator. 


From here you can change the:

Display Size

    Display Mode:
These radio buttons allow you to choose to display the emulator in a standard Aqua window, or to use the entire screen for displaying the emulator.  When in full screen mode, normally you will want to check the Fullscreen Always 640x480 item.  This will lock the display to a fixed size.  If this item is unchecked, then the Scale Factor and Display Width parameters below still apply.  The emulator will attempt to find a sutible mode.  Note, not all modes will work with all display adapters.  If the emulator suddenly quits when changing to full screen, the Scale Factor and Scale Mode were not compatible with your graphics card and fullscreen.  You can also change the Display Mode setting from the Display Menu.
    Scale Factor:
These radio buttons allow you to choose betwen the standard Atari Screen Size where one Atari pixel is mapped to one Macintosh pixel, 2xAtari Screen size (one Atari pixel is mapped to four, 2x2,Macintosh pixels), 3x Atari Screen size (one Atari pixel is mapped to nine, 3x3,Macintosh pixels),  or 4x Atari Screen size (one Atari pixel is mapped to sixteen, 4x4,Macintosh pixels).    You can also change this setting from the Display Menu.  Note, on slower Macs, you may want to change your video depth to Thousands of Colors to achieve full frame rate when using more than 1x mode.  (Don't change this while running the emulator!!!).
    Display Width:
These radio buttons allow you to choose betwen narrow, default, and full widths of the Atari screen.  These correspond to 320x240, 336x240, and 384x240 respecitvely when in 1x Scale Factor mode.  You can also change this setting from the Display Menu.
Show Frames Per Second In Window Title
This checkbox lets you choose to display the Frames Per Second (FPS) that the emulator is running at the moment.  This can be used to check that your Macintosh is fast enough to run the Atari at full speed.  It should indicate 50fps for PAL, and 60fps for NTSC.  FPS Display is not available in Fullscreen mode.  However, since Fullscreen mode always runs in 256 colors, speed is usually not an issue.  You can also change this setting from the Display Menu.

Brushed Metal Apperance
This checkbox lets you choose it the windows in the emulator use the Standard Aqua appearance, or if they use the Brushed Metal apperance, ala Safari or iTunes.  The emulator must be restarted after a change in this setting for it to take full effect.
TV Mode
These radio buttons allow you to choose to the refresh rate of the emulator, either NTSC (60 frames per second) or PAL (50 frames per second).

Refresh Ratio
This pull down allows you to choose how often to redraw the simulated Atari scren.  You can choose to do it every Atari frame, or every 2nd, 3rd, or 4th one.  On very slow Macs, this could be used to bring the frame rate up to full speed (50 or 60 frames per second).

Artifacting Mode
This pull down allows you to choose how the emulator simulates Artifacting, which occured when the original Atari used a TV for displaying its video.  Some games depended on the colors these Artifacting effects produced.

Color Palette
These options allow the user to customize the colors used by the Macintosh to Emulate the Atari's color palette. 8-bit Atari machines have 256 colors, and the emulator can either generate a palette, or use a pre-generated palette stored in a file.  By default, it uses the real.act file stored in the Palettes folder in the application directory.  

If the "Use Palette from File" checkbox is checked, then you can choose the palette file with the Choose.. button.  If you wish, you may then also check the "Adjust File Palette" checkbox to adjust the Black Level, White Level, and Intensity parameters described below.  These adjustments do not affect the file itself.

If the "Use Paletee from File" checkbox is not checked, then the emulator will generate a palette using the values you enter for the following 4 parameters:
Each parameter must be an integer within range 0-255.
Disk Leds

These options allow the user to chose if disk activity indicators are shown in the Atari Emulator window (lower right corner) and in the Media Status Window (Driver Status LED's and sector numbers on drive doors).