Rainbow Emulator Page

January '97 - Rainbow 95 now has sound!

Rainbow 95 now has 4 channel sound, disk noise and keyboard click using POKEY samples. The demo only has the disk noise and click. To run this new version you need Windows 95 or NT with Direct X installed. Direct X can be found at Microsoft's website.

Rainbow : The Atari 8-Bit Emulator for the MacOS

Rainbow 95: The Atari 8-Bit Emulator for the Windows 95 or NT with Direct X

Features include...

400/800 emulation with 48K RAM
800XL emulation with 64K RAM
130XE emulation with 128K RAM
5200 games console
Fast large (2x) and medium (1.5x) screen displays
Insert 8K and 16K ROMs... also SuperCartridges!
2 virtual drives which can read single/enhanced images
IMPORT external files from Mac/PC hard drive into your Atari DOS images
EXPORT Atari DOS files to Mac/PC hard disk
Full ANTIC and GTIA support
True 256 Atari colours
Player Missile Graphics with full collisions and priorities
NMI, IRQ and Display List interrupts
Fine scrolling
Full keyboard support
Sound with 4 channels of pure tones and noise (now also for Rainbow 95!)
Support for 4 joysticks and 4 paddles
PowerBook/Notebook friendly
Plays many, many, games... 'nuff said.

The full shareware version has all these goodies enabled and is priced at 15 UKP (about 25 US$ but do check latest exchange rates). For registration details, click here.

Download your free demo here!

Apple Mac users click here to download Rainbow Demo v1.3a

Note: Version 1.3a only differs from v1.3 in that the registration address has been updated in the text file. Nothing else has been modified!

(This demo is also at ftp.amug.org in info-mac/app)

This file is ~302K in size. It is in Binhex format and needs to be uncompressed with Stuffit Expander.

Windows users click here to download the Rainbow 95 Demo v1.35

Rainbow 95 runs under Windows 95 or NT with Direct X installed. This ZIP file is about 110K in size.

Jargon buster: What the heck is Direct X?

Direct X is Microsoft 's set of system libaries designed to make software production much simpler. It supports 3D graphics, networking, fast 2D graphics, joystick input and sound effects. It is for the sound component that Rainbow 95 now requires Direct X.

You can find Direct X at Microsoft's website or from many CDs which come free with magazines. Lots of new games now take advantage of Direct X and it will be an integral part of the upcoming Windows 97.

Note that if you are running Windows NT 4.0 then Direct X may already be installed.

Since Direct X cannot be installed on Windows 3.1, Rainbow 95 no longer runs under this operating system.

Other useful links...

For more nostalgia, look at John Goodman's excellent Reminiscing: 8-Bit Atari Games for a nice collection of screenshots.

Also look at The Atari 8-bit Home Page for more links.

Here are some others you should really try out...

If you grew up with the Atari VCS 2600 games console (as I did) you must visit the Stella website where you can download the superb Stella emulator which is now much faster and has sound. Versions are available for PowerMacs, Windows 95/NT, Linux, MS-DOS, Unix and even IBM's OS/2 (gasp).

Rainbow 95 users can use UPJOY so they can play games with a real joystick! Click here for more.

If you have DCM files to unpack, why not download Disk Communicator 3 and instructions how to use it with the full version of Rainbow. Apple Mac users click here for a Binhexed stuffed file while PC users click here for a zipped version (~20K).

Other useful software (Apple Mac users only...)

For a quick way to decipher DCM images, try DCMTOATR by Mike White. This is a tiny Mac application to unpack DCM files into ATR ones (~19K).

Need to mess about with disk images? Then try Richard Carvel's Atari Virtual Disk Editor. Very useful and includes Atari DOS 2.5 and MyDOS 4.5 disk images (~180K).

Feel free to e-mail me, Chris Lam, at jx91@cityscape.co.uk

Bye for now!

Click here to go back to the Classic 8-bit Emulators HomePage.