Running Taipan on a real or emulated Atari
------------------------------------------

Even though this version of Taipan is written more-or-less in C,
it's not portable to other platforms. You can't compile it for Linux
or Windows. To run it, you have to use an Atari 8-bit computer, real
or emulated.

Disk Executable
---------------

The game binary is called "taipan.xex". It's a standard Atari DOS
'binary load' file, which expects to be run with no cartridges
inserted. It may or may not work with a cartridge in, depending on
which cart (some don't allow disk boots, and it has to be an 8K cart,
not >= 16K). On XL/XE machines, you don't have to hold down Option to
disable BASIC. In fact, you shouldn't have to remove the BASIC cart on
a 400/800 (but I haven't tested this recently).

You can run it on a real Atari computer: any 400/800/XL/XE model should
be fine, so long as it has at least 40K of RAM. Use a SIO2PC cable and
software like Atariserver (Linux) or APE (Windows) to serve the game to
the Atari. If you can come up with a way to actually copy it to a real
floppy disk, you probably want a bootable DOS disk with Taipan renamed
to AUTORUN.SYS. Other options are MyPicoDOS (supports fast SIO if your
drive does) and Fenders 3-sector loader.

It's also possible to run Taipan in an emulator, such as Atari800,
Atari++, or Altirra. For Atari800, you should be able to do this:

  atari800 -nobasic taipan.xex

For atari++, use:

  atari++ -image.1 taipan.xex

For Altirra, try this:

  Altirra /run taipan.xex

For 64-bit builds of Altirra:

  Altirra64 /run taipan.xex

[Altirra instructions courtesy of MoparStephen, with thanks]


Cartridge
---------

The cartridge image is a 32KB XEGS bankswitched cartridge (what
Atari800 and Altirra call "type 12"). Unlike the .xex version, the
cartridge will work on a 32KB Atari.

Two ROM images are built:

taipan.cart is a "tagged" cartridge image, for use with emulators that
know how to read the cartridge type from the CAR header.

taipan.rom is the raw ROM image, exactly 32KB in size. Use this with
emulators that don't understand CAR headers. This is also what you'd
use on real hardware. For burning to an EPROM, you'll need to build
or scavenge a cartridge with the correct banking logic, and burn
taipan.rom (the raw ROM image) to a 32KB chip. You could also use a
multi-cart (flash or similar).

The cartridge can be run in the Atari800 emulator thus:

  atari800 taipan.cart

For atari++, use the raw ROM image, since it doesn't fully support
.cart images:

  atari++ -carttype xegs -cartpath taipan.rom

For Altirra, one of these should work:

  Altirra taipan.cart
  Altirra64 taipan.cart

Coming soon: You will also be able to purchase a Taipan cartridge from
the AtariAge store. Maybe.