Atari 2600 emulation question

[Drexel923]

I recently got a whole bunch of Atari 2600 roms on my computer but I can't find an emulator to play them. Right now they are in winrar files, and the files inside have the extension .a26

I downloaded StellaX and PC Atari emulators but the files don't work. Does anyone have an emulator that supports these files? Or maybe the ones I have do and I am doing something wrong. Any help would be appreciated.

[oesiii]

Most Atari 2600 roms you find on the net are .bin files, there was an ancient emulator called A26 so I wondering if that's why you found .a26 files.

Here's a listing of 2600 emulators including a homepage for A26:
http://www.zophar.net/a2600.html

My suggestion would be to download Z26 (Win version) which is probably the most accurate 2600 emulator out there. There's a frontend out there somewhere for it but the easiest way to play a game is just to drag the rom over the program icon and let it run from there.

If your files still don't work try renaming them *.bin and see if StellaX recognizes them.

[oesiii]

oh, and another option is to download the 842 bin files available at this page :)

http://www.theoldcomputer.com/Libarary's/Emulation/ROMs_summary.htm

They work 8-)

[Drexel923]

Thanks for the info...ok I changed one of the files extensions to .bin and it worked. Now all I have to do is do the same more 1700 other files. :o

Does anyone now know how to change the extension of a big group of files at once? :help:

[zektor]

Thanks for the info...ok I changed one of the files extensions to .bin and it worked. Now all I have to do is do the same more 1700 other files. :o

Does anyone now know how to change the extension of a big group of files at once? :help:

Yep, old DOS days :) Go to a command prompt and go to the folder with your roms. Type ren *.(whatever the extension) *.bin

Example:

If my files were all named *.a26 and I wanted to rename them all to bin files I would type:

ren *.a26 *.bin

Thats all! :)

Also, if you are not great with navigating around your HD with the command prompt (or just lazy like me), you can download the Microsoft powertoy that will add an extension to your right click menu in explorer. This way you can just to to the folder with your roms and right click on "command prompt here".

[Drexel923]

Thanks zektor for the info...it worked. Certainly saved me some time. And I did it throught the command prompt too. :D

[The Unknown Gamer]

I had a problem with Z26 after I used it for 6 months the program wouldn't
work for me anymore. So that was when I started to use Stella and no problem ever since.