The irony of course is that the keyboard is perhaps the worst thing about the Atari ST and much of the charm in these old systems is the crisp real-time response of their simple hardware and software - which you won't get in a software emulator.
The boot time of the Pi is an issue: it definitely doesn't have the same "feel" as just powering the machine on and having stuff happen instantly.
But besides that emulation is quite good nowadays and it mostly feels like the real thing.
I've got a vintage arcade cab and if I play an original PCB or that same game, emulated from a Pi (with a Pi2JAMMA adapter), it's pretty much the same thing. Heck, for some games you can't even tell if you're running of the real PCB or playing an emulator.
But you're right in that I don't like the slow boot time when I turn the thing on with the Pi connected: it's way nicer to just turn the machine on and have he the game start near instantly (quite a feat btw for games mostly running on slow Z80 CPUs and the like).
> it's way nicer to just turn the machine on and have he the game start near instantly (quite a feat btw for games mostly running on slow Z80 CPUs and the like).
Depends on the game. Some start pretty fast, but others do a lot of loading (hard drive or optical based games often load the whole thing into ram on boot), which isn't unreasonable given the typical use case is start in the morning and leave on all day and leaving on 24/7 wasn't uncommon either. And a little bit of delay isn't even noticable if the CRT needs to warm up anyway. If you have a slow booting game and you can savestate after boot, emulation might be much faster startup than real.
> emulation might be much faster startup than real
Ah could be: I only have "simple" PCBs, not laserdisc ones or anything fancy like that (and, yup, the old CRT needs to warm up, typically the sound is coming out before any picture!)
Laserdisc games usually run the disc in realtime, but (much newer) systems running from cd-rom or dvd often pull in the whole shebang. Things like the ps2-like hardware for DDR, and the dreamcast like (naomi) hardware would tend to pull everything into ram, rather than at runtime.
Unfortunately, the pre-boot environment on a modern PC takes longer than most of these old machines take to boot. No amount of stripping down the kernel will save you from a 2-5s POST.
I remember those mushy keyboards! One of my college friends was an ST fan. Her dad had at least 4 STs: 520, 1040, a couple of Megas. I was an Amiga guy myself.
I don't really like seeing retro hardware "modded" like this, unless the original machine was totally non functional, but to each their own.
Speed isn't the issue, it's latency. Some people don't mind latency. Some people will know just how to fix latency problems with software emulators, their host platforms, and modern hardware and controllers. I'm not in either category.
This would be a great way to run some pretty good business tools that existed primarily in Europe for the ST.
Calamus was a great desktop publishing tool, and I'd say some of the animation software/tweeners have been hard to compare to since. They were unusually good at what they could do and create beginners at the same time.
