Basic Operation

This page covers the main aspects of WinSTon which you will need to know in order to use the emulator. First time users may want to read through this page and then go on to the Quick Guide.

User Keys

WinSTon uses two main keys for its operation. These are F11 and F12.

F11 allows you to toggle between a Window and full-screen display. F12 toggles between Windows mouse mode and the ST emulated mode. This is explained in the next section.

There are also short-cut keys, such as SHIFT+F11/F12 and CTRL+F11/F12 which are undefined by default. When these keys are not assigned you can press SHIFT+F11 to bring up the Floppy A disc selection dialog. This is useful when running in full-screen mode as you can insert a disc and return back to the full-screen display automatically. In a similar way, SHIFT+F12 allows you to insert discs into Floppy B. These short-cuts can be changed by going to the Keyboard options dialog.
Another key used is the Print Screen key which when pressed will take a 'snapshot' of the emulator screen and save it to disc.

Mouse Controls

WinSTon has two mouse modes - Windows and ST emulated. When in Windows mouse mode the mouse behaves as normal allowing you to move around the whole screen and select icons/applications. The other mode, the ST mode, directs your mouse movements to moving the mouse in the emulated window. While in this mode you cannot move the mouse outside the limits of the emulated desktop - to do so simply press F12 to return to the Windows mouse mode.

Tool Bar

WinSTon has five icons on the Tool Bar which you can select when in Windows mouse mode. Some buttons have 'drop-down' arrows beside them. Clicking on these will drop a small menu down allowing for users to select additional features, such as inserting disc images without resetting the emulator.

Click on this icon to reset the emulator. When you choose reset you will be asked if you are sure; unless you have disabled the option in the Configure dialog. You may hold down the SHIFT key while you click the icon to toggle this setting.

These two icons represent the emulated floppy drives A and B. By selecting one of these icons you can choose a disc image to insert. This is the same process as inserting a floppy disc into a real ST machine. You can also use the default short-cut keys SHIFT+F11 or SHIFT+F12 to bring up these selection dialogs. Click here to find out more on Disc Images.

Choose this icon to change the settings of the emulator. For more information see the Configure pages.

This icon will take you straight to the Favourites page in the options dialogs. This allows you to easily run your favourite game discs.

If you need to bring up this Help file while in the emulator click on this icon. You can also press the short-cut key F1 while running in Windows mouse mode.


Status Bar

The Status Bar will inform you of information while you use the emulator. It also uses a number of icons to show you what options are currently active.

If the speed of the emulator drops below the required 50 frames per second this icon will appear. You may notice corrupted sound and un-responsive controls during this time. To improve the speed of the emulator see the Trouble Shooting section.

This icon will be highlighted when the emulator accesses either of its two emulated floppy drives.

When WinSTon accesses the PC hard drive this icon will be displayed.

If you print from within WinSTon, either to a file or directly to the printer, you will see this graphic.

Should you connect two machines together via the RS-232 you will see the communication icon when data is being transferred or received.

YM recording will bring up this sound icon.

When recording a screen animation this camera icon will be present on the status bar.