Make a folder for Steem to live in. For example, C:\Steem.

Now download the TOS and Steem archive files from the Steem website.

Extract their contents to C:\Steem.

Run the executable file. Steem will present some welcome messages, which you should read, and ask you to choose a TOS file. Select TOS 1.02 from the list.

You could also make a folder called hd in the Steem folder for the ST's emulated hard disk. If you do, choose it when Steem asks you for a path for hard drive C:. You can always change this later.

Steem's main window will appear. Click on the play icon () to start emulation.

You should get to the ST desktop. Press Shift+Pause/Break on your keyboard to stop emulation.

At this point you might think it is time to insert one of your ST disks into drive A: and run it. This won't work, because Steem doesn't allow direct access to the PC's floppy drive. Why not? The reason is that, while ST disks and MS-DOS disks are basically compatible, most disks on the ST were nonstandardly formatted in order to squeeze more onto them. Unfortunately most PC disk controllers can't read these extended formats. You can use Windows Explorer to copy the contents of any PC-readable ST disk to your ST hard-drive folder, eg. C:\Steem\hd. More info on using disks is in the "faq.txt" which comes with Steem.

Instead of accessing the PC floppy drive, Steem uses files called "disk images" which contain all the contents of an ST disk. These are available from many sources, or you can make your own (see the "disk image howto.txt" which comes with Steem). To find disk images on the net, go to Steem's links page, where there is a long list of sources. The Automation list by Chris Edgar has hundreds of games cracked by Automation and is a good place to start.

Pick a disk image from the list and save it to your Steem folder. I've chosen A_016.ST containing the classic game Bombjack.

Go back to Steem and click on the Disk Manager icon (). In the Disk Manager, drag A_016 to the drive A box.

Go back to the main Steem window, click on the reset icon () and then run by clicking on play (). After working through the crackers' menu (press 5, then n), Bombjack should appear.

To play the game you'll need to use a joystick. If you have a PC joystick installed Steem will use that as the main ST joystick. If you don't have a PC joystick then Steem will use the cursor keys and the control key as the main joystick when scroll lock is on.

You may wonder why you need to press scroll lock to enable a joystick, well there is a good reason. If a key, say A, is being used to control a joystick direction or the fire button then it cannot be used as a normal key. For instance, if your name was Andy and you tried to type that in when you got a high score, all that would come out is "ndy".

If you aren't happy with the defaults go to the joystick dialog to change them as your heart desires. Just click on the box that you want to change so it lights up and press any key, joystick button or joystick axis to select that as the input. You can even click on the box with the middle mouse button to select that, although it isn't very useful for joysticks!