Reader Comment
As you can tell by flipping through this magazine, ANALOG has indeed been redesigned.
Over the next few months, as we get comfortable with the new publishers and they with us, the rough edges will be smoothed.
Keyed for HelpOver the next few months, as we get comfortable with the new publishers and they with us, the rough edges will be smoothed.
I just bought an Atari 130XE computer, and there's something I just can't figure out. One of the keys across the top of the computer is labeled HELP. Yet, whenever I push it, it does absolutely nothing. It doesn't matter what program I'm running or what I'm doing, the help key does nothing. All it adds to the computer is an extra key. Is there something wrong with my 130XE?
-Deron Smith
Russel, KS
Russel, KS
No, there's probably nothing wrong with your computer. The HELP key on the 130XE must be accessed from with-in a program to make it useful just like the START, SELECT and OPTION keys. If the programs you're using don't take advantage of it, the HELP key won't do anything. Unfortunately, very few companies have decided to incorporate the use of the HELP key into their programs- probably because the older Atari computers don't include the key. That really isn't so much of an issue now, since very few people still use the old Atari 400s and 800s. But when most of the programs that are available today for the Atari were being devel-oped, using the HELP key would have made the program somewhat incompatible with the older machines. There are ways around that incompatibility, of course, but it seems that most developers took the easy way out and just ignored it.