help!
XL TYPOI'm glad I found you. Being the owner of a 1200XL and Microsoft BASIC, I was becoming more discouraged each day before finding your June issue on the XLs.
I noticed that the typographical error Atari made in their table of OS changes from Revision B to the XL was copied (in Robert DeWitt's article on the evolution of the XL computers). The last hex address should be 03FB-03FC instead of 033FB-03FC.
John Tilton
Carlsbad, CA
MEMORY WINDOW
In your program "Memory Window," (April 1984), Line 160 should read. . .";MEM+255" This will give the proper memory reading in the window. For example, page 0 resides in location 0-255, not 0-256.
Bill Travis
Salt Lake City, UT
ERRATA
In our review of Ultima I (Antic, July 1984), the author's name should have been Keith Valenza. We apologize for the error.
APX LIVES ON
Many readers have asked us how to get APX programs now that Atari has closed that division. Al Thomas, Manager of Sales and Manufacturing for APX tells us that twenty of the best APX programs, including EXCALIBUR, GETAWAY and ATARI PRINTER DRIVER, will continue to be sold. You can obtain a complete list of titles and a new order form by calling: (800) 672-1404 inside California, (800)538-8543 outside California or by writing:
APX
c/o ATARI CUSTOMER SERVICE
1312 CROSSMAN AVENUE
SUNNYVALE, CA. 94088
Al informs us that the turnover on APX orders is just 3-4 days using the new forms. If you use an old form from the catalogue to order a product no longer available, the turnover can take weeks!
SCROLLING INTO TROUBLE
I'm a student who is fascinated by what my Atari 400 can do, but I've stumbled onto a few problems. Specifically, I've had trouble setting up a horizontal-scrolling routine and creating my own character set. Any help you can offer would be most appreciated.
Richard Tan
Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Antic's publisher, James Capparell, has written an article on scrolling that may help You. Entitled simply, "Scrolling" it appears in our recently-published anthology, The Best of Antic, Volume One.
Several articles that explain how to create your own character set have recently appeared in Antic. See "Odd Man Reforms" by John and Mary Harrison (Antic, page 36, December 1983) and "Character Graphics" by Chris Chabris (Antic, page 60, Feb 1984).-ANTIC ED
ANIMATING TANKS
In your June 1984 article " Use Basic to Animate," you stated that the Antic staff was unable to eliminate the instructions for Players 2 and 3 because the remaining tanks would not fire.
You cannot eliminate the entire line. The first item on the line must be retained. The listing below allows you to select either a two, three or four player game. It then disables the unused tanks and eliminates them from the screen.
Please keep up the good work. I learn something every time I type in one of your listings.
Charles Barker
Lawrenceburg, IN
SCROLL YOUR WAY TO THE TOP
There is a typographical error in the article "Scroll Your Way to the Top" (Antic, June 1984). In the last paragraph on page 44, the number 1586 should be 1536.
DISKREAD SECTORS
I typed in "Diskread" from Antic, March 1984, and found a small flaw. If you request the utility to display the "next" sector, it finds the next sector from information in the "pointer" in the last three bytes of the current sector. The sectors (360-368) that contain the VTOC (volume table of contents) and disk directory don't use this pointer, so attempting to display the next sector while displaying a directory sector won't work correctly.
I've made a change that corects this problem. Insert the following line into the program:
215 IF NUM>359 AND NUM<369 THEN
NES=NUM+1:GOTO 250
Edward Aubitz
Bloomington, MN
LOADING GLOOP
Bravo to you and to Guy Aitchison for "Galactic Gloop" (Antic, February 1984) it's one of the best games in BASIC I've ever seen. The song is great, and the graphics are out of this world!
I have a disk-based system, however, and I quickly got tired of typing in special commands each time I loaded the game, so I wrote this little program to ease the task. To use it, first SAVE or rename the game program as "GALACTIC." Then type in this program and SAVE it as "GLOOP" Then RUN"D:GLOOP".
Please print my full address, so that other readers who'd like to talk computers or swap programs can get in touch with me.
0·REM Pre-load initialization for Galactic Gloop
10 GRAPHICS 0:SETCOLOR 2,0,0
20 ?:?:? "POKE 743,114:POKE 744,46":?
:? :? "NEW":? :? :? "LOAD";
CHR$(34);"D:GALACTIC";CHR$(34)
:? :?
30 ? "POKE 842,12:RUN"
40 POSITION 2,0:POKE 842,13:STOP
Mike Wildridge
R.R. #1 Box 35A
Lawrenceburg, IN 47025