I/O board

MODIFICATIONS AND KUDOS FOR TYPO II

Congratulations on your error checking program, TYPO II. It is short, fast and a great help in accurately typing your listings.
   Here are a couple of modifications. For those of us with BASIC XL or an auto-numbering program, typing in the line numbers is not considered a life enriching experience. The following changes let you step through each program line by typing an asterisk and [RETURN].
   This causes each succeeding program line to be listed and automatically checked, making it possible to type the program with an auto-numbering routine, and then check it without ever typing in a line number.
   Even if you don't use auto-numbering, these changes will make it a lot pleasanter for you to step through the lines of a previously typed program that you're modifying.
Modification code

Patrick DellEra
Fairfax, CA

HELP FOR PROGRAMS

How can I incorporate the "help" key on my Atari into my utility programs?
Greg Lyles
Rosemead, CA
To clear the HELP key, POKE 732,0. To read that key. PEEK(732). A 17 represents the HELP key, an 81 represents SHIFT HELP, and a 145 means CONTROL-HELP -ANTIC ED

TRAK REPAIRS

When my Trak disk drive went on the blink, I was somewhat upset to find that the company had gone out of business. But after a call to Computer Palace in Oregon-where I bought my drive through an Antic mail-order ad-I found I could get my Trak repaired by Electronic Connexion, 424 E. Stroop Road, Kettering, Ohio 45429. You can phone them between 11-3 eastern time at (513) 294-0212.
Please print this information in your great magazine as a service to other Trak owners.
William R. Goslin
Grand Isle, LA

BEATING THOSE FOOTBALL BLUES

A February, 1985 I/O letter asked about football handicapping programs. Several football statistical and prediction programs can be found in "BASIC Betting: the Microcomputer Edge," by James Jasper ($9.95, St. Martin's Press, NY). It covers baseball, basketball, football, and horseracing. It was intended for the Apple originally, but it should be possible to rewrite these programs for the Atari.
L. Allen Hummer
Fayetteville, PA

SEARS MONITOR GHOST

When Antic reviewed the Sears $349.99 Proformance TV/Monitor in our December 1985 Buyer's Guide, we wrote that it had a distracting color ghost when used as an Atari monitor At the time, local Sears spokesmen assured us that the problem was a unique glitch in the unit we had borrowed for review.
As a result of monitoring the CompuServe Atari SIG, Antic has now discovered that the problem is far more widespread. One electronically oriented SIG member wrote that when he looked inside his Scars TV/Monitor he felt that its composite video mode circuitry (needed by the Atari) seemed like a quick add-on to what was essentially an RGB monitor intended for IBM-type computers. -ANTIC ED

WRONG NUMBER

One of the BBS numbers Antic downloaded from the Boise Users' Group and reprinted unchanged in the February 1985 issue was incorrect. Please do NOT call the (601) 388-3940 number in Mississippi-it does not belong to a bulletin board. -ANTIC ED

JOYSTICK SPRAYPAINTER

I found "Spraypainter" (Antic, October, 1984) a little slow, so I converted it to ACTION! and installed an on/off routine with the joystick to make it more usable. Here it is:
spraypainter code

William Bennett
San Antonio, TX

EXPANDED CPU? NO.

Is it possible to put a CPU expander bus into my l200XL?
Greg Metallmos
Winnipeg, MB
We checked with Bill Wilkinson, who tells us that putting a bus expander on the 1200XL is out of the question for all but the most experienced electronics technician. Even if you could, it wouldn't be compatible with any other model without some very expensive conversion hardware and difficult-to-write software, says Bill, adding "Forget it."-ANTIC ED.

TWO-FACED FLOPPIES

Can you notch a single-sided disk and use the other side? If so, will it cause any harm?
Raymond Moody
Fort Ord, CA
1. Yes.. . Notching a disk is easy-you can just use a regular hole punch. To be sure of putting the notch in the right spot, hold an already-notched disk behind the disk you're punching.
2. Possibly... You run a slight risk in using the floppy's flip side. A disk drive's read/write head presses the bottom of a disk against a felt sad. Pieces of dirt or metal could get stuck in the pad and scratch the "A" side of your disk if you 're recording on the second side. However at Antic we routinely use both sides of disks all the time and haven't lost any files yet. It's up to you if you 're willing to take even a tiny risk with your disk data. -ANTIC ED

CHIPS, CHIPS, EVERYWHERE CHIPS

What can you tell me about the Western Design Center's OXI-CMOS W65SC802 CPU or related chips? It is supposedly a 16-bit processor compatible with existing 6502 applications. The chip is compatible, pin for pin, with the 6502 used in Ataris.
Mike Rutledge
El Segundo, CA
We checked with Charles Cherry, of Technical Support in Daly City, who supplied the following information and short history of the Atari 6502. -ANTIC ED

The Atari 400 and 800 use the 6502B, a faster version of the original 6502 microprocessor. The 600XL and 800XL use the 6502C, a substantially different chip that incorporates support functions that, in the days of the 6502A, were contained on separate chips. A further consolidation of support chips led to the 6510, which may be used in the new XE computers.
   There are three other interesting chips in the 6502 family
   The 65C02 (a plug-in replacement in the Atari 400 and 800) offers the increased reliability, decreased power consumption and heat generation, and better heat immunity of CMOS. It also has new machine language instructions and addressing modes, which are supported by the MAC/65 assembler cartridge from O.S.S.
   The other two chips are 8-bit and 16-bit processors based on the 6502. The 8-bit W65SC802 has new instructions and addressing modes. It appears to have the same new capabilities as the 65C02, and may work with MAC/65.
   The 16-bit W65SC816 chip probably won't work with the Atari because of the pin arrangement.