Classic Computer Magazine Archive ANTIC VOL. 6, NO. 1 / MAY 1987

Tech Tips

BY BILL MAROUARDT, ANTIC TECHNICAL ASSISTANT

ST WRITER BASIC EDITING
Bruce Noonan, a physician from Edmonds, Washington suggests this format line when using ST Writer as a BASIC editor:

[CONTROL]-L  1
[CONTROL]-G  10
[CONTROL]-R  160
[CONTROL]-T  0
[CONTROL]-B  0.
Remember to PRINT to a disk file, not SAVE.


Here are three Tech Tips sent in by Neta Fillmore, of Olidale, California. She Is a member of the Bakersfield Atari Computer Enthusiasts who originally published them in their newsletter.

NOISY I/O FLAG
If you would like to turn off the sound of data pulses coming out of your video speaker during disk or cassette I/O, type POKE 65,0. Bring It back with POKE 65,1.

BYE BYE REBOOT
Here's a tricky way to rerun an AUTORUN.SYS file without turning off your Atari XL or XE. Press [RESET]. Type in BYE and press [RETURN]. You will see the Self-Test Menu. Press [RESET] again and AUTORUN.SYS will take off.

BINARY LOCATING
Want to find out where a binary program is being loaded? The first six bytes will give you the answer. The following program reads them:

10 OPEN #2,4,0,"D:YOURPROG. OBJ"
20 FOR 1=1 TO 6:GET #2,A
30 PRINT A:NEXT I:CLOSE #2

Ignore the first two values which will be 255. Multiply the fourth value by 256 and add the third byte to the result. You now have the starting address. Repeat the above for values five and six to find the ending address of the binary program.


RAMDISK REVISITED
Rick Detlefsen of the Austin (Texas) Atari Computer Enthusiasts sends in his enhancement of the 800XL 16K RAMdIsk Tech Tip from the January 1987 Antic. This patched version shows correctly that you have only 101 free sectors, not 499.

1. Boot with DOS 2.5 to BASIC.
2. POKE 1802,PEEK(1802)+128
3. Press [RESET].
4. POKE 2924,l0l:POKE 2925,0:POKE 2926,l0l:POKE 2927,0
5. Go to DOS.
6. Format D8.
7. Return to BASIC.

Don't forget that when you turn off your computer, everything in this pseudo disk drive (D8) will be lost. Copy any files you wish to keep to a real disk before you shut down.


ML DATA LOADER
DATAMAKR.BAS is a short program which converts machine language object files into BASIC DATA statements that can be ENTERed and used in your own BASIC programs.

Just insert the filename of your object code in line 20. Then choose a filename for your DATA statements and type it in at line 15. DATAMAKR will read your object code from the first file, and write BASIC DATA statements to the second.

When RUN, DATAMAKR asks for a starting line number. DATAMAKR will use that line number to create its first DATA statement. Subsequent DATA lines will be numbered in increments of ten. If you prefer to number your programs differently, change the 10 in line 110 to a value of your choosing.

After DATAMAKR has written your file of DATA statements, type NEW and ENTER it into RAM. Remember that you'll probably have to delete the first six Items of data, which are file header bytes. You may also find a comma after the last entry. This should be deleted too.

10 DIM LINE$(127):TRAP 120
15 OPEN #3,8,0,"D:DATALIST.LST"
20 OPEN #4,4,0,"D:FILENAME.OBJ"
30 ? CHR$(125);"STARTING LINE # = ";
40 INPUT LN
50 LINE$=STR$(LN)
55 LINES(LEN(LINE$)+1)="DATA"
60 FOR J=1 TO 15
65 GET #4,D
70 LINE$(LEN(LINE$)+1)= STR$(D)
75 LINE$(LEN(LINES)+1}
80 NEXT J:GET #4,D
90 LINE$(LEN(LINE$)+1)=STR$(D)
100 PRINT #3;LINE$:LINE$=" "
110 LN=LN+10:GOTO 50
120 PRINT #3;LINE$:CLOSE #3:CLOSE #4



If you have a Tech Tip that you would like to share with other readers, send it along to Antic Tech Tips 544 Second Street, San Francisco, CA 94107 You might get your name in print. We always welcome very short programs that demonstrate the Atari's powers, simple hardware modifications, or useful macros for popular software.


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