i/o board

ABOUT THE COVER

Photography by Mark Gottlieb.

Model: Dawn Tills from the Frazer-Nicklin Agency.

SUNDAY COMES FIRST

Thank you for the excellent program, Appointment Calendar in the January, 1985 Antic. I'm a Lutheran pastor and find that the program is a good way to set up dates for our church newsletter calendar. However, a week starting with Monday was not what I needed. It took me a while to change the weeks to start on Sunday, so I thought your readers might want this information, Just change lines 180 and 1590-1660 as shown below:

180 DATA SUNDAY,MONDAY,
TUESDAY,WEDNESDAY,THURS
DAY,FRIDAY, SATURDAY
1590 DATA 366247251361,
477351362472
1600 DATA 511462473513,
623614625735
1610 DATA 144725736146,
255136147257
1620 DATA 366247251361,
471462473513
1630 DATA 622573514624,
733614625735
1640 DATA 144725736146,
256247251361
1650 DATA 477351362472,
511462473513
1660 DATA 622573514624

Chris Wareham
Spearfish, SD

On Disk CALFIX.LST Download / View

NO MORE BLUES

Re: Marty Saletta's letter (December, 1985 Antic) about Synapse's Blue Max game being incompatible with the 130XE:

Did he boot the Translator disk on his l30XE while pressing the [OPTION] key at power-up time? Blue Max seems to think a cartridge is installed. On the XL and XE, [OPTION] must be pressed during power-up to disable the built-in BASIC, even if you're booting the Translator disk. Release the [OPTION] key when the familiar blue screen appears and the disk begins to boot.

Also, some copyrighted software looks for ROM at $C000-$CFFF. This goes back to the earlier days of the 800, when machine language monitors, added to the operating system ROM board, were thought of as "hackers tools" by some software vendors. Their programs would look for ROM here and refuse to run if found. The problem with that, however, is that the newer 800XL and 130XE computers have operating system ROM here.

I have seen earlier versions of commercial software that refused to boot on a l30XE, giving a prompt to "Remove ROM at $C000." This demonstrates some publishers' initial reluctance to recognize the XL/XE machines as viable Atari computers. Now that they have discovered all that hidden RAM, most new software supports the XL/XE rather than the old 400/800 computers.

Matthew Ratcliff
Ferguson, MO

See Matt Ratcliff's review of the Atari XM301 modem in this issue. -ANTIC ED

HOMEWRITER HELP

I just bought an Epson Homewriter printer and have been trying to dump KoalaPad pictures. All I get is a bunch of ASCII characters. Help me please! I'm lost and worried that I cannot use graphs and charts on reports that I do.

Sorry, the Epson Homewriter 10 is a rarity-a stripped-down dot-matrix model with NO graphics capabilities. it was designed to print text only, and does that cleanly -ANTIC ED

ST-COMPATIBLE

I am planning to get a 520ST to replace my old Atari 800. Can I adapt my Gemini l0-X printer to the ST? Also, will there be a way for me to use all of my Atari 800 programs on the ST?

Todd Brownstein
Deerfield, IL

The 520ST uses a completely different processor chip than the Atari 800, so none of your old software will run on it. But your Gemini 10-X will work fine and you won't need to purchase a printer interface. Just buy a standard IBM-style parallel printer cable. -ANTIC ED

MAC LOCKUP

I've discovered that when I use my MAC/65 cartridge and read from memory page D5, my l30XE locks up. When I press [RESET],the computer does a cold start and switches to the built-in BASIC. Then if I read the same locations in BASIC and press [RESET], the l30XE will switch back to the MAC/65. This doesn't happen when I use my Atari Assembler Editor cartridge. I'd like to find out why this happens.

Joe Melville
Menomonie, WI

We spoke with Bill Wilkinson of Optimized Systems Software about this problem. He reports that OSS carts like MAC/65 are "super cartridges" which use bank-selection to determine which section of the cartridge is active. Reading or writing to ANY memory location between $D500 and $D5FF will cause the cartridge to "bank select" a new section of code to execute. If this is done from "outside" the cart, as from BASIC on your own machine language instruction, the cart will switch in 'garbage" and then try to execute the garbage, resulting in a lockup.
The answer? There is none, because normally there is no usable RAM orROM in the memory range between $D500 an $D5FF, and there is no reason to go rummaging around up there. See you in RAM!-ANTIC ED

OLD FAITHFUL 800

Thank you for your continuing support of Atari's "old faithful"-the original Atari 800 personal computer-with such articles as Fast Moves by Patrick Dell'Era in the November, 1985 Antic. It's just what this novice needed and wanted. One benefit not mentioned is the fact that it will speed up the cursor movement of Atari-Writer-a much needed improvement!

David Ferguson
Pontotoc, MS

8-BIT LOVE

Great sadness is in my heart because I no longer own an Atari 800. I owned my 800 for a proud five years and I never regretted my purchase, even though I paid $750 for a 16K computer with Atari BASIC. Friends with Apple IIs and IBM PCs mocked the best personal computer designed before the Macintosh, but I still stuck by my Atari. Until now.
   The lack of 80 columns never bothered me until I began to do long essays with footnotes and bibliographies in college. Little else was wrong with my Atari, but I still had an uncontrollable urge to buy another computer, either an Atari ST or an IBM PC compatible. The 8-bit computer I used and loved is now in the hands of someone else, and I will soon be in the 16 or 32-bit world.
   I have some advice for anyone who wants to sell their 8-bit Atari-DON'T DO IT. That is, unless you are absolutely, positively, unequivocably sure that you can handle the shock of leaving the unmatched Atari full-screen editor, the brilliant Atari CIO system, and the best video games behind you just to get MS-DOS or TOS.
   Good luck, former fellow 8-bit Atari users. Be proud, and live long and happy lives.

Victor Kan
Columbia University
New York, NY

THANKS FROM POLAND

Thank you very much for printing our letter in your August, 1985 issue. We have started receiving letters from Atari fans all over the world. Our club has grown to 60 people, but still we are dependent upon other Atari users for software. Without software, we suffer permanently. We would like to thank the people who have written to us, and especially thank those who sent us books, magazines and programs. We will answer all letters, but of course it will take some time. With best wishes and regards from Krakow:

Wieslaw Migut
Atari User
Club Poland
P.0. Box 375
30-950 Krakow 61

BUGGY BASIC

When I found that fatal lock-ups occurred when I wrote BASIC programs on my 800XL, I sent my computer to Atari. They sent back the computer with new chips, but the bug was not eliminated. After this, I called Atari Germany for over half a year. But they couldn't tell me why the bug occurs. After this time, I have given up. But I read in a German magazine that there is a bug in the BASIC ROM. Can you help me?

Hans-Joachim Riedl
West Germany

You'll find a type-in fix for buggy BASIC Revision B, Matthew Ratcliff's Revision C Converter, in the September 1985 issue of Antic.-ANTIC ED

PERFECT DOS

While re-reading your May 1985 review of the PaperClip word processor, I noticed that Antic said it's possible to transfer LJK Letter Perfect Files into standard Atari DOS files. How is this done, and where may I buy this program?

David Salowitz
PPN #76556,2606
(ANTIC ONLINE query)

LJK Enterprises. 8753 Big Bend Boulevard, St. Louis, MO 63119 has a $29.95 disk utility that will do this for you. -ANTIC ED