Table of Contents

1. System overview

2. ANTIC and the display list

Television Displays
Computers and Televisions
ANTIC, a Video Microprocessor
Building Display Lists
Writing to a Custom Display List Screen
Applications of display lists

3. Graphics indirection (color registers and characters sets)

Color registers
Character sets
Applications of character sets

4. Player-Missile Graphics

Difficulties with High-Speed Animation
Player-Missile Fundamentals
Vertical Motion
Horizontal Motion
Other Player-Missile Features
Missiles
Player and Playfield Priorities
Hardware Collision Detection
Applications of Player-Missile Graphics
Special Characters

5. Display List Interrupts

Theory of Operation
DLI Timing
DLI Example
Attract Mode
Detailed Timing Considerations
Multiple DLIs
Kernels
Applications of Display List Interrups

6. Scrolling

Horizontal Scrolling
Fine Scrolling
Applications of Scrolling

7. Sound

Definition of Terms and Conventions
Sound Hardware

AUDF1-4
AUDC1-4
Volume
Distortion
Volume Only Sound
AUDCTL
Clocking
16-Bit Frequency options
High Pass Filters
9-Bit Polynomial Conversion

Sound generation Software Techniques

Static Sound
Dynamic Sound
BASIC Sound
60-Hz Interrupt
Machine-Code Sound Generation
Volume Only Sound

8. Operating system

Introduction
The Monitor
Memory Management
Interrupt Processing Structure
System Vectors
The Centralized Input/Output Subsystem
Real-Time Programming
Floating Point Package

9. The disk operating system

The Resident Disk Handler
File Management Utility
Disk Utility Package
Random Access
FMS Disk Utilization
AUTORUN.SYS file

10. Atari BASIC Overview

What is ATARI BASIC?
How ATARI BASIC Works
The Tokenizing Process
The Token File Structure
The Program Execution Process
System Integration
Improving Program Performance
Advanced Programming Techniques

A. Memory Utilization

B. Human Engineering

C. ATARI Cassette Overview

D. Television Artifacts

E. GTIA

Glossary