=== Starting games from within XL-It easily with SID-LOAD (version 1.0.5) ===

N.B. Latest versions will always be available at

  http://ch.twi.tudelft.nl/~sidney/atari

New versions will be announced in newsgroup comp.sys.atari.8bit

=== The manual ===

The following steps are to be taken if you want to used SID-LOAD to run
binary executables from within XL-It:

  (1) Point the D1: device in the Emulator configuration screen to the
      SIDLOAD.ATR disk image;
  (2) Point the H1: device in the emulator configuration screen to the
      PC directory in which you keep all your files; you will have to
      select a game in this directory to do that;
  (3) Start the emulator.

    You can now type a filename of a game on your PC harddisk; this wil load
    and (most probably) run.

    Since version 1.0.5, it is also possible to type a pattern containing
    wildcards (e.g., BOULDERD?.*) to show all filenames in H1 which match it.

    N.B. because of the way the H: device is implemented in XL-It, if you'd
    like to list all files, you will have to specify "*" instead of "*.*"!
    If you enter "*.*", you'll get all the filenames containing a point
    (and miss the ones without an extension!)

    If you know your 6502 (as you should!) you can take a look at the source
    code SIDLOAD.ASM. If you detect any clear bugs or see possibility for
    improvement (however small!) be sure to e-mail me!

=== Change list ===

  Changes from [1.0.0] to [1.0.4]:

    * Fix: entering a wrong filename doesn't prevent the loading of
      correct files thereafter any more. Instead, it produces the 'error
      sound' ascii 253 (in XL/XE mode) and asks for another filename.

    * Fix: failures coming from bad images will not make SID-LOAD attempt
      to restart itself (which often fails); instead it will now try to
      start the game (though this may fail too). At least now, If you see
      the SID-LOAD opening screen, you'll know it's ok!

    * Improvement: loader memory has been reduced to only 164 bytes of
      memory, meaning more games will load. (for the technically inclined:
      only $480-$524 are in use by the loader program now).

  Changes from [1.0.4] to [1.0.5]:

    * Optimizations: some optimization made the loader portion smaller: from
      164 down to 123 bytes. This means all games not touching $480-$4FF while
      loading should work; the ones touching only $500-$57F now have a chance.

    * Feature: directory feature; the "BELL" on a wrong filename has gone;
      instead, SID-LOAD now tries to interpret the filename entered as a
      pattern for a directory listing.

    * Fix: COLOR2 (address 710) value is now restored prior to invoking the
      loader. The silly thing is: about the only program hindered by this
      was my own ROMCRC program! Should work fine now.

    * Fix: better handling of BLOCKSTART>BLOCKEND; in this case, SID-LOAD now
      tries to RUN the program (as it does with other errors).

    * Fix: some games (most notably, Asteroids) appear to be rather picky about
      system variables being set up properly (DOSVEC). They work now.

    (Never thought it would be possible to have this much bugs in so little
     code!)

===

  I hope this program is useful in some way.

  N.B. This program is free software as described in the GNU Public License.
       Read the GPL for info.

Regards,

  Sidney Cadot
  sidney@ch.twi.tudelft.nl