Dear Reader,

This package provides you with the possibility to produce the ROM images
as required for Atari 8-bit emulators, from a source version.

Note that only ROMs for the XL/XE series are produced by this package.

===== Release History =====

This is actually the second incarnation of this package; the first version,
released on January 13th, used the rather outdated TASM assembler. This
version uses the free CC65 assembler instead, which is much better in every
respect. For example, since a real linker is available, there is no ordering
problem on mutually-used symbols, which necessitated the inclusion of the
generated "export" files in the previous release. Things are very clean now.

The sources themselves have changed very little since the last release. The
most obvious change is that I have elected to change all 6502 mnemonics to
lower case. Porting the code to CC65 took only about two hours.

A lot of work remains to be done with respect to commenting the source.
Furthermore, I would like to do some other Atari ROMs as well. If you
like to help in either of these areas, please let me know.

===== The Manual =====

To be able to produce the ROM images, you will have to use the freeware
"cc65" package, provided by Ullrich von Bassewitz. This system gives you
a great C programming environment for 8-bit systems (not only Ataris,
but also CBM-64, Apple-II, etcetera); for the purpose of producing the
ROM images, you will only need the assembler and linker.

The following steps need to be taken to produce the ROM images:

(1) Download the latest CC65 compiler suite. You can get there
    via "http://www.von-bassewitz.de/uz/cc65/"; download either
    the source package and compile it, or get the pre-built
    binaries for your favourite platform.

(2) After installing the compiler suite, make sure that both the
    assembler ("ca65") and the linker ("ld65") are executable, by
    adding the directory in which they reside to your PATH.

(3) Assuming the "make" tool is available, type "make" in the
    atarirom directory.

    If you do not have a make for your platform, you may want to
    run the following commands manually, which produces the same
    result.

    ca65 500057ff.s -o 500057ff.o
    ca65 a000bfff.s -o a000bfff.o
    ca65 c000cbff.s -o c000cbff.o
    ca65 cc00cfff.s -o cc00cfff.o
    ca65 d800dfff.s -o d800dfff.o
    ca65 e000e3ff.s -o e000e3ff.o
    ca65 e400ffff.s -o e400ffff.o
    ld65 -C images.lnk 500057ff.o a000bfff.o c000cbff.o cc00cfff.o d800dfff.o
                                  e000e3ff.o e400ffff.o

    Note that the "ld65" command as shown above spans two lines.

(4) The three ROM images will now reside in your directory.
    The following MD5 checksum may be used to verify they are
    correct:

0bac0c6a50104045d902df4503a4c30b  ataribas.rom
06daac977823773a3eea3422fd26a703  atarixl.rom

    Alternatively, you may run "make check" if the md5sum program is available
    on your system.

(5) Step five ... There is no step five!

=========================

-- Many thanks go to Ullrich von Bassewitz for producing the GREAT
   CC65 compiler suite. I'm not easily impressed with somebody else's
   programming efforts, but I can only stand in awe of this tremendous
   achievement.

Best regards,

  Sidney Cadot
  Sunday, July 23rd, 2000