EASY FORMATTING
Dear Les,
I have a little comment on Steve Pedler's article
'A Guide To Error Codes'. On Error 162 (Disk Full) he says the only
solution is to use the cassette recorder. I have a better solution.
By using the following XIO commands with DOS 2.5 in direct mode
(Atari BASIC) you can format a disk without going to the DOS menu
and still have your program intact.
XIO 254,
#1,0,0,"D:" (for enhanced density)
XIO 253,
#1,0,0,"D:" (for single density)
A little word of warning, make sure you have
inserted a fresh disk before attempting this since it will erase
everything on your disk.
I hope that this little tip will be of use to
others. It has helped me out of many tricky situations.
Bjorn Deutschmann, Guernsey
_______________
ANOTHER BBS
Dear Editor,
This is just to let you know that yet another
Bulletin Board is in operation and I would be most grateful if the
information could be publicised in your journal.
Name of
System : The System
Transmission
rate: 300 baud
Times : 24
hours
Town/County
: Nottingham
Phone
number : 0602 817919 (ring back)
Sysop : Paul Isaacs
This is not a commercial board and is run on an
Atari system. Messages are welcome from all.
P.B.Isaacs, Nottingham
_______________
CHEAP UPGRADES
Dear Sirs,
First let me thank you for Les Ellingham's 'Error
8' program in Issue 21. It helped me debug two games that I've
struggled with for the last year. Each simply had a comma at the end
of a DATA statement, and how many times had I proofread them!
Now perhaps I can help any readers with 600XL's in
their quest to upgrade at a reasonable price. I recently bought a
64k upgrade kit from a place in the States for US$35 and installed
it in a friend's 600XL. It now performs exactly like my 800XL and
runs everything I can throw at it. The kit consists of two RAM chips
to replace two already installed and three jumper wires, two of
which require some easy soldering to install. The instructions are
very clear and simple and the whole job took less than 30 minutes.
The company will be glad to send through the
international mail but payment must be in US dollars such as an
International Money Order. The address is Computer Service Land,
1073, W. Broad Street, Falls Church, Virginia 22046, U.S.A.
TSgt Bob
Matiska,
RAF
Bentwaters,
Suffolk.
_______________
RENUMBER POSSIBLE?
Dear Les,
Can anyone tell me how I can get an 800XL to
perform the 'renumber' function found on the BBC which I am using at
college. Although generally the Atari compares favourably with the
BBC, the former's lack of this facility is annoying when attempting
to edit and debug programs.
Also I have seen offered a 'single-density' and a
'double density' second hand 1050 disk drive. What is the
difference? Can either run Atariwriter on a 1029?
Ian
Hayward,
East
Sussex
Some languages such as BASIC XL have a
built in renumber feature although this is an expensive way of obtaining
the facility unless you want the other features of the language. Several
renumber programs have appeared in magazines and in the public domain
which work either as an 'add-on' program at the end of your listing or
reside in memory to be used by a USR call. There are a few programs on the
public domain disks in the PAGE 6 library and many User Groups may have
such programs.
There is only one model of the 1050 disk
dive which can be used in either single density or enhanced density (not
true double density) as you wish. Hardware add-ons can be obtained to use
the drive as true double density. There are no restrictions to the type of
programs that can be used on this drive.
_______________
TELECOMPUTING ILLEGAL?
Dear PAGE 6,
I am very interested in telecomputing but
it seems to be forbidden in Belgium. Could you or any reader tell me if it
really is?
Fernand
Paquet,
Belgium
Most strange! Can anybody throw any light
on this?
_______________
DO YOU WANT MORE SOFTWARE?
Dear Les,
My name is John Davison (jnr), my Dad wrote
the Flight Simulator II reviews.
I would like to start a campaign for Atari
owners. With the help of Page 6 readers I believe that we could get
through to software companies and get them to write good software for us.
There are a few companies who have written things, like Mastertronic, but
they treat us like we own a defunct computer, which we don't!!! There are
some software companies who have treated us very badly, and these are the
companies I would like the campaign to be aimed at. Ocean Software and
Elite, are the main 'nasties'. At the beginning of 1985 Ocean ran big
colour ads with Atari written alongside Commodore, Sinclair and Amstrad.
We waited eagerly for Daleys Supertest and Frankie etc. Atari User even
had a news article about Ocean!!! We then waited and waited and then gave
up. Elite on the other hand actually brought something out, but they might
as well not have bothered! 'AIRWOLF' it said in big letters "GREAT!
The number 1 top seller" then underneath the big letters it said
`this was originally test marketed under the name `Blue Thunder' WHAT????
Why did we get Blue Thunder and Commodore, Amstrad, Spectrum, BBC,
Electron, C16, Plus 4 and Tatung Einstein owners get the real thing! This
infuriated me and I wrote a letter of complaint to the Managing Director,
within days I received a reply saying that they would be bringing out
'Paperboy' for the Atari at the end of June, they better have not
been lying or they'll get another letter!!!
If you see any software that you think
should be out on the ATARI, write to the Manager of that company and say
you want it. We are no longer a minority group, there are a lot of Atari
owners about now. A campaign such as this worked very well in the USA and
Antic readers managed to get BRODERBUND software to bring out Lode Runners
Rescue and Championship Lode Runner. They also got 'Farenheit 451' from
another company.
This campaign should not only apply to games. Utilities and word
processors, anything you want! If you want it, write and ask for it!!
I believe if we all write at least one
letter we could get the software companies thinking, so go to it,
WRITE!.
John
Davison jnr.,,
Sandy,
Beds.
I would love to see such a campaign work but I suspect that the more
subdued British Atari users would not take to letter writing campaigns
with as much fervour as the Americans. Still, it could be done. It will
take a lot of work but, as John says, start with just one letter. Start by
writing to the Managing Director of Ocean Software Ltd. at 6, Central
Street, Manchester, M2 5NS. tell him you want Ocean software for the Atari
and ask him to send details of future Atari releases to PAGE 6. If he
receives several thousand letters in the next couple of weeks, it must
have some effect? We'll let you know if it does.
_______________
ASSEMBLER EDITOR PROBLEMS
Dear Les,
Help! How about a future article on the
Atari Assembler Editor used with the XC11 recorder?
I recently purchased an Editor and the manual simply says to CLOAD an
object listing into BASIC but this results in an error. Using ENTER 'C:.`,
everything seems to work but on PEEKing 1536, nothing is there. I'm stuck.
Also is the G command in Debug mode supposed to execute the machine code
as to my simple mind this is what the manual seems to imply?
Cliff Winship
The manual for the Assembler Editor has
been wrong for years! I did know the answer to this problem some time ago
but it now appears to be lost in the mists of time. It has been fairly
well documented so perhaps another reader would care to drop us a line so
that we can publish the details and keep a note of the issue for future
reference.
_______________
1029 PRINTER SUPPORT
Dear Les,
I recently bought a 1029 printer so I could
run off Assembly listings and do graphics dumps. Unfortunately I do not
feel that I am using the printer to its full potential as I have no idea
how to program it for control characters, inverse characters or screen
dumps of my favourite games. I have seen this done on other printers and
wonder why it is not easily available on an Atari printer.
At the Atari Show I purchased Music
Construction Set from Ariolasoft. This is an excellent program that
includes the option to print the music score to a printer. However, the
program requires you to set up a printer before dumping the screen by
typing in a code of some sort. The most infuriating thing is that the
manual for the program gives examples for an Epson printer but not for the
1029! Does anyone know this secret code or indeed know anything useful
about this printer?
Tim
Eyles,
Basingstoke.
We now have a few articles and programs
about the 1029 which only need to be checked through before we can publish
them. They should throw some light on the subject.
One of the problems with the 1029 is that
it only uses a print head matrix of 7 x 5 whereas most other (and more
expensive) printers have a 9 x 9 matrix. Whilst the 1029 can print
graphics it is not possible to simply use a routine designed for another
printer, a custom program has to be written. The other problem is that
most of the commercial software that includes facilities for screen dumps
is written in America where the 1029 printer was either not sold or was
sold in very limited quantity. As a result most companies do not bother to
include a 1029 option in their programs thinking that the demand would not
be worth the effort. The 1029 can be used more extensively and we hope to
begin publishing some programs in the next issue.
_______________
LONG LINES
Dear Sir,
I recently bought my son an 800XL and he
loves typing in the programs from PAGE 6.
The reason for writing is that I managed to
get hold of some back issues of PAGE 6 and we are having a problem with
House of Secrets from Issue 10. Is it possible to let me have, or better
still print, the TYPO 3 codes for that and older listings? Also, sometimes
when my son is typing in a certain line, before he gets to the end of the
line there is a beep from the computer and when he presses RETURN he gets
an error code and the end of the line is missing. He can cure this by
missing out all the spaces but when he presses RETURN the computer puts
them all back again. Why?
M.E.Bradwell,
Grimsby.
The early issues of PAGE 6 used TYPO 2
for error checking and you will find a table of codes for the programs in
each issue. The original TYPO 2 program was published in Issue 5 which is
now out of print but we will happily send a copy of the program to anyone
who sends in a s.a.e. We do intend at some stage to produce TYPO 3 codes
for all of the programs in past issues but it is one of those projects
that will take a considerable time and keeps getting put off when more
important things crop up. Hopefully one day we will publish some sort of
supplement.
The reason the Atari beeps at you when
you have typed in a lot of information is to warn you that you are coming
near to the maximum amount of characters that you can type on one line.
You are allowed only three physical lines on screen for each program line
although internally the computer can accept longer lines. There are
several ways to squeeze more information onto a line. One, as you suggest,
is to leave out spaces. Another is to use abbreviations for BASIC words,
check your manual or Mark Hutchinson's A-Z OF BASIC published in PAGE 6 a
while ago. A third way is to type POKE 82,0 and press RETURN before you
start typing. As you enter each line the Atari checks it before accepting
it as part of the program. It can recognise legal abbreviations and
missing spaces and will automatically correct these for you but when it
finds something that it does not recognise, it will tell you so in the
form of an error message. The syntax checking on the Atari is one of the
very best but it can only check to see if input is legal as defined by
BASIC. It cannot check for all characters that are typed incorrectly which
is why the TYPO programs where developed.
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