OK, it isn't that new.  I finished writing it 15 years ago.  Even sold it
for a while, although it didn't sell a lot of copies.  The 8-bit world was
on the way out in 1985.  But I recently resurrected the compiler and its
development environment and have been having some fun enhancing some parts
of it.  Real nostalgia trip since I spent a large chunk of my free time at
university developing this thing.

It compiles a unique BASIC dialect to a very fast p-code.  The p-code
interpreter and the Control Program (i.e., DOS shell) live in XL's shadow
memory.  The Control Program replaces DUP.SYS and provides a command line
interface much like OS/A+ and DOS/XL from OSS.  It manages loading programs
(you can load multiple programs into memory at once) and libraries (modules
can share subroutines with multiple programs -- shared libraries on an 8-bit
computer!)

Anywho, if you want to check it out and play with it, check out my web page.
Goto and click on ATARI.  There's a ZIPped XFD
image of the object files and one of the source.  I'd love to hear from
anyone who downloads it and plays with it some.  While I'm still in this
nostalgic mood, I may even fix bugs and add enhancements for you.

You know, it boggles my mind, this is a complete development environment
release that fits on a 180KB disk.  The C++ compiler and development
environment I'm about to release for the company I currently work for is
literally 1000 times bigger.  And let's not even think about how big the
debugging version of said environment is.  (Oh yeah, if you look at the
source, keep in mind I have 15 years of experience now, and my coding and
commenting style is much better now :-)

Jeff Jackson
j@jeff-jackson.com

...

Two words:

Job security.

He is...  the ebay spammer in question is named "Bud Klass"
(budkl@sprynet.com.)

the Mav

--
Cliffhanger Serials, Boardgames, Videogames, and Red Baron I
 
The Classic Microgames Museum
 
The Space and Fantasy Gamer's Guide
 

Hi all

I've a large 8 bit collection up for auction on Ebay. I bought it all about
six months ago and have had a lot of fun with it. but alas space and money
considerations have lead to this.

Thanks

--
The opinions expressed in this communication are my own, and do not
necessarily reflect those of my employer.

I recently acquired an 800xl with a CSS Operating System upgrade installed.
The daughterboard is marked (C) 1984, which makes me suspect it predates the
Ultra Speed Plus OS.

There's a two position switch: in one position, it boots to the standard XL
OS; in the other, it boots to a blank GR.0 screen, where I can type
anything, but it has no effect.  Booting with OPTION held down in the second
OS takes me to the BASIC READY prompt.

I suspect the alternate OS is 400/800 compatible, with the "MEMO PAD" title
removed (copyright reasons?).  Does anyone have any info on early CSS OS
upgrades for the XLs?

I've looked at the CSS website () but I don't believe
this upgrade appears there... and I sold off my Antics and ANALOGs long ago.

Any help would be most appreciated.

David P.

For faster service, Please direct all replies through E-Mail to Ben at:
a@benjamin.net or bensm@teleport.com instead of NewsGroups as I
find it hard to keep up with NewsGroups.

I'm looking for 2 Atari xf551 5.25 Floppy Drives for an upgrade
project. I'm willing to Buy or Trade, but I prefer to trade. Reasonable
trades considered. To look at what I have, goto my WebPage @

<h3><a href="">Click for WebSite!</a></h3>

Or, if you have what I'm looking for and want to sell, E-Mail me@

<h3>e-mail: <a href="mailto:a@benjamin.net">a@benjamin.net</a><br>

Please Direct all Replies Through E-Mail to: a@benjamin.net or
bensm@teleport.com. If you can't reach me at benjamin.net see my
E-Mail/Web info in my Signature at the Bottom!
--
Atari 8 Bit, ST & Jaguar Hardware, Software, Books & Accessories(503)256-9974
DownLoad FREE Catalogs at ftp.teleport.com/vendors/bensmith/ or by WebSite at
or try Ben's SubDomain at
Catalogs Requested by & Received Through E-Mail at bensm@teleport.com or a@benjamin.net Specify 8 Bit, ST &/or Jaguar!

My 'Mapping the Atari' Revised Edition in Appendix 12 also lists the
table of PBI addresses with $D803 as $80 and $D80B as $91. It appears
from this table that these values are always there, but there is no
actual text that says this is true.

Could this be the way that the Atari 'finds' the PBI device ROM? IOW, if
these values aren't found, the Atari assumes there's no device?

Also, the book lists the checksum as 'optional'.

I am just guessing. I've never played with the PBI.

--
Tony Talarico

To contact me, take away the SVO
  (OVER MY COLD LIFELESS CORPSE!!) ;->

I don't know if this is relevant to anyone, but my son kind of provoked me
into doing a LCD project based on the Hitatchi HD44780 2x16 module.

It is one of those good news/bad news things. The good news is the modules
are available in surplus shops for ~$4 each and they are a breeze to
interface. For the module I used, it only required something like 12-14
connections and that includes ground, power supply, and contrast. There is a
lot of documentation for them scattered all over the net, if you just use
the part number in a search engine you will find a lot of schematics.

The bad news is multiple: I checked out the cost of new ones, I would say
prohibitive, ones like a 4x40 he bought for $4 cost $60-70 new. I did the
project for an IBM printer port. Of the 3 schematics I used, all 3 had
errors so I had to go best 2 out of 3 to decide what to do.

I didn't bother checking out the 4 bit parallel load, only used 8 bit, but
the things could be readily adapted to an Atari 800 though the JS and I
would guess could be done using an XLs 2 joysticks.

He needed the display for a remote MP3 player he is putting together for his
car. He wants to mount the IBM clone in the trunk and have the display on
the dash. I must say the effects are kind of neat, scrolling display,
predefined + 7 redefinable characters, etc. But really I don't have an Atari
application I need them for.

Other thing I am kind of looking into. He bought a few of those HP 1 3/4"
hard drives for $2 each. He thought they were 121 megs, but turns out they
are only 21 megs so the gave me one to experiment with. Damn things are
sooooo cute, about 2" sq and 1/3" thick. Bad news is I set it down on my
work bench and it is so small I can't find it!<grin>

If you can read the boot sectors and not the rest, it means the sector
size is set to $80 in DBYTLO/HI. Change them to $0100 and things should
work.

FWIW I always preferred to ignore DSKINV and just use SIO. There are some
things that just can't be done via DSKINV, such as format in 1050 density,
so I figured I'd just eliminate the middleman.

jkp

Ok, any other distribution method besides alt.binaries.comp.atari8bit
(my news server, newsguy.com, doesn't carry it).

--
Ryan 'Gozar' Collins
Check out for Web News and Information
rlco@ibm.net