Cassidy Nolen Posted June 21, 2002 Share Posted June 21, 2002 Hi all, First off, I have no idea what I am doing. Any of you that know me, well, you can attest to that. Anyway, found an XE system this last week, and want to program using it. Now, heres the thing: I do not have a disk drive or tape drive. Which one would you recommend. I am leaning towards the tape, because I can then use the .wav to binary converter so I can make binaries to burn onto eproms. Eventually I would like to be able to make cartridges for other systems. If I buy a disk drive, I cannot figure out how I could get the data to the PC to burn onto eproms. Any thoughts on that would be helpful. As for programming advise, I think I am going to putter around in basic for a while. Am I correct that there was a machine language cartrige for the XE? If so, does anyone have it, and is it worth whatever it would cost to get? Does anyone have the .bin from the cart and can I just make one from another cart (of course using an eprom). Sorry for the bazillion questions. I appreciate any help and good wishes. I got the system along with 30 games, keyboard, 2 controllers and a light gun for 30 bucks. Did not do too badly. Also had a few rare games in the lot. Not bad. Cassidy BTW, Ms. Pac and Pac on this system rock! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanBoris Posted June 21, 2002 Share Posted June 21, 2002 I would recommend an APE interface: http://www.atarimax.com/ This cable and software allows you to hook you Atari 8-bit to a PC and use the PC like a giant disk drive. This will allow you to easily access your files on both the Atari and your PC. As for a language to use, Atari Basic is a good choice to get your started. It was actually quite powerful and was even used for a number of comercial games back in the day. The only problem is that you won't be able to use it to make a cartridge based game, for that you will need assembly language. There are at least 2 assembly language carts that I know of. The first was the Atari Assembler, and the other was Mac65 by OSS (which also comes in a disk version). From what I can remeber Mac65 was the assembler of choice for the Atari, much more capable then the Atari Assembler. Another option is to write your code on a PC and use a cross assembler (an assembler that runs on the PC but in this case produces 6502 binary code). You could then run the game on an emulator and/or the real system via the APE interface i mentioned above. Hope this helps Dan Boris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris++ Posted June 21, 2002 Share Posted June 21, 2002 I would definitely choose the cross-design option. Once you're comfortable with BASIC and you graduate to machine language (i.e. Assembly), it's easier to write the code and test it right away on an emulator. Whereas you'll only have about 16K to work with if you use the old Assembly cartridge (since that was the extent of available memory for early '80s programmers), you'll be able to use the XE's full 64K of memory if you use your PC for the coding. Definitely get yourself a copy of any COMPUTE!'S BOOK FOR THE ATARI (for BASIC or machine language). I'm not sure where to look -- perhaps others can help you in that area -- but following the examples step-by-step will teach you how to code in no time. CF Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buddpaul Posted July 3, 2002 Share Posted July 3, 2002 Yes, there was an Assembler cartridge released for the 8-bits......tried to buy one from 4Jays......it was listed for sale on their site.....but got an e-mail several days later saying that they didn't have any more copies. Good luck finding one, and good luck learning Assembly......tough language! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted July 3, 2002 Share Posted July 3, 2002 Cassidy... Dan's got you on the right track - forget a real disc or tape drive go APE and you'll never regret it!!!! Try these sources for really awesome how to's to get something up and running in Atari Basic on the real metal via APE or on an Emulator: This Book is great - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/020...5843735-0209525 And this one too: http://www.atariarchives.org/c1bag/ And this is more advanced but totally great resource: http://www.atariarchives.org/agagd/ The first text is a "real" book, the others online at Atari Archives - which also includes the essential beginners book: http://www.atariarchives.org/basic/ sTeVE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted July 3, 2002 Share Posted July 3, 2002 I honestly wouldn't program games on the Atari itself. It's slow, clunky, and hard to debug. Your better off doing them on the computer and using an emualtor and a cross assembler. Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted July 3, 2002 Share Posted July 3, 2002 Oh I dunno Tempest - MAC65 on a 130XE with a couple of DD is a perfectly useable system for creating little projects. It seemed to work well for most commercial products back in the 80's (at least in Europe!) sTeVE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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