Atari 800 function keys

[Dr Do]

Yet more Atari questions! After several rounds of adjusting and swapping out ICs, I've now managed to get my Atari 800 up and running. There is, however, a slight quirk in its operation that I'm hoping to iron out. The function keys don't appear to perform the actions that they should do - at first, "Select" was doing a warm restart, "Start" (or was it "Option") was doing the action of Select and "Reset" was doing nothing at all. My guess was that it was something to do with the J114 connector, so I turned this the other way up - only to find that the functions changed, but still didn't correspond to the buttons (now, "Reset" acts as "Start"!). Does anyone know what I should be doing with this connector, or whether I should be looking at something else?

[russg]

Yet more Atari questions! After several rounds of adjusting and swapping out ICs, I've now managed to get my Atari 800 up and running. There is, however, a slight quirk in its operation that I'm hoping to iron out. The function keys don't appear to perform the actions that they should do - at first, "Select" was doing a warm restart, "Start" (or was it "Option") was doing the action of Select and "Reset" was doing nothing at all. My guess was that it was something to do with the J114 connector, so I turned this the other way up - only to find that the functions changed, but still didn't correspond to the buttons (now, "Reset" acts as "Start"!). Does anyone know what I should be doing with this connector, or whether I should be looking at something else?

How are you measuring the consol keys? Are you using a BASIC cart, with PEEK(53279)?

[Dr Do]

How are you measuring the consol keys? Are you using a BASIC cart, with PEEK(53279)?

 

I just tried using them in Star Raiders and noted how the game responded, and then tried to do a cassette boot with what I thought were the correct function keys. Should I do the PEEK as described? (Although I don't have the BASIC cart).

Edited August 25, 2012 by Dr Do

[russg]

How are you measuring the consol keys? Are you using a BASIC cart, with PEEK(53279)?

 

I just tried using them in Star Raiders and noted how the game responded, and then tried to do a cassette boot with what I thought were the correct function keys. Should I do the PEEK as described? (Although I don't have the BASIC cart).

You,re probably correct. Do you have a SIO2PC or APE or Aspeqt, something to load DOS from?

How are you measuring the consol keys? Are you using a BASIC cart, with PEEK(53279)?

 

I just tried using them in Star Raiders and noted how the game responded, and then tried to do a cassette boot with what I thought were the correct function keys. Should I do the PEEK as described? (Although I don't have the BASIC cart).

 

I guess you don't have a SIO2PC or APE device. If you can get a way to load a DOS disk, you can load BASIC from DOS. Then you would type:

10 X=PEEK(53279)

20 ? X;", ";

30 GOTO 10

 

RUN <ENTER>

 

It should show:

no consol key pressed - 7

OPTION - 3

SELECT - 5

START - 6

and RESET should exit the program back to READY prompt.

 

Here's DOS 2.5 disk with BASICB.OBJ .ATR file.

DOS25.zip

Edited August 25, 2012 by russg

[fibrewire]

I know this sounds dumb and obvious, but are the keys in the right spot?

 

[Dr Do]

Here's DOS 2.5 disk with BASICB.OBJ .ATR file.

 

Thanks for that Russg. The output for my keys make for interesting reading:

Option returned 5

Select returned 3

Reset returned 6

Start reset the machine!

 

I know this sounds dumb and obvious, but are the keys in the right spot?

 

You say that sounds dumb, but the same thought did cross my mind for a second. They are in their correct positions, though.

[Roydea6]

Ribbon cable plugged in upside down..

[russg]

Ribbon cable plugged in upside down..

Yes, that's it. The little four pronged cable is upside down.

Edited August 26, 2012 by russg

[Dr Do]

Ribbon cable plugged in upside down..

Yes, that's it. The little four pronged cable is upside down.

 

That's fixed it - marvellous. Thanks folks.

[Roydea6]

Some more PEEK(53279) values.

 

Values Keys pressed

 

0 OPTION/SELECT/START

1 OPTION/SELECT

2 OPTION/START

3 OPTION

4 SELECT/START

5 SELECT

6 START

7 none

Edited August 27, 2012 by rdea6

[sanny]

Or, maybe, for us ASM and C programmers, a bit mask:

 

Value of 53279 ($D01F), key pressed results in a "0" bit, not pressed in a "1" bit:

OPTION   XXXXXX011
SELECT   XXXXXX101
START    XXXXXX110

'X' means: ignore that bit.