8K Basic and Assembler in one cart?

[+Larry]

I know that this is a nice feature of the MyIDE carts, but I have an 800XL that cannot run internal Basic or correctly use a MyIDE. I'd like to put Atari Basic and the Assembler Editor in one cart so that I just need to "flip the switch" and then re-boot from my hard drive. Possible to do this with a 16K Eprom cart by trace cutting and adding a switch? An AtariMax flash cart would be useful, but I've never seen a workbook or flasher for these two roms. (I am not interested in using Mac/65).

 

Probably the closest thing that I have right now is the PILL menu, but that causes some other issues. Any advice on the eprom cart? I've got to believe this has been done before.

 

Thanks,

Larry

[ricortes]

Less then elegant, I would just use a 16k EPROM plugged into an 8k cart and switch the A13 line to enable the upper or lower half.

[Rybags]

30 years ago, I created a binary load AsmEd which allowed switching to/from Basic (your source code doesn't stay in memory of course).

 

In theory the same thing could be done with a banked cart though the switching routine would probably need to be custom made.

 

Probably the ideal might be a multicart with several languages, then dedicate one bank to a menu system that e.g. gets called if you do Shift+Reset.

 

The usefullness is variable - it's handy for Basic + Assembler to be able to create asm stuff in Ram then switch to Basic and just use it, without need to reload DOS. For other languages, the usefullness would be mainly that you don't need to boot Dos again.

[flashjazzcat]

I guess Ultimate 1MB is handy in this situation: you can have BASIC, ASM/ED and two other 8K ROMs and switch between them easily.

[a8isa1]

I know that this is a nice feature of the MyIDE carts, but I have an 800XL that cannot run internal Basic or correctly use a MyIDE. I'd like to put Atari Basic and the Assembler Editor in one cart so that I just need to "flip the switch" and then re-boot from my hard drive. Possible to do this with a 16K Eprom cart by trace cutting and adding a switch? An AtariMax flash cart would be useful, but I've never seen a workbook or flasher for these two roms. (I am not interested in using Mac/65).

 

Probably the closest thing that I have right now is the PILL menu, but that causes some other issues. Any advice on the eprom cart? I've got to believe this has been done before.

 

Thanks,

Larry

Hi, Larry!

 

Maxflash Studio can build the workbook very easily. All you do is insert 8K rom images, XEXes and/or ATRs.then FILE>EXPORT> Select the appropriate cartridge size for your ATR. Don't forget to save the workbook, in case you want to add or change something later.

 

-SteveS

Edited July 11, 2014 by a8isa1

[+Larry]

Thanks for the ideas, guys! @Rick -- switches are elegant in my book!

 

Hi Steve! Wow, that's right. I keep forgetting that you can use 8K images -- just not 16K (unaltered). I will definitely try that first.

Larry

[+Larry]

@ Steve-

 

That was sooo easy! Works perfectly, and a "piece of cake!"

 

Thanks, again,

Larry

[Rybags]

16K images can be done too, just more work needed. Have to change the top of RAM pointers and reopen the screen @ $8000 then copy the bottom 8K of the cart to RAM.

 

One problem with all this is that it won't necessarily work easily by creating an Atarimax workbook image - since each image can potentially be in any bank. I guess one solution might be to have a menu image that gets run and it could work out what language is in each bank via a checksum of the top part of the image or similar.