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Atari Basic Disk Keyword


sashswash

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First of all, you need to make sure that you boot a disk that contains a disk operating system (DOS). Like Dos 2.5. This should be done BEFORE you do anything. Booting the disk is simply turning the drive on, inserting the disk, closing the lever, and then turning on the computer. If a Dos is present, it will automatically load before you get the READY prompt.

 

Secondly, is the disk you want to save to already formatted? This is also one of the options in the Dos menu...and must be done to any disk that you want to save files to before you can use them. Generally, it only needs to be done to a disk once (since one disk can hold up to 64 files using Dos 2.5). Choosing this option will ERASE the entire disk, so make sure you put a different one in the drive (don't format your only DOS disk!!). When the format is complete, you will receive a message if you want to write the Dos files onto it. If you choose Yes, the files DOS.SYS (the file that makes the disk bootable) and DUP.SYS (this menu program) will be written onto the disk. If you choose No, they won't (meaning you will need to boot a different disk before you can access your files on this fresh one).

 

Now you can type-in or load in a program. If you are loading a previously-saved program, you would type:

LOAD"D:filename.ext"

 

Substitute filename.ext for the name of the program you want to load. This file must be in tokenized Basic (created with SAVE), and the filename must begin with a letter. All other characters in the name and extension must be letters and/or numbers...no spaces allowed. filename can be a maximum of 8 characters, and the extension can be a maximum of 3...with a period in the middle. For example, you could use MYFILE.BAS, FILE.1, or even just A if you want. If you are unsure what files exist on the disk, you can type DOS and hit enter to bring up the menu, and choose option A (disk directory), and just hit enter on the next prompt :) Beware, the DOS command will wipe out any Basic program in memory unless MEM.SAV is active (I won't go into using that option in this post).

 

Anyway, to save a program on the disk...you would type:

SAVE"D:filename.ext"

 

Be sure to put the correct disk in the drive if you want to save the file to a different floppy...and you need to follow the naming instructions listed above.

 

There is a trick to saving files to a disk if you forgot to boot Dos first, but I won't go into that in this post either (search this board for NoDos).

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