Basic Revisions

[Tempest]

I was just reading an interesting article on Atari Basic Revisions (ok I'm a nerd so sue me!):

http://www.atarimagazines.com/v4n5/revisio...cconverter.html

 

 

Was Basic Rev. B ever released on cart, or was it only built into the XL? I have a Rev. C cart which I guess was only available from Atari directly, was it sold in stores as well?

 

At least now I know what caused the keyboard lock-up bug in Rev. A! That happened to me a few times as a kid and I always thought it was a defective cart (actually I guess it was).

 

 

Tempest

[Albert]

I don't think Rev. B was ever released outside the XL series in cartridge form. I had to buy a Rev. C cartridge direct from Atari because both A and B were too buggy to use 24 hours a day to run a BBS on (with Carina II the core modem drivers and other libraries were written in assembly, but the bulk of it was written in Atari BASIC). Unfortunately I no longer have that cartridge. If anyone else has one they'd like to trade or sell, you know where to find me.

 

..Al

[Tempest]

I'll keep an eye out, but I've never seen another one. I got this one out of John Hardie's bargin bin at the Philly Classic.

 

At least I can stop searching for Rev. B on cart now. What a pain in the ass that was.

 

Tempest

[Albert]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Tempest:

I'll keep an eye out, but I've never seen another one. I got this one out of John Hardie's bargin bin at the Philly Classic.

 

At least I can stop searching for Rev. B on cart now. What a pain in the ass that was.

---

 

I'll have to ask John if he has any more, as well as what other interesting Atari 8-bit carts he might have. And, uhmmm, you may not want to call off your search for an Atari BASIC Rev. B cartridge any time soon. According to the Atari 8-bit FAQ, Atari did make Rev. B available as a "special request order item for 400/800 and 1200XL computers".

 

If this is true, who knows what style of cartridge they used. It could be in an original Atari BASIC cartridge, or it could be the later silver-style cartridge style (as is the Rev. C cart).

 

..Al

[+Mitch]

Best Electronics list both the "A" and "C" revisions as being available in their catalog but no Rev "B". The "A" cart is $10 and the "C" cart is $15. They may have the "B" cart but it's not listed. You could email them to find out though.

 

Mitch

http://atari7800.atari.org

[Rhindle The Red]

I have a related question.

 

I have four copies of BASIC, three that say BASIC Computing Language and one that says BASIC Computer Program. I also have Microsoft BASIC II, but I know that's completely different.

 

So, anyway, since I can't hook any of my 8-Bits up at the moment (they're packed away) does anyone know if there's a difference in the carts? What was the label text for the various revisions?

[Callipygous]

The story was that REV A was never meant to be the final version. It was sent to Atari in early 1979 by - hmm, forgot the name of the company Bill Wilkinson worked for. Atari wanted something for computer shows etc. The geniuses at Atari ordered a run of ROMS from the beta. They thought so little of the users that the unfinished BASIC was good enough.

 

Carts- The REV B cart was mailed to users who requested it. This according to an old Atarian who sold me one. It has a paper label that either has nothing on it or is faded away completely. It has another sticker on it (says REV B), probably put on by the user. Inside is the Rev B rom with the correct part number(CO60302A), so it seems genuine. REV C is the silver label. Don't believe it ever came in box. May have an extra one. Will check tonight.

 

Refresher for determining REV

"? PEEK(43234)"

A= 162

B= 96

C= 234

 

BASICally yours,

[Nukey Shay]

Albert--

If you have an XL machine, you can use a small program to create a rev. C Basic that can be loaded as an AUTORUN.SYS file to the underlying Ram.

 

Repost from http://www.atariarchives.org/mapping/appendix19.php

 

Revision B BASIC to Revision C Converter

10 REM 800XL & 64K-600XL REV.B(UGS)

20 REM BASIC TO REV.C CONVERTER.

30 REM By Matthew J. W. Ratcliff 4/5/85

40 REM THIS LOADER WILL CREATE AN

50 REM AUTORUN.SYS FILE FOR YOU.

60 REM ADVISABLE TO MOVE DOWN RAMTOP

70 REM WHEN IN THE RAM/BASIC, SINCE

80 REM SOME ATARI GRAPHICS COMMANDS

90 REM WILL CLEAR RAM ABOVE RAMTOP.

100 REM (i.e. POKE 106,PEEK(106)-4:GR.0-6)

110 REM (i.e. POKE 106,PEEK(106)-16:GR.7-11

)

120 RESTORE

130 GRAPHICS 0: DIM A$(10)

140 ? "GET DOS DISK READY FOR REV.B TO C"

150 ? "AUTORUN FILE AND PRESS RETURN KEY"

160 TRAP 220: INPUT A$

170 OPEN #1,8,0,"D:AUTORUN.SYS"

180 READ A:IF A<0 THEN 200

190 PUT #1,A:GOTO 180

200 CLOSE #1:? "** ALL DONE **"

210 ? "SAVE THIS LOADER AS A BACKUP":? "JUS

T IN CASE!":END

220 ? "ERROR # "; PEEK(195);" AT LINE "; PEEK

(186)+256*PEEK(187) :END

1000 DATA 255,255,0,6,130,6,169,0,133,2

1010 DATA 169,6,133,3,173,250,3,240,1,96

1020 DATA 169,0,133,216,169,160,133,217,160

,0

1030 DATA 173,1,211,41,253,141,1,211,177,21

6

1040 DATA 72,173,1,211,9,2,141,1,211,104

1050 DATA 145,216,230,216,208,228,230,217,1

65,217

1060 DATA 201,192,208,220,162,0,169,12,133,

218

1070 DATA 160,0,189,95,6,133,216,232,189,95

1080 DATA 6,133,217,232,189,95,6,145,216,23

2

1090 DATA 198,218,208,232,165,9,9,2,133,9

1100 DATA 96,223,168,234,224,168,240,225,16

8,17

1110 DATA 226,168,234,41,187,0,243,191,0,24

4

1120 DATA 191,0,245,191,0,246,191,0,247,191

1130 DATA 0,248,191,0,249,191,0,226,2,227

1140 DATA 2,0,6,-1

 

REVBTOC.BAS

 

Rev. C is really just Rev. A with two (yes, TWO) bytes NOPed out. The story goes that when the techs fixed the bug that crashed Basic when a user deleted program lines, they went ahead and "corrected" the code that handled adding lines. Again, it seems that very little beta testing was done with Rev. B. Rather than starting from scratch when developing Rev. C, they simply followed what Matthew (or was it Jim Butterfield?) did in a '79 issue of Compute!...copy the Basic cart and skip the two bytes at $A8DF and $A8E2.

 

Be sure to check out appendix 12 on Mapping The Atari...there is a cool program called Ramrom halfway down that moves the OS to ram. Some advantages to doing this is you would be able to edit it and patch over some areas...like speeding up tape access, changing keyboard layouts, POKEing directly to the character set (no need to set aside memory), changing the screen color to be black by default, and getting rid of that blasted keyclick.

 

[ 12-16-2001: Message edited by: Nukey Shay ]