atari 800XL help

[Rick Weis]

Hello,

 

i just hooked up my atari 800XL and a floppy drive (1050). question! do i need to type in something to get the computer to read the floppy? i have gotten a few (not many) floppies to work, but some won't do anything, it will just show ready on the tv. could this be a drive problem? or a floppy problem (old floppy) all but 1 floppy is very old and the new one just keeps making the screen turn on and off. also my drive is very old (USED)

(it's been a looooong time since i used a floppy drive) Please Help this dummy!

 

Thanks,

 

Rick

[classics]

Hold down OPTION while turning on the computer to disable BASIC. Most disk games require BASIC to be disabled in order to run.

 

Steve

[Nukey Shay]

Deep within the Atari computer's operating system (the machine-language program that runs in the background that reads the keyboard, etc), there is a very crude I/O subroutine. This subroutine is run when you first turn on the computer. What it does is check to see what devices are present (connected and turned on). If a disk drive is detected, the computer resets the drive to the lowest sector of the disk and attempts to read the data there and execute it. This is called "booting" the disk.

 

Note: if no disk is inserted or no "boot" program is present on the lowest sector, the screen will print the message "boot error" infinitely.

 

What the boot program does on most user disks is load in a more complex I/O program to deal with disks. This is commonly referred to as "DOS" (Disk Operating System). This program attempts to integrate itself to the regular operating system...which will allow you to use specific commands to access the drive and files. In actuality, a DOS "master" disk is divided into 2 programs besides the boot loader (DOS.SYS and DUP.SYS)...plus 2 optional files (AUTORUN.SYS and MEM.SAV).

 

DOS.SYS is the name of the larger I/O program that allows you, the human, to use commands to manually access the drive. Because these commands are still relatively complex, a second program was created...

 

DUP.SYS (or Disk Utility Package)...this second half is a "menu" program that allows you to use the commands in as few as just a couple of keypresses. When called, it will overwrite any user program in memory and display the menu on-screen. It can be called by booting the master disk when no cartridge is present...or by typing the instruction DOS in Basic.

 

Because the program in memory will be wiped out by DUP.SYS when it's used, the user can activate an option called MEM.SAV. This file will contain the Basic program currently in memory before DUP.SYS overwrites it. Then when the DUP.SYS menu program is exited, MEM.SAV is loaded back in memory...leaving the Basic program intact.

 

AUTORUN.SYS is the reserved name for any program that the user wants to automatically load and execute when that disk is booted. It must be a machine-language program only.

 

Therefore, any user disk that you wish to boot must at the very least contain a copy of the DOS.SYS file (in addition to the boot loader).

 

 

Commercial programs generally do not use any of that...but the entire game program IS the boot file. So usually all that is required is to turn on the disk drive, insert the disk, and then turn on the computer. Because commercial programs are usually written in machine-language, you'll need to hold down the -option- key to disable the built-in Basic that is in your XL computer when you turn it on. If this is not done, there is a very good chance that the program will not load/execute at all.

[Rick Weis]

Thanks guys! i will try that today!

 

Rick

[deathtrappomegranate]

 

[Rick Weis]

<rushes to buy 8-bit carts before it's too late>

 

 

hehe.. don't worry! i not buying any new ones. :wink:

 

Rick

[Brad2600]

I am hoping to find a disk drive for my 800XL as well. I only use carts right now.

[Bruce Tomlin]

Google for "sio2pc cable". Why not turn your PC into a big Atari disk drive?