Tyrop

Thank you for the reply. I'm curious why you prefer to do it that way. Isn't it easier just to use mac/65 on the Atari rather than try to coordinate 3 programs on the PC?

I am fairly knowledgable at programming in various Basic's on the PC and Atari, but I want to jump into assembly language on the Atari and try my hand at writing a centipede-like game, probably using shape tables, not players. I have a 130XE and I just got the cartridge verision of Mac/65. I do have it connected to my PC with an SIO2PC cable and APE. I'm using SpartaDos 3.2g with a 16 meg drive simulated by APE. My questions are to those who program in assembly language for the Atari 8 bit computers. I am hoping for some ideas as to the best way to set my computer up to do assembly language programming using Mac/65. If you were going to write a game like centipede, would you write the code all in one big source code file? Or would you create lots of smaller libraries of routines and keep them on disk in a D1:>MAC65 subdirecetory and then .include them in a main program. Would you use macros to do repetitive tasks that take parameters, or would you instead make subroutines and keep JSR'ing to them (in which case, I guess you would grab parameters from other areas of memory?) I know the compiler expands the macro into its consituent bytes every time you put it your code, so I see that macros could eat up memory fast. I've read the Mac/65 manual, as well as books on assembly language for the Atari, but the books don't realy tell you how to set up an environment, or the best way to tackle large programs.

Thanks for checking. I would be interested in the cartridge if you have you would like to sell.

I'll bet you're right. Probably need the cartridge. I don't have the cartridge. I have the FTE version. That's too bad, I bought this so I can use it with MAC/65 so that I could get a little better readability. At least is was not that much money. I would be curious to find out if it works for you.

I'm using disk based.

I just got an XEP80. If I try to binary load MAC/65, it does not work. Does anyone know how to get it to work with MAC/65? The following web page seems to suggest that MAC/65 is the only OSS product that will work with the XEP80: http://www.atarimagazines.com/v7n6/xep80slideshow.html

Thanks for all the replies. So what I am gaterhing is that the Atari 800 had a simpler design than the C64 when it came to diplaying color in 320x200. The C64 (and the NES and everything after the NES) were able to make solid pixels in 320 resolution using more advanced techniques (by doing interlacing?). So is 320 resolution the absolute highest that is resolvable on an NTCS TV? At what resolution are games on the Xbox?

Thanks for the explanation. I guess the answer is in the number of color registers available in that resolution.

Question. Is it true that the 7800 can display many colors in 320 x 200 resolution? If so, why can't the Atari 800 do this? My understanding of the Atari 800's graphics mode 8 (which is 320 x 192) is that it is too high a resolution to have color on a TV because each individual pixel is half a color clock (and therefore produces artifacts). If the 7800 can display 320 pixels across, then why doesn't the 7800 (or NES for that matter) produce artifacts?

Wow! THanks for going through the effort to make those screen shots! I think the 80 columns looks great. THis will come in handy for Mac/65 (which I think I saw a driver for). Thanks for posting. I think I will buy one.

I have it hooked to a Commodore 1082 monitor. I would like 80 columns mainly for Mac/65. I put a lot of comments in my code and I'm finding 40 columns a little limiting.

I'm thinking of buying an XEP80. Old reviews say its has a real sharp display. I'm curious to see what a good 80 column display on an Atari 8 bit looks like. Can anyone point me to a screen shot?

Wow that did it, thanks! I knew it was something simple, and now that you mention it, I remember reading that it had to be on a 1k boundary.

I am dabbling with learning machine language on a 130XE. I'm booting with Spartados 3.2g. I wrote a program to copy the character set from ROM starting at $E000, to RAM starting at $2600 (just an arbitrary location). I copied all 1024 bytes. But when I put $26 into CHBAS (decimal 756) or poke 756,38 (decimal for $26), I get an unexpected result: all upper case disappears and all lower case appears as upper case. I was expecting there to be no change because I was poking 756 with the location of the start of the character set. It should be exaclty the same as if I left 756 pointing to $E000, shouldn't it? I even manually compared the entire 1K block starting at $2600 with the 1k block starting at $E000. My copy program worked, i.e., the blocks were identical. What am I doing wrong?