How to write basic for 800xl on my WinPC?

[Not Steve]

Hello,

 

I have been writing on my 800xl recently, and I am interested in making the switch to my PC and an emulator. I am at a good switching point, I can get a PC2SIO later and pull the older data.

 

I was going to run the atari800 emulator as a development environment, but I don't seem to be able to figure out how to write my code in Windows then access it through the emulator. I really don't want to type directly into the 800XL screen, I'm trying to get the nice features that NOTEPAD.EXE has to offer lol.

 

So what is the paradigm? I have a Windows 7 desktop. I'd like to be able to copy/paste and maybe even bulk renumber lines and whatnot. Can someone point me in the right direction please, is there a converter or editor somewhere?

 

I did see that the H: drive on atari800 was supposed to let you save files to the PC somehow, but my help files are not linked or something.

 

Thanks!

[Not Steve]

http://www.virtualdub.org/altirra.html

 

It looks good, and I can paste directly to screen. That's all I wanted. Still interested in what you guys would be doing ... I'll be versioning text files and pasting them into Altirra, with any luck.

[Rybags]

Atascii to normal Ascii isn't a straight up conversion which is why they provide things like the H4: - H8: devices that do translation, e.g. Return is 155 on Atari but 13 almost everywhere else.

 

The other thing is the special graphics characters which are unique to the Atari.

So depending on the program you might have to do some entry on the emulator.

 

But yeah, using a PC-based editor initially is a whole lot faster and easier.

[gozar]

http://www.virtualdub.org/altirra.html

 

It looks good, and I can paste directly to screen. That's all I wanted. Still interested in what you guys would be doing ... I'll be versioning text files and pasting them into Altirra, with any luck.

 

Check out Fastbasic:

https://github.com/dmsc/fastbasic

 

You lose the line numbers of regular basic, but you gain the ability to compile your program. There is a cross-compiler that you can use on your Windows box.

[Not Steve]

what I would really like to do is to finish where I left off in 1985, when I was trying to get PM/sprite to work. I've gotten a few examples to work on actual hardware lately but I'm at the point where I need to develop subroutines and re-number stuff, and my pinky finds CLEAR so often I've considered pulling the key lol.

 

This whole Player/Missile in basic ... I am finding that it kind of sucks. The horizontal movement is ok, but the Y is quite cumbersome and jerky. I am seeing that the machine code option looks a lot more realistic, except I don't know that at all. I've kind of fantasized about finishing learning the sprite thing on the 800xl. It would also be nice to learn assembly but perhaps not right this moment, I just want to play around.

 

I've been using BASIC because that's what I had back then ... I'd be open to using BASIC II (electric bugaloo) or anything else that would have been available to me at the time, if that would make PM/sprite/graphics stuff more straightforward. I'm a practical IT guy - rack and stack, components, networking, script writing for OS management. The last thing I did for fun was in 2010 I was pretty good at writing bots for Runescape, we used PascalScript and it was pretty fun. I got a bunch of achievement capes then half my guys got banned in one day lol. Anyway, appreciate the input.

[Irgendwer]

Can someone point me in the right direction please, is there a converter or editor somewhere?

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/244686-turban-turbobasic-nifty/

 

(Plain Atari-basic is also possible with "Turban"...)

 

A small and simple example for PMG in Atari-Basic: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/uufbtdvy6ipqds3/AAC0lNEZ524rMcKCoj6pyT0wa/Atari/41%20-%202nd%20Stroop

[+Philsan]

Regarding PMG, to design them I use Atari Player Editor.

 

I fought a lot to be able to quickly move PMG too.

This is a very simple and fast ML routine:

http://www.page6.org/archive/issue_13/page_32.htm

 

Instead of Atari Basic, I would use Turbo-Basic XL (on Atari or PC with Turban), compatible with Atari Basic, faster and with some additional commands.

 

Thanks to MOVE command, with TBXL you can move sprites without ML.

 

But nowadays I use FastBasic. I program on the PC and then my program is run on Altirra emulator.

[Not Steve]

I have been having difficulty getting Turbo Basic XL to open on Altirra. I downloaded a torrent of 800xl files, and I do see three different versions of Turbo Basic XL 1.5 (Turbo-Basic XL 1.5 (1985)(Frank Ostrowski).atr also [a] and [a2]), and I can set one as a boot image and get to the DOS on that disk image, and even open the compiler ... but tb.com always hits the splash screen then back to a READY prompt. Somewhere else I have a binary for Turbo Basic 2.0 (Turbo-Basic XL v2.0 (1990)(Laser).com), but that crashes my emulator.

 

Is there maybe an adjustment to the emulator aside from the defaults that I need? I looked at Turban, and getting that set up reminds me of the 9 months I spent in 2002 compiling a linux kernel over and over until I got it right. Well, until I understood the process enough to alter what I was doing lol.

[Not Steve]

Oh good lord, the READY prompt IS turbo basic, isn't it?

[Not Steve]

Ok hey so thank you. I got it. I had it, I just didn't realize it.

 

I'm using Turbo Basic XL v1.5 on Altirra. For now I am simply dumping text files into the screen and fixing as needed. I will work towards adding the programs you have mentioned here, ones that modify the ascii code, and turban with the ability to be more of a Windows guy with automation.

 

I am sure that I will have some questions regarding these sprites, but I will fire that under its own topic when it comes up. For now, I am set, thanks.

[Not Steve]

Regarding PMG, to design them I use Atari Player Editor.

 

 

nice, good stuff.

[777ismyname]

Altirra Extended BASIC is free and supports Player/Missiles out of the box. It also supports subsets of TurboBASIC XL and BASIC XL (maybe BASIC XE as well, I can’t remember).

 

Advan BASIC is also free and has robust (for an Atari BASIC) P/M facilities. It enables P/M movements during vertical blanks, etc. from within BASIC. It is a compiled BASIC and is very fast when using integers.

 

FastBASIC is another fantastic and free Atari BASIC. It is also a compiled BASIC and its integer performance is very good.

 

I wrote a rudimentary benchmark comparing the extended compiled BASICs. I will post some info in a little while.

 

 

 

 

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[Not Steve]

Altirra Extended BASIC is free ...

 

Thanks for your input! Yes, I found myself sitting in front of Turbo Basic XL thinking "now all I have to do is move memory..." and not really knowing how to do THAT. THEN I looked at PM Graphics in general, and I found a chart saying that Altirra was one of the best to use for that. So it is on my list to check out, and I will check out the other stuff you mentioned also.

 

I am not really going to DO anything with PM Graphics. It's just that I will be 50 in a little over a year, and this is one of those things that I let get the better of me and gave up on when I was a kid. I am REALLY understanding everything better, and I am looking forward to posting a few programs that demonstrate that I am the master of this thing that everyone is helping spoon feed me lol. I'll take it!

 

cheers

[Irgendwer]

You may like to inspect

 

http://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=7200

 

as here the "move"-command in Turbo Basic is used extensively for PMGs...

 

[dmsc]

Hi!

 

Thanks for your input! Yes, I found myself sitting in front of Turbo Basic XL thinking "now all I have to do is move memory..." and not really knowing how to do THAT. THEN I looked at PM Graphics in general, and I found a chart saying that Altirra was one of the best to use for that. So it is on my list to check out, and I will check out the other stuff you mentioned also.

 

I am not really going to DO anything with PM Graphics. It's just that I will be 50 in a little over a year, and this is one of those things that I let get the better of me and gave up on when I was a kid. I am REALLY understanding everything better, and I am looking forward to posting a few programs that demonstrate that I am the master of this thing that everyone is helping spoon feed me lol. I'll take it!

 

cheers

See the example at https://github.com/dmsc/fastbasic/blob/master/samples/int/pmtest.bas, FastBasic is similar to TurboBasic XL without line numbers.

[777ismyname]

dmsc...and Fast BASIC is fast! I was playing around porting some TBXL stuff to your Fast BASIC. One in particular had some nested loops that were a perfect fit for the integer FBI. Your FBI absolutely smokes compiled TBXL in the loops.

 

 

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[777ismyname]

Not Steve, we are in exactly the same boat and the same age I fiddle with these old machines (mostly in Altirra) all the time.

 

Advan does have some great inbuilt access to PMG stuff. Especially for out of the box, easy to use, auto move location during the VBI stuff. Similar stuff for sounds. It is very fast for an Atari BASIC. Get used to using the % key lots when using Advan. I’d advise to setup a storage floppy in Drive 2...it is quite easy to test your work and forget to come back to the editor correctly and lose your work. I still haven’t messed with the secondary optimizing compiler for it, but that is planned very soon.

 

If you haven’t tried dsmc’s Fast BASIC, you really should. Try out the FBI.COM version (integer only) version. It absolutely flies for a BASIC on the Atari 8 bits. I played around with simulating a multi-screened Graphics more 1 dungeon game, where I just loaded a string with a dozen 20 horizontal x 12 vertical redefined characters, grabbed the ADR of them and MOVEd them as fast as possible in a loop. I bought BASIC XL in the 80s and it was a good bit faster than Atari BASIC, but I could not have fathomed then how fast Fast BASIC is now.

 

If you still have some old Atari BASIC stuff you wrote way back when, be sure to grab ABC Compiler for it. There are some limitations (computed GOTOs and stuff, I think), but it will give that old stuff a kick in the butt.

 

 

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