Stock Atari 600XL and SIO2SD

[Meall]

Hi all,

 

I've been looking for this information all day yesterday, but could not find a specific answer to my question...

 

I have a stock 600XL (16Kb of memory) and I wanted to test my SIO2SD on it yesterday, but could never get to the screen to select the game or software I wanted to launch. I was thinkng I did sometime wrong and the SIO2SD was not properly configured. But I tested it on my 800XL, and it worked right away.

 

So the questions I have are the following:

 

1) I guess it is because it does not have enough memory and BASIC is going over/before the SIO2SD software can load. Does this make sense?

 

2) is there a way to tell it not to load BASIC and load the SIO2SD software first?

 

3) I read that 16Kb of memory may not be enough for most games, ­is the only solution to use a 600XL is to upgrade it to 64 Kb?

 

Thank you all

[_The Doctor__]

The 600XL is only suited to using the very smallest and lowest memory use DOS, even then you will find software choices limited. You have to choose titles that use the available memory. There are a number of 8k and 12k or less offerings. No one has done a sort of software base on size. It would be simple enough to do though. In windows you could sort by size and copy only those titles that are small enough to fit. This is not a guarantee all those titles will fit, some still occupy hard coded places in memory or de compress into a larger space..

 

I would set up picos dos, tiny dos, or similar from HIAS that has a large drive space but uses very little memory, TinyDOS, LiteDos sort of thing. You can then load in what you want. Original 400 titles should work but some need the software itself to be modified to use the XL's os. There is no room for a translator.

 

This sounds like a nice project for someone to tackle. A ready to go image that has a lowmem small dos and title that will run on the 600XL with the 400 titles pre patched.

 

Remember also that some cartridge titles worked for the 400 because they used the memory space of the rom, not ram in the computer.

 

While I whole heatedly agree you should do they very simple and dirt cheap memory upgrade. I still think software packs and bundles for each memory class and os are long past due for the Atari community

[mr-atari]

Yes, Most likely the SIO2SD loader uses ram the 600 does not have. LiteDOS is a nice solution, gives you 11k free memory in basic. Internal upgrade is easy, 2 64*4bit SRAM chips, 2wires, 1 pin out of the socket. Giving you a "800xl"

[mr-atari]

Typo, make that dram... Sorry.

[Mathy]

Hello Meall

 

Here is a description of the internal 600XL to 64kB upgrade.

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy