80 cols (Bit3) in Letter Perfect Success

[Steve Mynott]

Well I finally managed to get readable 80 cols in LJK Letter Perfect (at least under emulation).

 

With LP V6 (lower case menu) I had to hold down ESC while it was booting to get to a config screen where you can see Bit3 selection there (this part I could only get to work under Altirra with slow standard disk options rather than turbo disk). Then with the disk image in the config state it worked fine under Atari800 emulator with the Bit3 (I don't think Altirra supports Bit3?)

 

The screen looked nice and clear and the 80 columns is quite fast and useable (much better than the Omnimon 80 software version with 3bit wide chars). My impression, from emulation at least, is that Bit3 is a lot better than XEP80.

 

Is there a list of productivity software which supports Bit3?

 

It's just a pity I can't get this working on real hardware (unless VBXE can emulate Bit3?)

 

 

[Curt Vendel]

Letter Perfect, DataPerfect, SynCalc and SynTrend work with the Bit-3. DOS and any Gr.0 program works with it. I had heard a version of Visicalc supports it, but I don't have a diskette that is a Bit-3 version.

[Steve Mynott]

Hmm I'm not sure SynCalc has bit3 support. I know there are different versions but would assume its in the early ones (if present)

and https://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue57/review_syn_series.html suggests not.

 

"The only feature one might wish for is 80-column capability with the Bit-3 and Austin-Franklin 80-column boards. According to Synapse, there will be new versions of the programs that will work with Atari's 80-column board in the 1090XL expansion box, when or if the box is released."

 

It doesn't seem to work with VisiCalc 1.74a either. Although I could be missing config steps with both packages (Letter Perfect wasn't that obvious).

 

It's a pity since a 80 column spreadsheet would be cool (I think the source for the Antic one and SpeedCalc is available).

[+slx]

DOS and any Gr.0 program works with it.

 

Any GRAPHICS 0 is probably too strong a statement. As to my understanding, the Bit3 driver redirects calls to the OS screen editor, so the program would need to use standard screen editor (E:) calls. Programs which use GRAPHICS 0 through their own routines (like Action!) won't work. I don't know how the various word processors with status lines implement them, but I'd assume that many don't use OS routines but write something directly into screen memory to improve speed.

[_The Doctor__]

at least by late 1987 there was a hack or version that did work in 80 columns with one of the options listed, so Curt is correct, something will turn up in fullness of time.

[+Stephen]

at least by late 1987 there was a hack or version that did work in 80 columns with one of the options listed, so Curt is correct, something will turn up in fullness of time.

I now own boards with serial 312437(said to be non-working) and 309426(said to work, but video cable has been cut off). I hope to diagnose / repair both of these cards in the not so distant future.

[Steve Mynott]

The Bit3 manual says some Atari, OSS and LJK Products work.

 

I could get OS/A+ 1.2 to work in 80 columns (but not later versions). I used the attached utility (typed in and assembled from the manual) to switch to 80 column mode.

 

No spreadsheets worked.

 

I couldn't even get Edit 6502 (8K and 16K carts) to work which should work. A LISP from 1981 did work!

 

 

ON3.XEX

Edited March 24, 2019 by Steve Mynott

[ClausB]

BITD I patched Letter Perfect and Data Perfect to work with ACE80. IIRC I started with versions that supported the Bit3.

 

Is there documentation on the Bit3 API? Maybe my patches could be adapted.

 

BTW, I had no trouble running OS/A+ ver. 2 on ACE80.

Edited March 26, 2019 by ClausB