Looking for Recommendations A8 Coding Books

[Guest]

Hello!

I got back into commodore 64 coding about 18 months ago. This time after many attempts I finally got the hang of 6502 assembler.

(coding for years, first basic games, then C, then C++ and others)

I've been working on various things for the 64 to get to grips with it all. Nearing completion of my Football Management game.

I recently got a Atari 800XL. Looking for book/pdf recommendations SPECIFICALLY for coding Atari 8 Bit and the 800XL

if possible. I am assuming the whole range is pretty much the same save for the memory?

 

Need help with the memory map really and any tips or quirks specific to the machine/s?

I'd love to finish one of my c64 games then recode it for the A8.

Thanks in advance

[TGB1718]

Here's a good place to start

https://archive.org/details/ataribooks

 

Good ones to get you going 

 

De-Re-Atari

Mapping the Atari (Essential and probably the best memory guide)

Atari 800 Technical Reference Notes

 

I've never found a really good book on Assembler just for the Atari 8 Bit range, most are pretty general

and  personally really poor.

 

You already know Assembler, just need to mould your code for what these little beasts can do.

 

and of course, this forum, its full of very knowledgable and helpful people

 

[Preppie]

Agreed, Mapping the Atari is esential.

 

De Re Atari was good when it came out but there's been better individual articles written since, still a nice reference in general though

 

There was a couple of great articles written recently:

 

Display List Interupts (DLI) https://playermissile.com/dli_tutorial/

Scrolling https://playermissile.com/scrolling_tutorial/

 

You'll also need to know about:

 

Player/Missile graphics

Verticle Blank Interupts

General graphics modes and Character sets.

 

The above are all covered in DeRe but I'm sure someone will post a better article for them.

[Rybags]

If you're not familar with 6502 then Zac's Programming the 6502.

Even if you are, that and a reference card when in doubt.

 

As mentioned De Re Atari.  I'd add to that Compute!s Mapping the Atari, and the Atari Hardware Manual, Atari OS Manual (prev 2 sometimes called Atari Technical Notes).   Altirra Hardware Manual from the modern day.

[Guest]

Thanks for the replies guy. Yeah, I did wonder why there seemed to be no specific books like there are for every other computer/range. Odd. Nevermind I've lots of 6502 coding books for the C64. I've found the Mapping The... series tend to be quite expensive. The best books I've got are the ones by Mark Greenshields who remarkably was 15 when he wrote one of them and 16 when he wrote another. He actually wrote one for the Amstrad too but there was no market for it.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Rybags said:

I'd add to that Compute!s Mapping the Atari, and the Atari Hardware Manual, Atari OS Manual (prev 2 sometimes called Atari Technical Notes).   Altirra Hardware Manual from the modern day.

I'll try to get hold of one or more of these. Thanks Rybags! 

[Guest]

5 hours ago, TGB1718 said:

Here's a good place to start

https://archive.org/details/ataribooks

 

Good ones to get you going 

 

De-Re-Atari

Mapping the Atari (Essential and probably the best memory guide)

Atari 800 Technical Reference Notes

 

I've never found a really good book on Assembler just for the Atari 8 Bit range, most are pretty general

and  personally really poor.

 

You already know Assembler, just need to mould your code for what these little beasts can do.

 

and of course, this forum, its full of very knowledgeable and helpful people

 

Thanks man, much appreciate your recommendations.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Preppie said:

Agreed, Mapping the Atari is essential.

 

De Re Atari was good when it came out but there's been better individual articles written since, still a nice reference in general though

 

There was a couple of great articles written recently:

 

Display List Interupts (DLI) https://playermissile.com/dli_tutorial/

Scrolling https://playermissile.com/scrolling_tutorial/

 

You'll also need to know about:

 

Player/Missile graphics

Verticle Blank Interupts

General graphics modes and Character sets.

 

The above are all covered in DeRe but I'm sure someone will post a better article for them.

Thanks Preppie! I'll get on this and have a good look.

[Rybags]

Should have mentioned - all the ones I mentioned not to mention plenty of others can be had free as PDFs.

Can be a pain vs a real book but often it's sufficient to just print out things like tables and parts relevant to what you're doing.

[TGB1718]

14 hours ago, Rybags said:

Should have mentioned - all the ones I mentioned not to mention plenty of others can be had free as PDFs.

Can be a pain vs a real book but often it's sufficient to just print out things like tables and parts relevant to what you're doing.

Thats exactly what I do, have lots of sheets with good info on them

[FifthPlayer]

AtariAge member MrFish has curated a very nice collection of Atari-related documentation and tools at his website:

 

http://seriouscomputerist.altervista.org/

 

Not only has he done an excellent job choosing and collecting these resources in one place, the content is all presented nicely (clean PDF files for instance).

[Alfred]

The Mark Chasin book I found quite good back then.

[+MrFish]

1 hour ago, Alfred said:

The Mark Chasin book I found quite good back then.

One thing to note about his book, is that there are some errors in a few of the example programs. I opened up a thread about it some time back and posted corrections for one of the programs. In addition to that program, I found a few others -- which I didn't get around to correcting yet. I think I just got as far as typing in the first four programs (converting them to my own personal assembly source formatting).

 

I'm not sure if the example programs for the book posted on my site contain any corrections. If I'm not mistaken, I've just posted the originals there (I was probably planning to add the corrected ones later, once I'd gone through the whole book).

 

[Guest]

Thanks Mr Fish & Others for recommendations and tips. I will dig out key info from PDFs and where affordable get a few books of ebay. I've got lots of c64 coding books to be going on with, but system specific, info is gold-dust to me, so thanks all! ? 

[+MrFish]

On 2/20/2020 at 1:59 PM, ∞ Vince ∞ said:

Yeah, I did wonder why there seemed to be no specific books like there are for every other computer/range. Odd.

 

Aside from the Chasin book, all of these books are specific to the Atari.

 

The Atari Assembler
Atari Assembly Language Programmer's Guide
Atari Roots
How to Program Your Atari in 6502 Machine Language
Atari 130XE Machine Language for the Absolute Beginner (I don't think this requires a 130XE specifically, unless it pushes some 128K specific assembler).

 

There are probably more, but these are some that I have in my collection.

 

[Guest]

5 hours ago, MrFish said:

 

Aside from the Chasin book, all of these books are specific to the Atari.

 

The Atari Assembler
Atari Assembly Language Programmer's Guide
Atari Roots
How to Program Your Atari in 6502 Machine Language
Atari 130XE Machine Language for the Absolute Beginner (I don't think this requires a 130XE specifically, unless it pushes some 128K specific assembler).

 

There are probably more, but these are some that I have in my collection.

 

Ok, A bit less popular on ebay, then. Thank you for these. I will create a search on ebay and tell it to notify me of any listings. I might try to get the A130XE one because I have a 800XL. Thanks again MrFish!

[+MrFish]

36 minutes ago, ∞ Vince ∞ said:

Ok, A bit less popular on ebay, then. Thank you for these. I will create a search on ebay and tell it to notify me of any listings. I might try to get the A130XE one because I have a 800XL. Thanks again MrFish!

I don't own hard copies of any of these books. You can find PDF's for all of them here (probably on Archive.org too). 

 

[Guest]

Nice one! Yeah they all seem to be either unavailable or madly priced. 

[Guest]

Ok... so the Q is what cross development environment are you guys using?

For the 64, I am using DASM with notepad and a batch file to throw it through Vice.

[Ute]

I prefer the WUDSN IDE by Peter Dell. It integrates a text editor, assembler, and will auto load your program in to an emulator when done compiling.

 

https://www.wudsn.com/

 

 

Edited February 28, 2020 by Ute
Link

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Ute said:

I prefer the WUDSN IDE by Peter Dell. It integrates a text editor, assembler, and will auto load your program in to an emulator when done compiling.

 

https://www.wudsn.com/

 

 

Thanks Ute. I've bookmarked that. I'll have a good look over the weekend. Also like how you can use it for both C64 and Atari 8 Bit.

[Ute]

Yes it's really feature rich, you can even view character sets.

[Alfred]

On 2/23/2020 at 6:20 PM, MrFish said:

One thing to note about his book, is that there are some errors in a few of the example programs. I opened up a thread about it some time back and posted corrections for one of the programs. In addition to that program, I found a few others -- which I didn't get around to correcting yet. I think I just got as far as typing in the first four programs (converting them to my own personal assembly source formatting).

 

I'm not sure if the example programs for the book posted on my site contain any corrections. If I'm not mistaken, I've just posted the originals there (I was probably planning to add the corrected ones later, once I'd gone through the whole book).

 

Yes, that's true. There's a mistake in one of the CIO programs and it took me ages as a new Atari coder then to realise the error was in his code and not that I had typed it in wrong.