Great Hierophant Posted February 17, 2005 Share Posted February 17, 2005 I know of only one model of Atari, the 130XE. But one or two of the other released Atari systems could be upgraded to more than 64K of RAM. But how many programs needed it or could take advantage of it. My guess is none of the former and very few of the latter as the 130XE was introduced at the end of the 8-bit's life-cycle. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonBane Posted February 17, 2005 Share Posted February 17, 2005 How nice for you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dinosaur Posted February 17, 2005 Share Posted February 17, 2005 The biggest use of the expanded memory is for a RAMdisk. Very useful in many ways. For example,downloading to a RAM disk is a gazillion times faster than to a disk drive (or even a hard drive,for that matter!) Back in the day,when you paid by the hour to connect ( GENIE for example), this was very important! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hunter44102 Posted February 17, 2005 Share Posted February 17, 2005 OSS Basic XE supports whole 128K, allowing you to write large programs that have the advantages of the language, which I think is one of the best ever made for the Atari 8 bit, since it has tons of powerful commands, and you can put machine language stuff in it also. I used it to run FOREM XE BBS program, and ended up hitting the 128K limit at one time -hunter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonBane Posted February 17, 2005 Share Posted February 17, 2005 WTF, were you downloading to a casette tape? I never had download speeds exceed my disk write speed. Now, what RAMdisks are really great for are storing assembly source files. An assembly that could take minutes grinding away on a floppy disk would only take seconds from a RAMdisk. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mindfield Posted February 17, 2005 Share Posted February 17, 2005 I used to have a 256k-upgraded 130XE. I used a nice big RAMdisk for message bases on my BBS. I used to run and beta test Oasis BBS, and with its message base compacting (which could take several minutes on a floppy while the user sat there twiddling their thumbs) using the RAMdisk sped that up tenfold. There were also a number of programs that took advantage of the extra memory. Paperclip XE, Basic XE, Alternate Reality: The Dungeon, numerous graphic demos (shiny bubbles, anyone?), and likely more that I'm forgetting... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
miker Posted February 17, 2005 Share Posted February 17, 2005 HEHE - try to run any latest demo on 64Kb GOOD LUCK! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted February 17, 2005 Share Posted February 17, 2005 Yeah, I've mainly used it for looking at demos. -Bry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dracon Posted February 17, 2005 Share Posted February 17, 2005 An extra RAM could be useful as: - Ramdisk in different DOS'es - a data bufor for various things in some games e.g. in Polish game "Artefakt Przodkow" you'll get nice title tune (that is placed in one of extra memory banks) ; also German MEGABLAST turns on powerful digital tunes at title screen when extra RAM is detected! - great when using expanded version of Freezer (TIGHT FREEZER) - you can save whole RAM in that special memory, use some extra memory in DOS (as RAMDISK) and also hold some "memory states" written in other extra-banks (useful when playing in some hard games, just to save your level position) - and all can be done at the same time!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goochman Posted February 18, 2005 Share Posted February 18, 2005 Alternate Reality the Dungeon used more than 64K for faster data access - was a must for this game Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mindfield Posted February 18, 2005 Share Posted February 18, 2005 Alternate Reality the Dungeon used more than 64K for faster data access - was a must for this game It worked without it, but used it if it detected it -- which seriously cut down on disk swapping. On a 2-disk double sided game it was a major pain without the extra memory. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dracon Posted February 18, 2005 Share Posted February 18, 2005 Some good graphics editors like RAMbrandt and Trzemielused extra RAM as well. Thus, it allows e.g. more work-screens at once (edit, copy between them, etc.). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curt Vendel Posted February 18, 2005 Share Posted February 18, 2005 Well Atariwriter Plus used the extra memory, I think Atariwriter 80 might have too.... Basic XE used the extra memory too which was a HUGE help, but yeah, mostly ramdisks, you need to write a decent memory manager to window in/out the extra memory and make use of it, few programs did. Curt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drac030 Posted February 18, 2005 Share Posted February 18, 2005 SpartaDOS X uses extra RAM to keep DOS code and data buffers (this is why the MEMLO is so low under this DOS). MAE assembler uses extra RAM to store source and symbol tables: you get 64k of free memory for source code/symbol table. It can optionally store the screen memory in extra RAM too - 8k bitmap for 64-column display. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dracon Posted February 18, 2005 Share Posted February 18, 2005 As for assemblers, TKS Macro-Assembler (by Torsten Karwoth, author of "MEGABLAST") make use of extra ram as well. It enables really big buffer for writing source code along with some other features (based partly on MyDos 4.50 which is put together with TKS)... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted February 19, 2005 Share Posted February 19, 2005 before i had to switch to taquart's coding standard qasm/xasm i was a poweruser of torsten karworth's markoass XE where you simply assembled long source files just possible with the xtra banks... you could easily switch between the 16k banks each holding max. 16k of source code by CTRL+1,2,3,4... very easy... and the assembler was placed as well in one bank as far as i can remember (i was using a 1088kb xe model...on a 130xe its less banks) so you had nearly full memory...or at least more than in 64k + dos + bibo or mac65 assembler... and the assembler handled all banks as one large source file... it speeded up my coding very well.... carpe diem and all other demos/intros after that were coded with macroass XE (4k,8k,16ktro, abbuc intros,really unreal intro) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted February 19, 2005 Share Posted February 19, 2005 WTF, were you downloading to a casette tape? I never had download speeds exceed my disk write speed. But the 8-bit couldn't use both a modem and the disk drive at the same time (usually both were SIO, and the modem tied up the bus continually). I remember downloading a few blocks, then pausing as the sectors were written to disk, then downloading a few blocks, etc... It worked well enough, but it was faster to use a RAM disk. -Bry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dinosaur Posted February 19, 2005 Share Posted February 19, 2005 Bryan: Thank you for explaining the facts. I wasn't going to bother! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shannon Posted March 13, 2005 Share Posted March 13, 2005 WTF' date=' were you downloading to a casette tape? I never had download speeds exceed my disk write speed.[/quote'] But the 8-bit couldn't use both a modem and the disk drive at the same time (usually both were SIO' date=' and the modem tied up the bus continually). I remember downloading a few blocks, then pausing as the sectors were written to disk, then downloading a few blocks, etc... It worked well enough, but it [i']was[/i] faster to use a RAM disk. -Bry Busted! Yeah I remember the great 'ol bbs software and how the extra RAM was useful. Basic XE was a dream language for me. Too bad it came out as late as it did. I knew a few people that ran BBS's and I'd help co-sysop for them, patch up the code, etc. Even ran one myself for a little while on a 8086 PC under Opus BBS until my hard drive got zapped. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atari Smeghead Posted March 13, 2005 Share Posted March 13, 2005 I might've been one of the few people who had the 288k 800 upgrade. The ONLY thing it was useable for was a RAMdisk, but like others said, it was magnicificent for running the BBS. I ran Nite Lite software at the time, and I put the message base on the RAMdisk. It was super fast (since NL's worst feature was the sequential message base setup) but I had to constantly remember to save the message base to the drive every so often. Nothing worse than having a power outage or the enevitable lockup/crash... "Sorry guys, but we lost all of yesterday's messages... anyone remember what they said?" Smeg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wadsworth Overcash Posted March 14, 2005 Share Posted March 14, 2005 I had one of the Axlon ramdisks. For awhile, it was the only way to do hardcore development on the 800 without your hair turning grey between compiles. You could use it for other things besides a ramdisk, sort of, with some fancy footwork. As I remember, it overlaid memory and you could use it as a poor man's paging system. Back in the day, I'd do anything to speed up development. I remember investing in one of Dave Small's parallel drive systems. Awesome speed increase (well, in its time) but it wasn't cheap. It used a card that plugged into one of the 800's memory slots and cantilevered out over the computer. With all of the power cords and ribbon cables, it looked vaguely Frankensteinian. --r Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dinosaur Posted March 14, 2005 Share Posted March 14, 2005 Russ,was that the Corvus system? Believe it or not,there was one on eBay (for the Apple II) recently. It went for next to nothing. Had it been for the Atari,I probably would have bid on it, for nostalgia's sake. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wadsworth Overcash Posted March 14, 2005 Share Posted March 14, 2005 Russ,was that the Corvus system? Corvus was a hard disk, no? Dave Small's gadget was a 5 1/4" floppy system. It had a parallel interface as opposed to serial, so it was much faster (20x?). I didn't buy my first hard disk until I bought my Apple Lisa for Mac development. As I remember, the 5MB hard disk cost around $1000. What a steal. --r Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dinosaur Posted March 14, 2005 Share Posted March 14, 2005 I still have my FIRST harddrive ( Seagate ST-225 MFM for the IBM XT) that I paid $400.00 for,and it still works! Any offers? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
themrfreeze Posted March 17, 2005 Share Posted March 17, 2005 Well Atariwriter Plus used the extra memory, I think Atariwriter 80 might have too Heh, that reminds me of the time (back in high school) when I was writing a long paper for physics class with Atariwriter Plus, and ran out of RAM on my 130XE. So yeah, there was a good reason for 128K. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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