Most published articles and programs will apply equally to the
400/800 and the XL models but there are certain areas that are unique to the XL This column will feature such material and we would like your feedback on anything you may have discovered that does or does not work on an XL
There is quite a lot of software that will not work on the XL but help is at hand with The Translator from Atari. This boots in the old 400/800 Operating System and will allow virtually any program to run. PAGE 6 supplied The Atari Center in Birmingham with a copy and they have been able to boot every item which previously would not run with the exception of A.E, and Bandits. The Translator is available in the
U.S. from Atari on disk or cassette at cost but at the time of writing Atari UK had not worked out the U.K. release. If you want one, tell Atari.
The Sting from issue 5 will not work on the XL - at least not as intended - as it uses the keyboard speaker in the 400/800.
The Revision B basic in the XL has a different token file structure which means that many of the Basic routines are not at the same addresses as the 400/800. The system reset routine in lines 6 and 100 of Scramble in issue 6 will not therefore work but it is such a neat little routine that we will let you know as soon as the
equivalent on the XL is worked out.
Useful XL POKEs
729 Key Repeat Delay. Afters the time before a key repeats. POKE with 0 - 255 to represent multiples of a jiffy (1/50th second) before key repeats.
730 Key Repeat Rate. Similar to 729 except that it controls the rate of repeat after the initial delay.
731 Key Click. POKE with 255 to disable sound through the TV. POKE with 0 to enable
732 Help Key. 17 is stored here if the Help key is pressed, 81 when Help and Shift are pressed and 145 with CTRL and Help. Clear with 0.
621 Keyboard. POKE with 255 to disable keyboard or 0 to enable.
622 Text Scroll. POKE with 255 followed by GR.0 to fine scroll text. POKE with 0 to return to normal.
That's all for this issue. If you discover anything new which works on the XL but not on the 400/800, we want to know.
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