Author's Preface
To The Revised Edition
In the past two years, many people have written to me about Map-ping--mostly complimentary. I was gratified that no serious errorswere uncovered, only a few typos and minor corrections--a tributeto COMPUTE!'s editing skills. There are too many people to mentioneveryone, but I appreciate the efforts of you, the readers; pleasecontinue to write to me, even if I can't answer every letter.Special thanks to Joe Miller of Koala Technologies (previouslywith Atari, author of the Translator disk, and frequent CompuServeuser), Matt Ratcliff (remote sysop on the Gateway BBS), Randy Tjin ofAtari Canada, Neil Harris and Richard Frick of Atari USA for tech-nical support, Bill Wilkinson for the frequent mentions in COMPUTE!magazine, Gary Yost of Antic, and my friend Yoram Rostas for his in-cessant prodding and poking into the machine. Also to Atari for its"open system" policy which helped make this book possible.The Atari SIG on CompuServe has been a great help and sup-port; it may be the best source of information and public domainsoftware for the Atari presently available. If you haven't usedCompuServe, I highly recommend that you do so; the sysop, RonLuks, and his group run a super online operation. Ron helped megather some of this information by putting up a special message ask-ing for suggestions and answers to questions I had.Most of all, I owe an immeasurable amount of love, gratitude,and affection to the ever-patient Susan McCallan, my constantcompanion these past two-plus. How she stands me, I've never quitefigured out, but I hope she continues to do so for a long time. Thisbook is for her.Publications and Products
Since the first edition, OSS has released an excellent new language,Action!, as well as a considerably superior BASIC--BASIC XL. Action!is probably the best language yet for the Atari; it's a bit like C andPascal, with a dash of Forth. I recommend it. (Russ Wetmore wroteAtari HomePak in Action!. Even the Commodore 64 version was writ-ten in Action! on the Atari.) Many Action! utilities and programs areavailable on CompuServe's Atari SIG as well.Too many magazine articles have been published since the orig-inal edition to cross-reference all of them, but Bill Wilkinson's "Insight:Atari" in COMPUTE! magazine, Paul Swanson's "From Here to Atari"in Micro, plus articles in Analog, Antic, Creative Computing, andROM have all provided their share of information. Atari's own maga-zine, Atari Explorer, also has many useful articles, especially fornovice programmersAs for books. The Programmer's Reference Guide for the Atari400/800 computers by David Heiserman (Howard Sams, 1984) is agood "single volume" reference, Mark Chasin's Assembly LanguageProgramming for the Atari Computers (McGraw-Hill, 1984) is highlyrecommended; it provides many excellent examples strictly for Atariusers, explaining such difficult concepts as I/O, handlers, and VBIs.Carl Evans's Atari BASIC Faster and Better (IJG, 1983) is an excellenttechnique book for BASIC programmers who want to improve theirstyle and learn some machine language.Jerry White, well-known Atari software author, coauthored agood compendium with Gary Phillips called The Atari User'sEncyclopedia (The Book Company, 1984), Linda Schreiber's Ad-vanced Programming Techniques for Your Atari (Tab, 1983) has sev-eral good routines for graphics and strings in BASIC.COMPUTE! Books has published several good books, includingCOMPUTE!'s Third Book of Atari, COMPUTE!'s First and Second Bookof Atari Graphics, and COMPUTE!'s First Book of Atari Games. A realhacker's delight is The Atari BASIC Sourcebook, by Bill Wilkinson,Kathleen O'Brien, and Paul Laughton, which includes the entiresource code for Atari BASIC--a must for serious BASIC users (alongwith Wilkinson's Inside Atari DOS). One of COMPUTE!'s best booksrecently is Richard Mansfield's Machine Language for Beginners,a painless way to introduce yourself to machine languageprogramming.Finally, for the real hardware buff, Atari once published their400-800 Home Computer Field Service Manual (part # FD 100001); ithas a wealth of data, schematics, parts lists, diagnostic tests, andassembly information, It's hard to get, but worth it. An 800XL FieldService Manual is also available. Sams has released an excellenthardware technical service manual for the 800 and 800XL, it's expen-sive. but contains material any hardware hacker needs to know.It looks like the Atari will have a long life; it's already into itsthird generation (all compatible). I'm glad to see that the recentchange in ownership did not spell the end of my favorite home com-puter, but rather Jack Tramiel is continuing to support and develop itas well as maintain compatibility between models. I'm looking for-ward to seeing his new 68000-based ST machines.March 1985Ian Chadwick55 Kent RdToronto, Ont.M4L 2X5CanadaCompuServe 70375,1010September 2000: the above contact information is obsolete. Iancan be contacted via e-mail atichadwick@georgian.net or at:115 First St., Suite 502Collingwood, Ont.Canada L9Y 4W3
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