One Response to “WHAT IS WHAT ? (ATARI THEME)”

1. admin says:

   April 19 at 2:32 am

   Atari ST’s came out in 1984 or 1985, so if it was before or older than that,
   it was an Atari 400, 800, XL or XE.
   

   The 400′s had 16K, the 800′s had usually 48K.  Neither had BASIC on ROM but
   required cartridges.  Both had 4 joystick ports.  The 800 had two cartridge
   slots.  The 400 had a membrane keyboard.

   The Atari 1200XL had 64K, the Atari 600XL had 16K and the Atari 800XL had
   64K.  The Atari 600XL and 800XL both had BASIC on ROM and had cartridge ports
   on top.  The 1200XL required a BASIC cartridge like the 400/800′s.  The
   1200XL’s cartridge port was on the left side.  The 600XL and 800XL had
   silver buttons on the right of the keyboard.  The 1200XL had a row of
   silver buttons (including Function buttons) above the keyboard.

   The Atari 65XE had 64K, the Atari 130XE had 128K.  They both had BASIC in
   them.  The 65XE looks like an original Commodore 64, in my opinion.  Both
   XE’s cartridge ports were in back.

   The Atari XEGS (Game System) had 64K, BASIC, and Missile Command on ROM.
   It had pastel console buttons (Start, Select, Option) on the unit, and a
   detachable keyboard <stop singing the "Detachable Penis" song!>.

   There ya go…

   The biggest differences between any series of Atari 8-bits were… the colors.
    The 400/800 and their peripherals all had a tannish color and were built
   like tanks.  The XL series had the silver strips, off-black keyboards and
   light tan (off white) cases.  The XE series were all sorta greyish (I’m
   not positive about the XEGS).

   Also, the styles differed.  The 400/800′s had trapizoidish shapings (I
   think that’s right.  ie, the shapes were sorta /  \ ).
   The XL’s had the notched venting (the XL’s, the 1050, the 1030, etc.)

   The XE’s had diagonal lines all over them (/////) and had parallelagram
   button style (console buttons on the computers, control buttons on the
   XMM printers, etc.).  I also think the ST’s are like this?????? (At least
   the originals.)

   ANYWAYS… and as for Operating Systems, it went 400/800 OS, 1200XL OS, XL OS,
   XEGS OS (added Missile Command to the ROMs, not really an OS thing I guess).

   Finally, another useful point to note is the 600XL, 800XL and 130XE have
   extra I/O ports on them.  On the XL’s they’re PBI ports (Parallel Bus
   Interface), on the 130XE it’s the ECI (Expanded Cartridge Interface???).
   These are EXTRA useful for hooking up a Black Box hard drive/modem/printer
   interface and doing high speed data transfers.

   Well.. I hope that helps you!  And as for having 256 colors.. well, sorta yes,
   sorta no, sorta that’s not all!  You’ve got a usual palette of up to 9
   colors:  5 playfield colors and 4 player/missile colors.  Each of these can
   have a color value of 0 to 255, BUT, every other color is the same as the
   previous one!  (0 is the same as 1, 2 is the same as 3, etc.)  So that’s
   really only a palette of 128 colors.  BUT, there’s that 16-shade mode on the
   XL’s, XE’s and later Atari 800′s (this mode is supported by the "GTIA"
   graphics chip, which the 400′s and earlier 800′s did not have; they had
   "CTIA" chips).  THEN, you can do a display list trick to make the screen
   be split up into different hues and viola, 256 real colors.

   THEN, you’ve got APAC (Any Point, Any Color), which doesn’t use that trick
   (which gives you only one color per line <yuk!>), but uses a screen flipping
   trick which flips between 16 hues on the screen and 16 shades of grey on
   the screen, thus presenting 256 colors to your eye.  This is useful for
   viewing GIFs, for example.

   FINALLY, there’s the supreme master of all software-driven graphics modes:
   ColorView.  These modes (8, 9, and 15) flip between three screens, each
   having a color of Red, Green, and Blue, and 2, 4 or 16 shades (respectively).
   That gives you 8, 64, or >> 4096 << colors on the screen at the same time!

   Anyways…  just thought I’d add that in to show off to ex-Atari 8-bitters
   or folks who never used the Atari 8-bits.  

   Later!
   -bill
   kendr…@vax.sonoma.edu  |||  kendr…@zippy.sonoma.edu
   William (Bill) Kendrick / | \  ** New Breed Software **

   Oh, and as for emulation..  look for some of my earlier posts about
   PC Xformer.