wrd@tekigm2.UUCP (Bill Dippert) (04/01/86)
Well I did it, I went out and bought two of the RAMBO XL 256k upgrade kits. (My last posting called them the ??? brand as I forgot who they were.) RAMBO XL is put out by ICD, Inc. who also puts out SpartaDOS, US Doubler, etc. I chose them over the original BYTE kluge, the CDY upgrade or the Newman upgrade only due to the ability to use them to upgrade my old faithful 1200XL. (Soon to be renamed the 1200XE, likewise I will rename the 800XL to 800XE.) I still do not like SpartaDOS and in fact since it does not come with the kit, I will for now use Atari DOS 2.5. RAMDOS XL will allow Atariwriter +, BASIC XE and other XE type programs to see 130k RAM. Until DOS 2.5m [2.6] comes out, I will have 130k unuseable RAM. Since RAMBO XL is fairly new, I will post any problems that I encounter when installing it. The instructions that come with it are quite clear both for the 1200XL and for the 800XL. They seem to have thought of everything including which ANTIC chip you have. Is there anyone out there who has already installed RAMBO XL? I do not know if the 130XE version of SynCalc will work -- the instructions only say that SynFile+ was checked. PaperClip is also shown as working -- including the ability to see all 260k RAM. Later.... --Bill-- ========================================================================== Tektronix has no interest in Atari and vice versa. Standard disclaimers apply. I merely am a model railroader who is hooked on Atari computers. ==========================================================================
DYOUNG@USC-ISID.ARPA (C. David Young) (04/04/86)
I would like to make a couple of points of general interest. First, CDY does not manufacture its own 256K upgrade. It buys them from Newell and resells them like any distributor. Second, I have heard from people about at least 2 problems with the RAMBO 256K upgrade. First, it does not support ANTIC at all. If you put your screen memory down in the bank area and flip banks your screen goes away. The Newell version has logic to keep ANTIC in main memory even when the CPU is switching banks and it has a switch option to allow ANTIC to follow banked memory. As an example as to why this is important, I am in the process of converting AtariWriter Plus to work 80 columns. The only room left to put the 80 column screen was in one of the banks. This conversion has no chance of working with the Rambo board. The second problem with the Rambo board is that it does not protect main memory when banking is occurring. With this board it is possible, for example, to access zero page or the stack via one of the (illegal) banks in the $4000-$7FFF range. With the Newell board this dangerous situation is not possible. On the positive side, it is nice that the Rambo board will install in a 1200XL. Newell will only do this in house. David Young -------