sl195089@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (02/07/90)
My name is Karl and I recently got a atari 65xe. The owners manual says that it has a 64 K memory but that only certain software uses it. Is there a way that I can access the extra 16 K that is not normally available? Karl Poorbaugh sl195089@silver.ucs.indiana.edu
normanl@uokmax.uucp (Norman Lin) (02/07/90)
In article <9800001@silver> sl195089@silver.ucs.indiana.edu writes: > >My name is Karl and I recently got a atari 65xe. The owners manual >says that it has a 64 K memory but that only certain software uses >it. Is there a way that I can access the extra 16 K that is not >normally available? > >Karl Poorbaugh >sl195089@silver.ucs.indiana.edu The 16K is actually 'underneath' the operating system. Thus, accessing it is a tricky business, since you must mask all interrupts while you do so. Furthermore, there is a gap from $D000 to $D800 (it may be larger, but I don't think so) right in the middle of the 16K, so you actually have only 14K free. If you just want to use the extra 16K for programming or word processing directly, it cannot be done because it is bank-switched. I have seen a few ramdisk programs that take advantage of the 14K so that you can, for instance, store DUP.SYS and MEM.SAV in the ramdrive to have DOS load up instantly from BASIC/Assembler/Editor. I have not seen many other uses of the memory. -- Norman Lin / normanl@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu