jhs@MITRE-BEDFORD.ARPA.UUCP (03/11/87)
In answer to Michael Farkas's question about making an 800XL emulate a disk drive, I would suggest the Newell 256KXL board and OMNIVIEW256. The 256KXL is a small logic circuit which figures out what signal to put on the single extra pin that is needed to control a 256K Dynamic RAM chip instead of the standard 64K ones in an unmodified XL. You remove the 8 64K-bit chips, replace them with 8 256K-bit chips (which can be purchased with the 256KXL board), and solder up about six or seven wires to strategic places on the main board, and presto-chango, you now have a 256K machine. Then you replace the standard Atari O/S chip with OMNIVIEW, put the case back together and fire it up. Press "1", then hold down START and press RESET, and suddenly you have an invisible, blindingly fast extra disk drive called D1:, which works just like a normal one except about maybe 50 times as fast. If you prefer, you can set it up as D2: or whatever, but it is especially handy if you put DUP.SYS and your favorite application programs on the RAMdisk, because then switching programs is almost instantaneous. The RAMdisk can be activated also under software control, and CDY gives instructions for how to do that and supplies a short 1-sector machine language program for this purpose. Of course, putting in OMNIVIEW also gives you 80-column display capability, makes the Translator disk unnecessary, and gets you CDY's OmniWriter 80-column word processor thrown in free, as well as giving you compatibility with the very nice OmniCom VT100 emulator, which CDY also sells (for $10 I believe). Also, MYDOS is thrown in with the 256KXL board. And by the way, you can run the 256KXL as a "double sided" drive, i.e. with twice the capacity of a normal drive, about 1500 sectors as I recall. Another trick you can do is to use the RAMdisk handler provided with MYDOS to install the standard 499-sector (formatted) 130XE RAMdisk and AT THE SAME TIME you can run a standard 708-sector (formatted) full-sized RAMdisk. I've done it, and it is sometimes very convenient to have two independent RAMdisks!!! When you consider the cost of a second disk drive ($125 plus shipping if you really shop around), and the speed of operation and the eventual wearout of the physical drive, versus the high speed, zero wear, 80 columns, and free 80-column word processor you get going with the RAMdisk, for less money at that, it isn't hard to decide in favor of the RAMdisk!!! You'll have to experience it yourself to understand, but all of a sudden, switching from DOS to an application program (or BASIC) and back goes so fast you think you are on a VAX or something. All I can say is "Go for it!" CDY can be reached at (214) 235-2146 or by mail at 421 Hanbee, Richardson TX 75080. Newell Industries can be reached at 602 E. Hwy 78, Wylie TX 75098. CDY is, by the way, a dealer for the Newell board, so you can order both products (as well as OmniCom) from CDY. I don't know if Newell also sells the CDY products. -John Sangster/jhs@mitre-bedford.arpa ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I am not associated with either company other than as a customer of CDY. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------