Info-Atari8@SCORE.STANFORD.EDU (Info-Atari8 Digest) (11/10/86)
Info-Atari8 Digest Monday, November 10, 1986 Volume 86 : Issue 3
This weeks Editor: Bill Westfield
Today's Topics:
net.micro.atari8 is being renamed comp.sys.atari.8bit
PRODUCT REVIEW: CDY's OMNIVIEW256 and OMNIMONXL
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Date: 7 Nov 86 20:04:38 GMT
From: cbosgd!mark@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Mark Horton)
Subject: net.micro.atari8 is being renamed comp.sys.atari.8bit
To: info-atari8@score.stanford.edu
This newsgroup is being renamed from net.micro.atari8 to
comp.sys.atari.8bit. This renaming will gradually take place over the
next few weeks. More and more messages posted to this newsgroup will
be aliased into the new newsgroup as they pass through the net, and
people will begin to post to the new group. After a few weeks, the
old name will be removed.
This note is to inform you of the renaming so you can begin to
read the new group as well as the old group.
Mark Horton
Director, the UUCP Project
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To: info-atari-request@su-score.ARPA
Subject: PRODUCT REVIEW: CDY's OMNIVIEW256 and OMNIMONXL
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 86 11:26:37 EST
From: jhs@mitre-bedford.ARPA
PRODUCT REVIEW: CDY's OMNIVIEW256 and OMNIMONXL
and the NEWELL 256KXL 256K BYTE MEMORY UPGRADE
for the ATARI XL/XE COMPUTERS
I recently (Feb. 1986) installed CDY's OMNIVIEW256 and OMNIMONXL along with
the Newell 256KXL memory expansion upgrade in my Atari 800XL, and would like
to share my impressions of these products with others who might benefit from
them.
OMNIVIEW is a replacement Operating System (OS) ROM which, among other things,
gives the 800XL the capability of displaying text on the screen in 80-column
format. I wanted to do word processing on my Atari, so I thought this would
be a very valuable enhancement. Also, CDY provides a compatible word
processor on diskette with the upgrade, so the price of getting 80 columns is
more or less comparable to buying a WP software package.
OMNIMONXL is yet another OS chip which provides a resident monitor/debugger
facility. I want to become proficient at 800XL machine language programming,
so I decided to get one of these also. To permit switching between the two
and also (I am a very paranoid sort) to allow me to put back the "official"
Atari OS ROM without opening up the cabinet every time, I also ordered the
RAMROD board which provides 3 sockets and a switch to select the desired OS.
Finally, I also elected to go with the 256KXL expansion to allow me to
(a) run 130XE software and (b) run a "ramdisk", or simulated disk drive
implemented in memory. I have only one disk drive, and decided that perhaps
it and a ramdisk would be all I need for my contemplated operations.
As for my impressions of all of this:
INSTALLATION. I found the installation of the boards to be fairly
straightforward, although I would not recommend the job to somebody who has
never done any electronic circuit assembly work previously, unless they have
expert supervision at hand while they are doing it. I had to unsolder two
chips because Atari didn't provide sockets for them. This MUST be done
carefully and one must have the right equipment at hand and know how to use
it. *** Note (11/07/86): Later units of the 800XL are probably more likely
to be shipped without sockets, so don't count on having to unsolder only two
chips!!!***
I also had to file a little off the edge of the RAMROD board and the cartridge
socket shroud to make the RAMROD board fit in place. Eventually this resulted
in a very nice mechanical fit, with the ledge I had filed onto the tapered
shroud providing a nice support for that end of the RAMROD board. I
understand from David Young of CDY that this filing would not have been
necessary if I had elected to install a socket under the RAMROD board instead
of installing the board directly into the location vacated by the Atari O/S
chip. The installation also calls for modifications (bending) of the top
shield cover. As I plan to use the computer in a ham radio station...where
even very tiny leakage signals can interfere with reception and spoil all the
fun...I was concerned about minimizing the loss of shielding effectiveness. I
was able to make somewhat less drastic changes to the shield than those called
for in the assembly instructions. In particular the shield tab next to the
cartridge slot does not have to be bent out of the way; all I had to do was to
bend about 3/16 inch of it out of the way at the end nearest the RAMROD board.
Also, I did a similar trick to widen an existing slit in the shield near where
the switch cable has to exit, which I thought looked more professional than
coming out of the corner of the shield after opening it up there. When all
was said and done, the shield did not look as though it needed body and fender
work, and I sincerely doubt that any measureable increase in hash leakage
occurred; certainly I have not detected any new spurious signals on my ham
receiver with the computer running.
Replacing the memory chips was no big deal, as they were (whew!) installed in
sockets. *** REPEAT of WARNING: Don't count on being so lucky, newer units
are tending to have fewer sockets. This is, however just a minor annoyance if
you are careful in your unsoldering technique. Mounting the memory mapping
board required a little ingenuity but not much. A hint or two about where to
mount it would have been nice, but a very satisfactory method soon became
obvious. I talked with Wes Newell, whose company makes the hardware, and
learned that he views this kind of product as something that a neophyte should
not attempt to install him/herself, so he doesn't want to tell anybody how to
do it lest they blame him for botching up their computer. I can see his
point. However, I have no such liability, so I can freely tell the world how
I chose to mount the board: I simply plugged in the ribbon cable supplied
with it and folded the ribbon cable over so the board lies on top of the chips
on the motherboard in that area, with its solder side facing up. It happens
that it nestles contentedly in that position with nothing touching but the
plastic of the ICs and the ribbon connectors. Also, it sits at just about the
same angle as the sloping shield cover, with about 1/8 or 3/16 inch to spare.
I simply attached two strips of adhesive-backed foam rubber to the shield
cover over this area so it would clamp down on the foil side of the memory
mapping board when the shield is installed. (I first tested the foam with my
ohmmeter on the highest megohm range to make sure it was not at all
conductive.) The resulting installation looks very satisfactory to me; the
only thing you have to worry about is watching out for where the memory board
flops if you turn the motherboard upside down while you have the shield cover
off and power applied!
I found it convenient to substitute a length of ribbon cable for the hookup
wire they supplied to make a run of 5 conductors across the mother board to
the PIA chip. I actually ran seven conductors of ribbon from the memory
mapping board, and peeled off two of the to make the local connections in the
middle of the motherboard, then ran the remaining five over to the PIA. This
resulted in (ahem) an exceptionally neat installation, I thought. Also, I was
able to arrange the cable so that it is easy to flop the memory mapping board
over for inspection or servicing.
RESULTS! The installation worked correctly the first time I fired it up,
although I had a few scares because of differences in the way things operate.
The instructions are vague about which switch position gives what OS chip, so
you have to figure it out. Also, the OMNIVIEW OS uses the reverse convention
that BASIC is only loaded if you DO press the option key. This convention
makes good sense if you plan to use OMNIVIEW, as I do, mostly for word
processing and maybe for Assembly language. However, it can be confusing if
you forget it the first time you fire up the computer after having committed
mayhem to its innards with your soldering iron and are expecting the worst!!!
TEXT QUALITY IN 80 COLUMN MODE (OMNIVIEWXL). Mind you, I fired this thing up
on my Sylvania TV set, mostly because I couldn't wait to buy a monitor or add
the monitor input jack I plan to put on the TV set -- I wanted to see if it
worked! I was absolutely DELIGHTED to see that the 80-column text is entirely
readable even on a silly TV set with probably 2 or 3 MHz of bandwidth through
the IF amplifiers and whatnot! It's true, the edges are a little blurred if
you tune for maximum blurriness (centered on the channel), but if you tune for
best sharpness, the display is highly useable at least on the particular TV
set I own. I do look forward to improved display quality when I do buy a
monitor, but I am in no dire hurry to get one, now that I have seen the
results on my TV set. *** NOTE: Don't try it on a COLOR TV set, though, as
this will give very poor results, as will a COMPOSITE monitor. If you want
to use color, make sure your color monitor has a SEPARATE CHROMA INPUT. You
will have to make a minor modification inside the 800XL to bring out the
chroma signal; I believe both the old 800 and the XE series already have it
brought out. With a separate chroma input you can get resolution close to
that of a true analog RGB monitor.
If you know how the 80-column font is derived (in software), you will find it
hard to believe that it can look this good. This is especially true when
using dark characters against a light background. In this mode, you will
think David Young cheated somehow and stole some extra pixels from somewhere
to make it look better. Apparently, the "smoothing algorithms" in the human
eye and brain must be filling in details that simply CANNOT be there in the
actual pixels, because the overall effect is incredibly good, given the
limited dot matrix available to work with. The normal alphanumerics and
punctuation characters all are highly legible. The numbers are if anything
maybe more legible in 80 column format than in 40!!! A few special
punctuation marks and some of the reverse video characters take getting used
to, but they are rarely used. Nobody would claim that OMNIVIEW will make your
XL/XE into a Sun workstation or a MacIntosh, but it certainly does give you a
useable 80-column screen for text editing!
*** NOTE: Since this review was originally written, I have added an amber
monitor (the Magnavox Computer Monitor 80, which sells for around $90 at
discount stores). Results with OMNIVIEW are significantly better than on the
B&W TV set, and entirely acceptable in my mind for long-term use as your
primary word processor setup. With a good B&W TV set, however, you will be
able to get by just fine, too.
The word processor provided (Omniwriter-80) started out in life as an enhanced
version of SpeedScript, but by now has many new features. Cursor operations
are a little more reasonable than with vanilla SpeedScript, and the machinery
for moving blocks of text around is greatly improved. A brief but complete
and very readable manual for OmniWriter-80 is provided on the disk so you can
print off a new copy anytime you need it. ***NOTE: If you buy the
OMNIVIEW256 version and the 256KXL memory expansion, you can configure your
word processor to use the extra memory to make a much larger buffer than the
standard one, which gives about 22K bytes. For example, I have been running
an 80K buffer ever since I got the latest version of OmniWriter. This is good
for something like 30 full pages of text!!! Not only that, but the 80K buffer
fits into memory space NOT USED FOR THE OMNIVIEW256 RAMDISK, so it is fully
compatible with OMNIVIEW's full-sized, 708-sector RAMdisk. I routinely use
both the 80K buffer and the RAMdisk when doing word processing. Considering
that OmniWriter is provided FREE with OMNIVIEW, and considering what
comparable word processors are selling for, the actual cost of going to 80
columns is pretty small if you subtract the cost of buying somebody's (ugh!)
40-column word processor!
The latest development in the OMNIVIEW world, CDY's new OmniCom VT100 emulator
program, is the icing on the cake! It provides a pretty complete emulation,
even including a good approximation to things like line graphics, which even
the popular VT10SQ emulator doesn't implement. Also, OmniCom provides
single-keystroke keypad emulation, using the SELECT key to select keypad mode
instead of the rather clumsy ESCAPE prefix that VT10SQ used. I have used both
emulators, and while VT10SQ is nice to have available for unmodified machines,
OmniCom has set a new high in both accuracy of emulation and convenience of
operation. For example, OmniCom gives you complete flexibility to reprogram
the keyboard and (with some restrictions) even the keypad, and to save your
custom options -- or even several different sets of options -- to disk.
Your standard options are automatically loaded at startup, but can be changed
at any time during a session and the changes either saved or not, as you
prefer. As an example of the flexibility of this programming capability,
I have programmed the numerals 1 thru 0 to generate TWO sets of TEN autodialer
codes, e.g. ATDT12015551212: one set is accessed with the CONTROL key and the
other with CONTROL/SHIFT! Add to this the normal meaning of these keys as
numerals and the punctuation marks one gets with SHIFT, and the use of the
keys 1234 as the top row of the keypad when SELECT is pressed, and you can see
that OmniCom gets a lot of mileage out of the Atari keyboard!!!
But the BEST PART OF ALL is that OmniCom implements Xmodem and Kermit
file transfer protocols and will soon complete the package with plain old
data capture to a file and send from a file capability. The final version
is just about to be released as this review is being written (11/07/86).
I have been using a Beta Test version of OmniCom for a number of weeks now,
and there is no question in my mind that it is the Cadillac of VT100 emulators
for the Atari. But it's being offered for Hyundai (or Volkswagen, if you
haven't heard of Hyundai) prices to purchasers of OMNIVIEW -- check with CDY
for confirmation, but I believe the price tag is $10.
The other major feature of OMNIVIEW is that it provides improved compatibility
with software written for the old Atari 400 and 800. Some software that runs
on those machines does not on the 800XL because the authors ignored some of
the rules of the operating system to gain a slight performance advantage.
With OMNIVIEW, most of the old software runs fine on the 800XL. After nearly
a year of use of OMNIVIEW256, I have not yet run across a piece of software
that would NOT run under OMNIVIEW but WOULD run with the standard Atari O/S.
On the other hand, I have run across several programs that claimed to require
the Translator Disk to run, but which ran just fine with OMNIVIEW and did not
require the Translator Disk. At this point, I would unhesitatingly recommend
just replacing the Atari O/S with OMNIVIEW if you want 80 columns and want to
avoid the cost and complexity of installing the RAMROD board as well as
OMNIVIEW. I.e., you REALLY don't need to worry about having the Atari O/S
chip always available, if my experience is typical. (There may be a few
programs out there that are designed not to run except on the standard O/S,
however.)
OMNIMONXL. As noted earlier, OMIMON is yet another O/S chip replacement for
the 8-bit Ataris which contains a resident "monitor" or debugger, which gives
you just about total control of your machine when you need it, no matter how
thoroughly that assembly-language program you just tried to run has made a
mess of things. (You wrote WHAT over the stack?!!) Just press a couple of
the special keys on the right, and pop into the debugger to see what values
are in the registers -- in particular the Program Counter contents tells you
just WHERE your program was when it crashed. Or if not, at least you can
use OMNIMON to single-step through things until you find out where things go
wrong.
By now, I have had occasion to use OMNIMON on a number of occasions to bail me
out of trouble. If you're not interested in assembly language, then maybe it
isn't something you need right now, but if you are a serious programmer, you
ought to buy it first and ask questions later. With OMNIMON installed, you
will have a resident sector and file I/O capability. An assembler and
disassembler that live in your machine even if you don't have a disk drive
attached!!! Ability to scroll through memory with either Hex or ASCII
display. Search for strings. Load a file with OMNIMON figuring out the
sequence of sectors in the file for you. Print out a disk directory with no
DOS loaded. Etc., etc. Interrupt execution of a cartridge program and look
at memory, disassemble it to see what makes it tick. Move it to RAM,
disassemble it, modify it, write it to disk, you name it! Of course, you have
to have a disk drive attached to write to disk!!!
256KXL MEMORY EXPANSION. If you add the Newell 256KXL memory expansion along
with OMNIVIEW256, the version of OMNIVIEW developed specifically to support
it, you will have the capability of running up to a full Double Sided, Single
Density RAMdisk. Or two independent normal RAMdisks, or a full-sized Single
Density RAMdisk IN ADDITION TO an Atari 130XE-sized RAMdisk. I've done this
and it is really handy if you want to put a bunch of files on the 130XE
RAMdisk and then select from them to make up a full sized disk image on the
OMNIVIEW256 RAMdisk, and finally make a sector copy of the full-sized RAMdisk.
Of course, the whole point of RAMdisks is that a disk drive simulated in RAM
is many times faster than a real drive. When copying disks, for example, one
version of DOS that I use prints messages to the screen "Reading Source Disk",
"Writing Destination Disk", etc. The message for the Ramdisk comes up almost
instantaneously, while the one for the real physical disk takes a bit of
gyration of the disk and several seconds to complete the operation!
A nifty Disk Operating System called MYDOS is provided along with the 256KXL
upgrade. With MYDOS, you will be equipped to handle not only the full
double-sided disk capacity of the Newell board but also a hard disk, should
you add one at a later date!
One implication of using a RAMdisk that you may not appreciate until you
experience it is the speed with which you can swap applications. Going from
DOS to, say, your Word Processor is no longer a matter of waiting for the disk
drive to chug away and bleep at you. Instead, after a second or two of
initialization (depending on the program and the buffer size, etc.), you are
ready to roll. And returning to DOS from an application program or from BASIC
is almost instantaneous! You will think you are running on a VAX!
One quirk of the memory expansion should be mentioned. It is LARGELY but NOT
EXACTLY compatible with the 130XE. I was disappointed when I found this out,
but for most applications it will not make any difference. The net effect is
that if the ANTIC (display processor) chip is mapped to the new extended
memory by a software package that you want to use, you will have to install a
manual switch to select this mode. Normally, the display is in an area of
memory unaffected by the mapping to extended memory banks, but some special
applications that need a lot of display memory might want to use the extended
memory to hold graphic images. According to Wes Newell, only one software
package he knows of at this time does this (Typesetter, by XLENT), so many
users won't ever need the switch. However, "ever" is a very long time, and
there will doubtless be other packages developed that will need the switch, or
maybe even won't work because they want to switch this mode dynamically. Of
course, such packages wouldn't work on an unmodified 800XL in any case.
This problem could be fixed with a minor revision of the Newell board, but
Newell has no plans to do so at this time.
SOFTWARE SUPPORT. I bought these enhancements through CDY Consulting, which
supplies most of the software. My initial impressions of the software were
very positive, and that feeling has grown stronger as I have gained more
experience with CDY's software quality. (Don't blush, David, I am just trying
to be objective.) Some users may object to the fact that CDY has taken the
liberty of changing a few time-honored conventions, like OPTION KEY DOWN =
omit BASIC and CTRL-1 for scrolling on/off. (CDY uses OPTION KEY DOWN =
include BASIC and the HELP key for scrolling off/on, in the OMNIVIEW O/S.)
However, I found I like these conventions BETTER than the original ones, once
I got used to them. Unless you are ALWAYS using BASIC (you hafta be some kind
of NUT in that case), it seems to me to make more sense to take an action
(hold down OPTION) to request that BASIC be loaded than to have it always
assumed that you need it when most professional programs WON'T WORK if BASIC
is active! Also, I find that touching the HELP key is MUCH EASIER than
pressing CONTROL-1 to start and stop printing to the screen. HELP is much
easier to reach and of course requires only one finger instead of two. So I
vote for CDY's conventions instead of the Atari conventions on both counts.
OVERALL IMPRESSION. These enhancements appear to be all I had hoped for and
more, with the single exception of the minor incompatibility with the 130XE
which I mentioned earlier regarding ANTIC memory mapping convention. I would
have liked it much better if I had ended up with exact compatibility with the
130XE plus an extra 128K of memory. However, I have not actually run into any
software that would run on a 130XE which does not run on the 256KXL modified
800XL, although I may want to buy Typesetter one of these days. In that case
I will either add the switch Newell recommends or else make a modification to
the board to make it fully 130XE compatible, as I have been threatening to do
for some time. Meanwhile, the 256KXL board and CDY's OMNIVIEW256 team up
nicely to provide the speed and convenience of RAMdisk operation almost
effortlessly -- you can run CDY's RAMdisk with just about any DOS, such as
good old DOS 2.0.
All in all, I am very pleased with the results of my 800XL upgrade after
nearly a year of experience with it. It makes all the difference in the world
in word processing (OMNIVIEW and Ramdisk capabilities) and in Assembly
language tinkering (OMNIMON). And if you need a communications package for
use with your modem, OmniCom with OMNIVIEW is the best one I know of for the
8-bit Ataris.
John Sangster
jhs at mitre-bedford.arpa
NOTE: I have no financial interest in or connection with either CDY or Newell
Industries other than being a customer. The above opinions and impressions
are transmitted solely for the information of other Atari 800XL users.
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End of Info-Atari8 Digest
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