Re: [stella] Has anyone tried this before?

[Nick Bensema <nickb@xxxxxx>]

This reminds me of a program I had for my Atari XE.

Seel, the Atari XL and XE series had some minor differences in the OS 
that prevented some old programs from working.  To run these old 
programs, you could employ a disk called a Translator, which would 
pretty much just load the old 400/800 operating system into RAM, and 
then booted from disk.

I found on one BBS a program that claimed to be able to use the same 
process with cartridges.  I only had one cartridge, Astro Chase, that 
didn't work on the XE, so I tried it.  You had to basically hold down 
the Start key while inserting the cartridge, and then when you released 
it, it would jump to the cartridge code.  And it worked, though only 
maybe half the time.

See, even though the Atari 8-bit computers run code mostly in either RAM 
or the operating system, it would still freeze up if you inserted a 
cartridge while the system was on.  This is why the 400 and 800 had 
cartridge doors that doubled as off-switches.
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