Re: [stella] Has anyone tried this before?

Subject: Re: [stella] Has anyone tried this before?
From: Nick Bensema <nickb@xxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 08 Feb 2004 15:19:15 -0700
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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