ATR8000/8500 SIG Newsletter for February 1986 by Bernie Bennett LETTERS and ANSWERS and requests for help. Spoke on the phone with Dennis Melichar of Tinker AFB. He inquired about the club, MYDOS support of 130XE & XL memory upgrade, & ramdisks. Yes it does support the extra memory and the new version is supposed to work with both the ATR and XL hard disk options recently announced. Also have a letter from Dennis dated September, which could do with answering publicly. Sorry about the delay, partially my fault, partially the change in ATR SIG Chairpersons. Here goes: 1. Information on interfacing: A: Disk drives- 1. Compatible Dos's? Let's take a survey? Write me if you are using anything but MYDOS as your standard DOS. Most I know are using MYDOS and double sided double density. Also used are ATARI DOS 2.0 and versions of it for single sided double density compatibility with Speedscript and ATARIWRITER. In addition, I have had no trouble with files written by MYDOS to DOS 2 format disks. MYDOS also does an outstanding job of sensing density and copying from single to double and back with no problem. I have not used the MYDOS Ram Disk features as my 800 XL has yet to be upgraded. Knowing the work of Charles Marslett in the past, I would expect MYDOS 4.-- to work flawlessly. REMEMBER if you bought MYDOS from the club, you are entitled to upgrades from us, $2.00(postpaid) each thru the mail. If from SWP, you can upgrade through them for $10 and your old disk. 2. Connections? You can build your own ribbon cable; but the SWP cables work. I vote for spending the extra bucks. I am not technically inclined. The ATR manual in very good on hooking up drives, and setting drive switches. If you are using a hard disk or quad density drive, write your experiences to this column or the newsletter editor. B: Modems? As I've said before, Brenham is too far from any reasonable phone rates. I need readers help on what modems/programs, terminal emulators work best. C: Using the printer buffer from the ATARI mode is automatic and wonderful. It is one reason I do use not CP/M much. I would hate to give up the 48 K. Software: CP/M 1. Sources: Dealers that offer 5 & 1/4 " formats. The ATR version of CP/M for April '84 contains a Disk Define program which reads most popular formats. The program you get should not be a machine specific version that won't allow you to configure the program for your terminal. E.g. the Kaypro II version of Wordstar. The ATARI emulates a Lear Seigler ADM 3A. 2. I have read and transfered files to and from Kaypros and TRS-80 Model 4 CP/M Plus. Also to and from the old ATR CPM format. I have also copied files from ATARI format to the Old CP/M and from there to the new. I have not successfully been able to copy back in the other direction. I know of one other ATR/ATARI transfer program; but cannot vouch for its effectiveness. Bulletin boards: Yes there are some being run with ATR's both under ATARI & CP/M. The club library contains some public domain BBS programs. Membership in the AACE is open to those interested with the $15.00 to pay. Club library policies are in the newsletter and contained in the new member packet of information. From Mike Graben of Mililani, HI who is running DS drives of 40 and 80 tracks as well as an 8 inch DSDD. Also Mike uses a Pro Modem 1200 and STAR SB-10. He is looking for and ATARI to CP/M DISKDEF option. As I indicated above, the program by Simon Yam in the ATR Sig Library does work one way only. I will keep you posted on other possibilities. Mike also wants to know of ATR bulletin boards. I will dig thru the old issues of the newsletter for some highlights. Stephen James of Bartlesville, Ok writes an MSDOS question. He's trying to run Multiplan and having trouble configuring for a terminal. As above, try the Lear Seigler ADM 3A option if it is available. No one at a recent user group meeting had used MultiPlan; but, all suggested trying this. Let us know of your experiences/problems. Finally, a letter from New South Wales, Australia. Ian Foreman writes he is a 'proud but lonely ... user". He desires to write/read/format DOS 2.5 enhanced 1050 format. As I understand it, a 1050 compatible drive is necessary to use this format. DOS 2.5 will allow you to convert enhanced to DOS 2.0 Single density. MYDOS is supposed to handle enhanced density; but I could not figure how to set it to read my nephew's enhanced 1050. Mr. Foreman is an Agriculture teacher in a senior high school. He is looking for teaching programs under CP/M or ATARI mode. Also, states lack of software is a problem in Australia. He is looking for a used CO-Power-88 at a reasonable price and information on the Syn Series. The word I have is that SYNCALC is very good but memory limited without AXALON or MOSAIC memory expansions to 128 or 196K; the new version should support the 130 XE expanded memory and the 800Xl upgrade??(if it is 130XE compatible). Bgraph, now marketed by Batteries Included, is supposed to work well with Syncalc. I can't say. Synfile is a powerful data handler. It needs a powerful report generator. He refers to the New ATARIWRITER and I presume he means the upgraded version of the cartridge program. Good word processors include ATARIWRITER, The Writers' Tool, Computes' Speedscript, BI's Paperclip (but don't lose the key that must be plugged into the joystick port), and ANTIC is selling Word/Spell­ Magic which look good in the ads (caveat emptor). Has anyone out there used these? Much of the software out there does not support double density and most does not support double sided disks(they are designed for 810's-some third party software is far more flexible). Bye.