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Programming
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DON'T know who you are. You might be a wife whose Atari owning husband is away at work, or a father who is trying to come to terms with his daughter's Christmas present. Alternatively you might be a teacher who has just been "computerised". Whoever you are, the fact that you are reading this article tells me your guilty secret: You want to be able to program the Atari micro. But how to begin? You must have noticed that some people take to computing like ducks to water, or an output port to an interface, as they would say. Words like byte, strings and user—defined functions flow freely from their lips. They pass parameters and handle interrupts with ease, then get their hands on the peek and poke in a way that beggars belief!
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You, i take it, are not like that. You are not a computer “natural". But you would dearly like to be. Well fear not, this series is for you, and it was written by one of your kind. I, too, have sat at a keyboard, watching the cursor without having any idea of what to do next (or even knowing it was called a cursor), I also know what it's like to have someone explain something to me in the ”simplest possible terms" and still find it way above my head. Yet now and programme reasonably well so can you. Read on! Let's assume for a start that you are seated in front of the computer
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will need a Basic cartridge plugging into the left cartridge slot. lf yourAtari is of this sort, make sure the cartridge is in. And that is the end of our
Reach over and switch on (and the TV
if necessary). You'll hear some buzzing from the speaker of your TV and then the message READY will appear, together with a rectangular blob, the cursor.
mm '
ready for
iS
YOU
‘\
‘
to type in some
information. Try typing in tWO or three letters iUSt part Of the alphabet for —
the moment, please. You should soon see that the cursor indicates the position at WhiCh the next letter Will be printed on the
assumptions. The "On" switch is a rocker switch at the rear of the computer on the left. .
screen.
Before we tYDe any more, let's examine the keyboard. Funda— mentally, it iS a standard typewriter keyboard surrounded by several additional keys. Notice that the computer has a O (zerO) key and another key for the letter 0YOU must keep the tWO separate:0 for numbers, 0 for words. guarantee that a let Of your early errors in programs Will be caused by typing O I
instead of 0!
.
which is already plugged in, connected to the TV and tuned in correctly. Some versions of the earlier Ataris
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May 1985
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22 ATARI USER
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you're lucky enough to have a attached, keep it switched off for the moment you won't need If
disc drive
—
On
the
there
1
is a do not use
same lines, notice that (one) key. Make sure you
I. (Incidentally,a lot ofyour other early errors in your computing career will be from misreading as 1
it.
and
The READY message is called the prompt. This indicates that the micro
such
vice-versa.) Other keys are labelled by words as
Shift, Esc and Return. Let’s
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