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ORIC ATMOS Manual SOMTA LAUNAM ~l"l:,.s «Jn ~ts- L -Aw~ . Av~ Ian Adamson The ORIC ATMOS Manual Pan Books London and Sydney Published 1964 by Pan Books Ltd, Cavaye Place, London SW10 9PG in association with Personal Computer News 9676543 This revised edition produced for Orie Products International Ltd 1964 ©Ian Adamson 1964 ISBN 0 330 26462 7 Photoset by Parker Typesening Service. Leicester Printed and bound in Great Britain by Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press) Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser Contents Introduction 1 Getting the ATMOS together 3 2 The Language Lesson 7 3 Building With BASIC 23 4 Loops Beyond Compare 36 5 Down memory lane 50 6 Tapes and Data 61 7 Graphics and Colour 69 8 The Sound of Music 93 9 Orie BASIC Keywords 108 1O Introducing Machine Code 190 11 Input/Output 223 Appendices ASCII Character Codes 228 2 Escape Codes 232 3 Error Messages 234 4 Screen Grids 237 5 Memory Map 240 6 Binary/Hex/Decimal Conversion 244 7 Orie MCP-40 Printer Use 252 8 6502 Op Codes 261 9 ROM Routines and Addresses 266 10 Input/Output Circuitry 273 11 ATMOS 1/0 Connections 284 12 BASIC Reserved Words and Tokens 289 Acknowledgements The book you are holding could not have been produced without the teamwork of many people. As the notional author of this text, it falls to me to express my gratitude and my debt to them all: Andrzej Chanerley and Roger Smith for technical inputs, Ian Ritchie for musical expertise, Brian Jones for programming, printing, graphics, ethyl alcohol and corn esters supplies, Fi lnchbald for edits, optimism and balm, and Richard Kennedy for hard work, sacrifice and support in the circumstances surrounding the production of this book. All characters and situations depicted in this book, as with all books, are fictitious, and should not be confused with any events, but this should not bother anyone who understands that 'Emptiness is not different from Form and Form is not different from Emptiness'. This book is dedicated to the memory of Pigalle and all that remains truly sacred. Thank you. Introduction Welcome to the world of the Orie ATMOS microcomputer! If you're reading this you have become the proud owner of an ATMOS, and this handbook intends to show you how to use it to its full potential. High­ resolution graphics, three channel sound, colour and many other features make the Orie ATMOS one of the most advanced microcomputers available today. This handbook covers all you need to know to get the most from your ATMOS, learn the built-in BASIC language, get started on programming in BASIC, and discover the fascination of computing. If you're starting from scratch, please remember when the going gets a little tough that it's a complicated and powerful machine you are learning to use, and you can't expect to have it all worked out in a few hours. Exercise some patience and application, work through the examples we give in the text, and you'll soon be hacking a keyboard with the best of them! We introduce the jargon as we come to it, but you should also realise that computing is a technical subject, and familiarity with the technical terms is a necessary part of your initiation into computing. Whilst bits and bytes and BASIC, chips and Ks and all the rest, are confusing when first encountered, they are all essential elements in discussing our subject. This handbook first covers setting up your Orie ATMOS, and describes the facilities built into it, and some of the expansion possibilities. The first elements of the BASIC language are defined, and the elements of pro­ gramming are explained as you are introduced to more of the BASIC intruc­ tions. After covering the storage and retrieval of programs on cassette tape, the complex and powerful graphics and sound facilities of the Orie are covered in separate sections. The full set of the Orie BASIC instructions and commands is then covered in an alphabetic glossary, with their formats and examples of their use, for easy reference. Chapters on machine code programming and input/output interfacing follow, and the appendices provide additional technical and reference material not suitable for the main text. We're sure you'll find that the world your ATMOS opens up will provide you with an inexhaustible source of fun, fascination and satisfaction. Let's take our first steps towards opening up this world! D-- --- mrr··~...... I .,,< I - - D D D ::1::::: z g D D .. '..... D D 1 •• m D D I ..1..... x D D D .. 1..... ""l11 D D ::::::: ~z - ~ D D D D .......••••••• -f!!?Oz""Z-i::a_. D D ""':: }Jmz::o D D ..... ~ ..... o 1 D D >mzn::on oDDDD D m "' D D DDDD '] DODD : D DD .1 oogooo DD0 . lilll;fj D 0_O ·•· -·--- - -~ 1 Getting the ATMOS together Let's first run through what comes in the Orie box of goodies. You get the Orie ATMOS itself, the power supply, a cassette lead, and a TV lead. Find a convenient work surface big enough for the ATMOS, your TV, and a cassette recorder if you've got one, and you can proceed to set your system up. The components of your microcomputer system should be connected up as shown in the diagram. The Orie power supply should be plugged into a convenient socket, close enough so that there's plenty of slack in the cable, the plug of which is fitted into the power socket of the ATMOS (at the left rear of the Orie as you face the keyboard). This supplies the 9V d.c. (direct current) power which the Orie needs. There's no on/off switch on the Orie, so it's now powered up, and two elements of our system are working. (The keyboard, which is an input device in the jargon, since we use it to input information and commands, and the processor board, which as you might imagine does all the processing of information and handles the input and output of data, are of course all built into one unit in the Orie ATMOS.) We need an output device to know what's happening though, and this is where your TV comes in. This functions as an.on-line visual display unit (VDU) output device, but we'll just call it the TV! Connect the TV lead between the Orie (using the rightmost socket) and the aerial socket of the TV. If there's a choice, use the UHF socket. Switch on the TV, and tune it to Channel 36. When you get the correct position, the screen will be displaying the message: ORIC EXTENDED BASIC Vl .1 © 1983 TANGERINE xxxxx BYTES FREE •READY This notice comes up on switching on the Orie. If you now take out the power supply from the Orie and re-insert it, the screen goes blank, with random white blocks on it for a few seconds (while the Orie checks through its circuits), and then clears to display the message again. 4 Getting the ATMOS together Adjust the brightness and contrast controls to get a sharp picture. The Orie itself has two controls that can be used to fine-tune the picture. They affect the colour signal, but also have some effect on the stability and steadiness of the picture, and we will deal with them here for completeness. When you start to experiment with the colour cap­ abilities of your ATMOS you may find that colour contrast is lacking, especially between yellow and white, or that you have 'dot crawl' pro­ ducing a shimmering effect, making the colour display hard on the eyes and reducing the quality of the screen resolution. If you are positive that none of this is due to a badly adjusted TV, then you should have a look underneath the Orie. You will find two small holes, fairly close together; of which one is lozenge-shaped and contains a slotted silver screw, and the other round, with a brass screw. Find a screwdriver, and leave the Orie switched on, with a multi-coloured display on the screen. Turn the Orie over and turn the screw within the lozenge-shaped hole a quarter turn or so in both directions, watch­ ing the screen as you go, until you have found the setting at which the yellow just starts to fade. Back off slightly from this position and the bias modulator is then correctly set. This should also centre the picture on the screen. Next adjust the brass screw within the round hole, adjusting it in the same way until you get a positive colour contrast, with no shimmering or rainbow effect is achieved. Remove the screw­ driver from the screwhead in case it affects the signal. The controls are set for a standard test TV at the factory, and adjustment is necessary if your TV differs significantly. Under the copyright notice the Orie displays the number of bytes of free memory. The Orie ATMOS comes with different memory sizes of 48K and 16K. AK is an abbreviation of 'kilobyte', meaning 1024 bytes (you'll find out why 1024 and not 1000 later), and a byte is a storage location in the computer memory.
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