Monkey Wrench?

[+Larry]

OK, I'm confused -- perhaps someone can help...

 

I have two Monkey Wrench carts -- One says Monkey Wrench II and the other says Monkey Wrench II (with a note on it: 800 only). I've read quite a few of the older threads about the Monkey Wrench, and most say that the MW can't be used on XL/XE computers.

 

There is at least one post that says that an ATR version works on the XL/XE. I can get the disk version to work in an XL/XE using an 800 OS, but it does not work with the XL/XE OS. Aside from not surviving a reset, the disk ATR version appears to function normally. Likewise, using the MW cart with the Omnimon or Omniview OS's works fine, but not XL or XE OS.

 

Many years ago, when I purchased the original MW for my 800, I believe that I remember upgrading twice: first to the MWII then later to another version that was compatible with the XL/XE.

 

Even the manual is confusing. One manual says specifically that it works with the Atari XL series of computer, referencing an 800XL's top cartridge slot. It says nothing about using a translator or an 800 OS.

 

Can anyone shed any light on this?

 

-Larry

Edited May 20, 2008 by Larry

[+bf2k+]

...

 

Can anyone shed any light on this?

 

-Larry

 

I cannot help... sorry. However, I have a MW2 cart in the original box with no docs. Anybody know where I can get docs (PDF would be great)?

[Rybags]

Well, AFAIK all versions of that utility resided in the $8000-$9FFF memory area.

 

By default on XLs or "Left Cartridge" slots, the cartridge ends at $BFFF and is mapped backwards from there.

 

No idea if an $8000-$9FFF cart is possible for a left slot, and if it would still allow normal mapping of RAM or BASIC from $A000-$BFFF. I'd guess that it probably is, given that there are other carts around that can be swapped out totally if required.

 

But, IIRC, the MR and MR2 were aimed exclusively at the Atari 800.

[+Guitarman]

...

 

Can anyone shed any light on this?

 

-Larry

 

I cannot help... sorry. However, I have a MW2 cart in the original box with no docs. Anybody know where I can get docs (PDF would be great)?

 

 

I think I have the docs for MW2 XL

[+bf2k+]

...

 

Can anyone shed any light on this?

 

-Larry

 

I cannot help... sorry. However, I have a MW2 cart in the original box with no docs. Anybody know where I can get docs (PDF would be great)?

 

 

I think I have the docs for MW2 XL

 

Mine says 800 on the box...

[+Larry]

Well, AFAIK all versions of that utility resided in the $8000-$9FFF memory area.

 

By default on XLs or "Left Cartridge" slots, the cartridge ends at $BFFF and is mapped backwards from there.

 

No idea if an $8000-$9FFF cart is possible for a left slot, and if it would still allow normal mapping of RAM or BASIC from $A000-$BFFF. I'd guess that it probably is, given that there are other carts around that can be swapped out totally if required.

 

But, IIRC, the MR and MR2 were aimed exclusively at the Atari 800.

 

I'm going to attack this a different way, and I *think* that I did this successfully many years ago. I'll make a 16K cartridge with BASIC and the Monkey Wrench in a 27128 -- a "Basic Wrench."

 

-Larry

Edited May 20, 2008 by Larry

[+Guitarman]

I do have the booklet for Monkey Wrench 2 for the XL. I will scan it and post a PDF tonight or tomorrow night. At least some of the info may apply to the 800 also.

[+Larry]

I do have the booklet for Monkey Wrench 2 for the XL. I will scan it and post a PDF tonight or tomorrow night. At least some of the info may apply to the 800 also.

 

Does the cart label say "XL" and does it work in an XL?

-Larry

[+Guitarman]

I do have the booklet for Monkey Wrench 2 for the XL. I will scan it and post a PDF tonight or tomorrow night. At least some of the info may apply to the 800 also.

 

Does the cart label say "XL" and does it work in an XL?

-Larry

 

Yes, the cart label says XL but I have never plugged it up to test. I'll scan the label also.

[+Guitarman]

Update. The manual I have is for both. According to the beginning of the manual, MW2 came in 2 flavors, one for the 800 and one for the XL. When you ordered it, you had to select which one you wanted. Since MW2 is a programing enhancement for BASIC, MW and MW2 were designed as a RIGHT cart so the BASIC cart could co-exist in the 800. With the XL and built in BASIC, the XL version was designed as a LEFT cart. All the instructions in the manual apply to both since they technically do the same thing. I will scan it, hopefully tonight, and get it posted.

[a8isa1]

Well, AFAIK all versions of that utility resided in the $8000-$9FFF memory area.

 

By default on XLs or "Left Cartridge" slots, the cartridge ends at $BFFF and is mapped backwards from there.

 

No idea if an $8000-$9FFF cart is possible for a left slot, and if it would still allow normal mapping of RAM or BASIC from $A000-$BFFF. I'd guess that it probably is, given that there are other carts around that can be swapped out totally if required.

 

But, IIRC, the MR and MR2 were aimed exclusively at the Atari 800.

 

I'm going to attack this a different way, and I *think* that I did this successfully many years ago. I'll make a 16K cartridge with BASIC and the Monkey Wrench in a 27128 -- a "Basic Wrench."

 

-Larry

 

Larry:

 

I can't answer any of your questions but a couple of years ago I did exactly what you intend to do. I appended a Monkey Wrench II image to the back end of a BASIC image (Rev A, I think) and put the combined image on a 16K cart. It worked fine, well for the little amount of time I actually tried the combination, with XL Boss 2.0 OS with which I was also experimenting on my 800XL at the time.

 

I still have the image and it works fine on my SRAM cart combined with Omniview XL OS, the only 400/800 friendly OS in my 800XL at present.

 

Guitarman:

 

Any chance of making an image of the Monkey Wrench II XL?

 

- Steve Sheppard

[+Guitarman]

Guitarman:

 

Any chance of making an image of the Monkey Wrench II XL?

 

- Steve Sheppard

 

 

I will open it and see if it has roms I can read in my burner. If not, I will try and get an image using The Pill, unless there is a better, easier way to get the image.

[a8isa1]

Guitarman:

 

Any chance of making an image of the Monkey Wrench II XL?

 

- Steve Sheppard

 

 

I will open it and see if it has roms I can read in my burner. If not, I will try and get an image using The Pill, unless there is a better, easier way to get the image.

To be honest I never dumped a cartridge back in the day.

 

Recently however, I did just for fun.

 

 

I used QMEG XL OS 4.04 and SIO2PC.

 

Monkey Wrench is kind of special so I don't know if this will work.

 

 This is what I do to dump a standard 8K cart.

1) I setup up a blank single density ATR with AtariSIO (APE would work fine) as drive 1.

2) Go to the QMEG monitor by pressing Select+Reset and then press Return at drive options screen.
 
3)To dump the cartridge to disk I typed A000.BFFF>1.40 (format is addr1.addr2>start_sector.num_sectors in hexadecimal).  

note: I would assume that Monkey Wrench resides at $8000-$9FFF.  The dump option would like this: 8000.9FFF>1.4

4)Save the ATR that was just written to.

5)To extract the ROM image from the ATR I just used the linux dd command.  For example, dd bs=1 skip=16 count=8192 if=MW2.ATR of=MW2.BIN.

note: 
bs=1 means blocksize is 1 byte
skip=16 skip the first 16 bytes (the ATR header)
count=8192 means send this number of bytes to the output file, the ROM data.

 

That's it. The ROM dump is now in MW2.BIN.

 

I found this method easy.

 

- Steve Sheppard

Edited May 21, 2008 by a8isa1

[+Larry]

Well, AFAIK all versions of that utility resided in the $8000-$9FFF memory area.

 

By default on XLs or "Left Cartridge" slots, the cartridge ends at $BFFF and is mapped backwards from there.

 

No idea if an $8000-$9FFF cart is possible for a left slot, and if it would still allow normal mapping of RAM or BASIC from $A000-$BFFF. I'd guess that it probably is, given that there are other carts around that can be swapped out totally if required.

 

But, IIRC, the MR and MR2 were aimed exclusively at the Atari 800.

 

I'm going to attack this a different way, and I *think* that I did this successfully many years ago. I'll make a 16K cartridge with BASIC and the Monkey Wrench in a 27128 -- a "Basic Wrench."

 

-Larry

 

Larry:

 

I can't answer any of your questions but a couple of years ago I did exactly what you intend to do. I appended a Monkey Wrench II image to the back end of a BASIC image (Rev A, I think) and put the combined image on a 16K cart. It worked fine, well for the little amount of time I actually tried the combination, with XL Boss 2.0 OS with which I was also experimenting on my 800XL at the time.

 

I still have the image and it works fine on my SRAM cart combined with Omniview XL OS, the only 400/800 friendly OS in my 800XL at present.

 

Guitarman:

 

Any chance of making an image of the Monkey Wrench II XL?

 

- Steve Sheppard

 

Well, I struck out. I made a 16K cart, and BASIC comes up fine, but the Monkey Wrench has a "monkey wrench" in the works. I tried both a dump (PEEKing) and reading the MW 2532 Eproms with my burner, but the cart refuses to initialize. Maybe when I did this before, I used an 800. (?) I guess that's the next step -- get out the 800 and set it up to try these carts.

-Larry

[Rybags]

Do later versions of the cart swap themselves out? Sounds like a logical progression.

 

The thing that probably kept a lot of people away from it was that you lost another 8K - making it very unattractive given that with DOS loaded it would have only left you with about 24K RAM free.

[+Larry]

Well, I struck out. I made a 16K cart, and BASIC comes up fine, but the Monkey Wrench has a "monkey wrench" in the works. I tried both a dump (PEEKing) and reading the MW 2532 Eproms with my burner, but the cart refuses to initialize. Maybe when I did this before, I used an 800. (?) I guess that's the next step -- get out the 800 and set it up to try these carts.

-Larry

 

Well, part of the mystery is solved -- I have one bad cart. My cart marked "800 only" comes up fine in an 800, showing "Monkey Wrench II." But the other cart refuses, even after cleaning contacts, re-seating the eproms, etc. Naturally I dumped the "bad" cart! I'll have to dump the "good" cart and try the 16K trick again.

 

I did have a scare -- my 800 refused to come up. (Panic!) Then a little voice in my head said "close the cartridge door, dummy." Ooooh!

 

-Larry

[a8isa1]

Do later versions of the cart swap themselves out? Sounds like a logical progression.

 

The thing that probably kept a lot of people away from it was that you lost another 8K - making it very unattractive given that with DOS loaded it would have only left you with about 24K RAM free.

I don't recall versions that swapped parts of themselves out.

 

On the other hand, the existence of a XL version was news to me so I probably stopped following product development of Monkey Wrench.

 

There were many other BASIC wedges that were less memory consuming. Though these were disk based and possibly limited to specific DOSes.

 

- Steve Sheppard

[+Larry]

Do later versions of the cart swap themselves out? Sounds like a logical progression.

 

The thing that probably kept a lot of people away from it was that you lost another 8K - making it very unattractive given that with DOS loaded it would have only left you with about 24K RAM free.

I don't recall versions that swapped parts of themselves out.

 

On the other hand, the existence of a XL version was news to me so I probably stopped following product development of Monkey Wrench.

 

There were many other BASIC wedges that were less memory consuming. Though these were disk based and possibly limited to specific DOSes.

 

- Steve Sheppard

 

Success, Steve!

 

I dumped my "good" MW cart, and the resultant 16K cart does work in the XL using (as you said) Omniview. It doesn't work with Omnimon. Interestingly, the ATR version does work with Omnimon. Now that I know the cart works with an XL, I'll try a few "translators" and see how it does with them.

 

There was a similar utility from the same period -- it was called the MMG Basic Commander. The MMG product was disk-based, and I think took more like 3-4K instead of 8K for MW. But it had fewer features, including no machine language monitor, so I went with the Monkey Wrench instead.

 

My "pet peeve" with the Monkey Wrench remains the bass-akwards treatment of the arrow keys. Why in the world they had to "fix" that is a mystery to me.

 

-Larry

[Rybags]

The XL OS doesn't have the right cart detect code - that's one possibility why it doesn't work with certain OSes.

 

This 16K cart image? Is the top 8K just a copy of BASIC?

[a8isa1]

Success, Steve!

 

I dumped my "good" MW cart, and the resultant 16K cart does work in the XL using (as you said) Omniview. It doesn't work with Omnimon. Interestingly, the ATR version does work with Omnimon. Now that I know the cart works with an XL, I'll try a few "translators" and see how it does with them.

 

There was a similar utility from the same period -- it was called the MMG Basic Commander. The MMG product was disk-based, and I think took more like 3-4K instead of 8K for MW. But it had fewer features, including no machine language monitor, so I went with the Monkey Wrench instead.

 

My "pet peeve" with the Monkey Wrench remains the bass-akwards treatment of the arrow keys. Why in the world they had to "fix" that is a mystery to me.

 

-Larry

Larry:

 

Thanks Larry. I did not know of MMG BASIC Commander or I have completely forgotten about it.

 

FYI, I just booted the hybrid cart with a standard XL OS.

 

Sitting in BASIC I was wondering what would happen if I accessed the original MW2 cart's INIT routine. Would it it hook itself into BASIC?

 

I tried:

 

x=usr(32768)

 

32768 ($8000) is the address pointed to by init vector at $9FFE (well, what would be the INIT vector for a right hand cartridge).

 

Sure enough, MW2 did hook itself into BASIC.

 

I can't say I did any signifcant testing but at least the renumbering and auto numbering functions seem to work.

 

Rybags:

 

Oops, did I get it backwards?

 

I guess it would be MW2 in the first half the image and BASIC second.

 

- Steve Sheppard

[+Larry]

The XL OS doesn't have the right cart detect code - that's one possibility why it doesn't work with certain OSes.

 

This 16K cart image? Is the top 8K just a copy of BASIC?

 

Hi Rybags-

 

Yes, I made my 16K cart with my MWII in the lower address range and Basic Rev C in the upper location.

 

 

Hi Steve-

 

I tried a couple of things with the XLOS -- first "RUN AT ADDRESS" from Dos to $8000 -- didn't work.

Then I tried X=USR(32768) -- froze (remember the PLA). With X=USR(32767) MW came up showing the ML monitor stats and then MW title. That's unusual, but seems to work.

If you enter the MLM, the only way out that I've found is to hit RESET, so you have to do the USR thing again. But, the good news is the cart seems to work perfectly as 16K with Omniview.

 

 

Hi Guitarman-

I found the docs last night already posted at www.retrobit.net -- may save you some time.

 

-Larry

[a8isa1]

The XL OS doesn't have the right cart detect code - that's one possibility why it doesn't work with certain OSes.

 

This 16K cart image? Is the top 8K just a copy of BASIC?

 

Hi Rybags-

 

Yes, I made my 16K cart with my MWII in the lower address range and Basic Rev C in the upper location.

 

 

Hi Steve-

 

I tried a couple of things with the XLOS -- first "RUN AT ADDRESS" from Dos to $8000 -- didn't work.

Then I tried X=USR(32768) -- froze (remember the PLA). With X=USR(32767) MW came up showing the ML monitor stats and then MW title. That's unusual, but seems to work.

If you enter the MLM, the only way out that I've found is to hit RESET, so you have to do the USR thing again. But, the good news is the cart seems to work perfectly as 16K with Omniview.

 

Larry:

 

Interesting. I forgot about the returned value of usr(). That explains the "Error- 9" I get. Even still x=usr(32768) works for me yet all is not perfect. The scroll enable command, ">SE", does not work. 800XL locks up or goes into the monitor and then locks up. It does not seem to matter which OS I am using whether I did the x=usr() bit.

 

- Steve Sheppard

[a8isa1]

I tried X=USR(32768) -- froze (remember the PLA).

Let's see if we can do better.

 

Hoping that I've got the sequence right I tried PLA, LDA #$00, PHA, JMP $8000 (the INIT location).

 

x=usr(adr("h, inverse_h, H, L, CTRL+left_bracket, inverse_CTRL+left_bracket")) ; without the commas and spaces

 

 

Not an easy sequence to remember. Oh well.

 

- Steve Sheppard

Edited May 22, 2008 by a8isa1

[+Larry]

I tried X=USR(32768) -- froze (remember the PLA).

Let's see if we can do better.

 

Hoping that I've got the sequence right I tried PLA, LDA #$00, PHA, JMP $8000 (the INIT location).

 

x=usr(adr("h, inverse_h, H, L, CTRL+left_bracket, inverse_CTRL+left_bracket")) ; without the commas and spaces

 

 

Not an easy sequence to remember. Oh well.

 

- Steve Sheppard

 

This is getting really interesting (and weird).

 

I have my XE hooked up now as opposed to my XL last night. On my XE, your sequence takes me into the MLM. As with the XL, the X=USR(32767) takes me into the Monkey Wrench, showing first the MLM, followed by the MW splash. But the real grabber is that on my XE, the 16K cart comes up to the Monkey Wrench just like in Omniview. Seem to work perfectly, except when you hit RESET, you just get BASIC instead of the MW. This is what I *seemed* to remember from the mid-80's when all I had was an 800 and then got my first 130XE. (Ahh, love at first sight!). Presumably there are some subtle OS differences in the XL and XE.

 

And part of the difference may have to do with the versions of the MW that each of us have. Bear with me...

 

One of my manuals says "The Monkey Wrench" the other says "The Monkey Wrench II" The MW manual shows that to initialize the cartridge in either an 800 *or* XL, do the USR(32768).

 

In the other manual entitled "Monkey Wrench II" it only mentions the 800 and says that it will initialize automatically at power-up. (No USR...)

 

Wonder how my "dead" cart would behave?

 

-Larry

 

 

 

Edited May 23, 2008 by Larry

[+Larry]

Let's see if we can do better.

 

Hoping that I've got the sequence right I tried PLA, LDA #$00, PHA, JMP $8000 (the INIT location).

 

x=usr(adr("h, inverse_h, H, L, CTRL+left_bracket, inverse_CTRL+left_bracket")) ; without the commas and spaces

 

Not an easy sequence to remember. Oh well.

 

- Steve Sheppard

 

This is getting really interesting (and weird).

 

I have my XE hooked up now as opposed to my XL last night. On my XE, your sequence takes me into the MLM. As with the XL, the X=USR(32767) takes me into the Monkey Wrench, showing first the MLM, followed by the MW splash. But the real grabber is that on my XE, the 16K cart comes up to the Monkey Wrench just like in Omniview. Seem to work perfectly, except when you hit RESET, you just get BASIC instead of the MW. This is what I *seemed* to remember from the mid-80's when all I had was an 800 and then got my first 130XE. (Ahh, love at first sight!). Presumably there are some subtle OS differences in the XL and XE.

 

And part of the difference may have to do with the versions of the MW that each of us have. Bear with me...

 

One of my manuals says "The Monkey Wrench" the other says "The Monkey Wrench II" The MW manual shows that to initialize the cartridge in either an 800 *or* XL, do the USR(32768).

 

In the other manual entitled "Monkey Wrench II" it only mentions the 800 and says that it will initialize automatically at power-up. (No USR...)

 

Wonder how my "dead" cart would behave?

 

-Larry

 

Another revelation and thought.

 

I discovered that the MyDos DUP.SYS file did not exist on my boot disk. When I added the DUP.SYS and AUTORUN.SYS (ramdisk) that my XE behaved just like the XL -- the MW won't come up without the USR. A short AUTORUN.SYS routine to bring up the cart should work fine, but as-is, having it inactive until you choose to do the USR seems like a good (better?) way to initialize the cart.

 

-Larry