800 and the 800XL compatibility?

[betaphile]

I have been told that the 800 programs and carts wont work on the 800XL and vice versa is this true?

[+Mitch]

I have been told that the 800 programs and carts wont work on the 800XL and vice versa is this true?

 

That's partially correct. Actually, most 800 programs will work on the 800XL (and any other Atari 8bit computer) and most 800XL programs will run on an 800.

 

There are two different reasons for this. The only 800XL programs that won't run on an 800 is because of lack of memory. The 800's max out at 48k while some later programs use 64k or more. The reason some 800 software doesn't run on the later Atari 8bit computers is because the system bios was changed after the 800 creating a few incompatibilities.

 

Those are the basic reasons, there are a few ways of getting around some of the incompatibilities but the bottom line is that most programs work fine as is.

 

Mitch

http://atari7800.atari.org

[AtariDude]

The Atari 800XL uses a slightly modified OS than the Atari 800 did. Programmers were warned that certain features of the Atari 800 were not going to be used in future versions of the OS and they were told not to program using certain features to assure compatiability.

 

Of course, some programmers needed to use certain tricks from those features and when the Atari 800XL came out, it created problems for some programs. Back in the day, you had to use a translator disk to trick the 800XL into using the 800 OS and this solved the problem.

[DuckandCover]

Since purchasing my 800XL a few months back, I haven't had any software problems. However, long term I would like to obtain some old casette and disk games. (At the moment, I'm concentrating on carts, but some of the older RPG's, like Telengard have been calling... ) If I needed to obtain a translator disk, where could I find one?

[oesii]

An easy way to get a translator disk besides looking for it on ebay or online retailers is to make it yourself. Download it from the utilities section here: http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/atari/

 

and then you can transfer it to a old atari double density disk using a sio2pc program, ape, or atari810.

[AtariDude]

Luckily, a maority of programs will work with both systems. I only found a few programs that needed a translator disk and I used to mark the diskettes with a little dot like the kind that you can buy at an office supply store.

 

I would only mark the sleeves for the diskette and not the diskette itself. I was not sure if adding a dot would create a problem with the diskette fitting into the drive.