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Anyone have the XL BOSS OS ROM?


Nezgar

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So my original post was going include be "What does BOSS-XL do other than 800 compatibility" but looks like this page answered all my questions!
http://www.cyberroach.com/analog/an25/xlboss.htm

Referenced also in Mapping the Atari, Appendix Twelve on atariarchives.org: https://www.atariarchives.org/mapping/appendix12.php
"A hardware solution is available: the XL BOSS chip from Allen MacroWare."

Anyhow, I used to have this OS in my 130XE that my dad had modded for me back in the day as one of 4 selectable OS's . It was nice because it disabled BASIC by default, and had 800 compatibility for games. I didn't about any other features until reading that article just now. :) Unfortunately, that particular OS ROM just gives me a RED screen in that machine now, so the EPROM must have erased itself over the years.

I'd like to find it again to make a new XL BOSS EPROM, but I am having trouble finding it in the usual places (ie pigwa).

If it really is missing from the generally known collective, I know there's still a working one inside an 800XL that I returned to a friend last year before I realized my own machine's plight. I'd have to try to get him to run a ROM dump program...

 

Thanks!

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Wow... good things come to those that ask. Thank you to an anonymous sender for their PM!

 

XLBOSS1.bin seems to be most likely the OS I remember, I a hex editor I can see the MEMOPAD replacement header "THE XL BOSS V1.0" and "LOAD ERROR" instead of "BOOT ERROR" , and 4KB of blank space at the beginning of the ROM

 

XLBOSS2.bin has a lot more data in the first 4KB, the original "BOOT ERROR" again, and I see the string "macromon xl © allen macroware" in hex editor, so the disk based macromon maybe got included in this ROM. Not sure if the rest is an 800 compatible OS, or a derivative of the XL OS.

XLBOSS1.bin

XLBOSS2.bin

XLXEBOSS.doc

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  • 7 months later...

I was browsing some ANTIC and Analog magazines on the Internet archive, and came across some ads for the BOSS XL (Analog, Dec 84), and the BOSS XL II (Antic, Nov 86) clearly showing the marketing features pitched for both versions of the ROM. The first did not include the Macromon in the ROM, and it was sold separately on disk (as we have seen previously in this thread). The second version included Macromon in the ROM.

 

post-53052-0-65670000-1549031560.jpg post-53052-0-61549200-1549031568.jpg

 

In the same Dec 84 issue of Antic, Mat*Rat wrote a two page review of the XL BOSS as well, on page 21/22: https://archive.org/details/analog-computing-magazine-25/page/n22

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