36 years and I never knew...

[Rybags]

Turn on your real Atari XL or XE (or just fire up emulation with the appropriate OS.  Hold Option to disable Basic, leave drives off so it goes to Self Test.

 

Then wait.

 

Without user prompting after some time (by my estimate, double the time it takes for attract mode to normally appear so it's probably counting 256 ticks of the middle byte of RTCLOK) "ALL TESTS" will start automatically and keep running until you exit.

 

Fairly sure I've never done that before today... that's over 20 minutes sitting at the Self Test menu on a PAL machine which would be a rarity.

[foft]

It would be even better if it then ran the 'Self demo'

[+Philsan]

I discovered it years ago forgetting to close Altirra emulator.

After a while I started to hear sound test.

[Mclaneinc]

Can't sat I noticed it but what a strange delay amount, activated with attract mode I could understand but twice as long?

 

I believe a lot of weed was smoked in Atari then...That might answer it...

[Rybags]

Not activated with attract mode flag or even RTCLOK.

 

 

Had to look - there's multiple DLIs and during one a 2-byte counter at $80 is incremented, once the high byte hits $FA it automatically starts.

So, just under double the time it takes for attract mode.

 

Edited November 3, 2019 by Rybags

[Heaven/TQA]

Can not remember it runs into self test... just attract mode...

[Gunstar]

Sure, I left my computer sitting on the self-test menu, way back in the 80's and came back after a while and it was in the middle of doing self-tests on it's own. But sometimes we just miss things; I recently learned that Happy upgraded 810's are still single density after thinking they were double density upgrades like the 1050 ones, for 34 or so years...

Edited November 3, 2019 by Gunstar

[xrbrevin]

easter egg: the automated keyboard test spells out some bloke's name and a copyright message

[Rybags]

Early revisions - Michael Colburn

 

Later - Copyright 1983 Atari

 

XEGS - Copyright 1985 Atari

[Heaven/TQA]

Ah Wait... say Auto play when you are already in self test? Yes... I knew that... I thought from basic prompt.

[xrbrevin]

can the ROM file be hex-edited to automatically type any text?

[+DrVenkman]

2 hours ago, xrbrevin said:

easter egg: the automated keyboard test spells out some bloke's name and a copyright message

 

1 hour ago, Rybags said:

Early revisions - Michael Colburn

 

Later - Copyright 1983 Atari

 

XEGS - Copyright 1985 Atari

Isn’t the “Michael Colburn” routine only in the first version of the 1200XL OS? I think I remember that ... I also think he was interviewed for the ANTIC Podcast a couple years back and talked about it, but I could be misremembering. 

[Rybags]

It made it through later than that, I'm just about sure my first 600XL had it - pretty sure it's the same one that does a coldstart as soon as a cartridge state change is detected where later revisions have the Copyright and just halt when a cart state change occurs.

[+Stephen]

Well, I only learned a few weeks ago (even though I owned it since late 1982), that if you leave Star Raiders in attract mode long enough, it goes to the 3D star field as a screen saver.  I never let the game sit long enough to see it before.

[firebottle]

6 hours ago, Stephen said:

Well, I only learned a few weeks ago (even though I owned it since late 1982), that if you leave Star Raiders in attract mode long enough, it goes to the 3D star field as a screen saver.  I never let the game sit long enough to see it before.

 

Checked this out. The star field screen saver happens in 9 minutes.

[+Nezgar]

9 hours ago, Rybags said:

It made it through later than that, I'm just about sure my first 600XL had it - pretty sure it's the same one that does a coldstart as soon as a cartridge state change is detected where later revisions have the Copyright and just halt when a cart state change occurs.

Yep. I confirmed this myself in the past too - it types out "Michael Colburn" in 1200XL Rev 10 & 11, and 600/800XL Rev.1 too: