Do you need a basic cartridge to play games with a disk driv

[GameGod]

Yep. Another question Tempest...

 

Do you need a basic cartridge to play games with a disk drive. (1050?)

 

I know that some (all?) tape games need a basic cartridge.

 

Help! Thanks in advance.

[Tempest]

I don't think so. I haven't found a disk game yet that needs the Basic cart, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. I don't have enough disk games to be sure but I'd guess no.

 

Tempest

[Gunstar]

Yeah, the only time you need the basic cartridge is to run programs that were written in basic. Regardless of the format; tape or disk. But rest assured when it comes to "commercial" programs, there are very few, if any, written in basic. You should only run across basic programs when dealing with PD or shareware, or, like Tempest said, some of the ancient APX classics. The same is true if you come across any of the extremely rare programs that were written in other Atari languages, like 'Action!,' you'll need an Action! language cart for those. There are actually a LOT of different computer languages that came out on cart for the Atari, but very few programs that ever made use of them (mostly programs like these are found in old Atari magazines to type in).

[Rhindle The Red]

There are definitely some games that require the BASIC cart if you don't have a system with BASIC built in. These are mostly home brew games written in BASIC: APX, Antic Magazine, etc. But they are out there.

[Nukey Shay]

Not necessarily -written- in Basic, but also programs that took advantage of Basic's FP & graphics routines (I think that Roklan's Silent Run was one...it's the only reason I could come up with why it required Basic**). Generally, the older a program is, the more chance that Basic routines were used (since in it's early days, Atari was reluctant to offer specifics about hardware locations and such. P/M graphics had people stumped for a while until De Re showed up. Here's some that I know were written in Basic (because I have them)...

-States And Capitals

-World Geography

-Mar Tesoro (Sea Treasure)

-Dragon's Eye

-Telengard

-Atari Language series

* the last group of programs also required a 410 cassette recorder, as the language samples were piped directly to the TV speaker.

 

** The variable name table was erased...this was an early form of copy-protection (it made the LIST command lock up the machine). By using a program to re-build the table, I was able to LIST the program...which if I remember correctly just contained a USR call.

 

[ 08-04-2001: Message edited by: Nukey Shay ]