"MBOARD2" Message Display System

[Pab]

Unearthed in my archives as I encode my old floppies....

 

I wrote this program in 1991 while working at the Community Access TV station in Vineland, NJ. When they did not have programming on (which was most of the time) they had a scrolling message board where people would pay to advertise their business on a video "slide," and some regular features like local news, sports scores, trivia, etc.

 

The software they were using was a BASIC program which would draw GRAPHICS 2 screens with text as the user watched. All one color, all big text, all uppercase. I decided that would not do.

 

The result was "MBOARD2," written in Turbo BASIC XL under SpartaDOS 3.2 (so I had the built-in clock handy) and using mixed mode graphics. The operator could edit screens through a WYSIWYG editor, allowing a mix of text modes. The static top bar was designed to have station ID on it.

 

They used this for about three years before a new employee convinced them to move to an Amiga 500.

 

I offered this for distribution through one of the Atari Magazines of the time. I can't remember whether it was Current Notes or another mag, but it was technically released.

 

Not a very useful program today, but still a nice peek at a practical use for the Atari 8-bits at the time. 

 

MBoard.atr

[www.atarimania.com]

Found the review: https://archive.org/details/current-notes-volume-13-number-4-may-1993/page/36/mode/2up

[Pab]

13 minutes ago, www.atarimania.com said:

Found the review: https://archive.org/details/current-notes-volume-13-number-4-may-1993/page/36/mode/2up

Thanks. I was wrong that I thought it was distributed, it was just reviewed. I'd almost forgotten I'd written the thing until I found the original floppy.