Atari BASIC questions

[IndyJones1023]

I remember nothing from using BASIC back in the 80s. Hell, it's tough to remember what I had for lunch yesterday.

 

I am trying to write a simple BASIC program much like a flashing billboard (for my streaming vinyl channel). I would like the ability to flash words on the screen in large letters (much like the attached images). To that end, I asked ChatGPT to write me a program and this is what it came up with.

 

10 GRAPHICS 8            ; Set graphics mode
20 PRINT CHR$(147)       ; Clear screen
30 COLOR 1               ; Set initial color
40 FOR I = 1 TO 10       ; Loop to flash the text
50   PRINT " "            ; Add spaces for centering
60   PRINT "  THE RETRO SCENE  "
70   COLOR 2              ; Change color
80   PRINT " "            ; Add spaces for centering
90   PRINT "  THE RETRO SCENE  "
100  COLOR 1              ; Change color back
110  FOR T = 1 TO 1000    ; Delay for visibility
120  NEXT T
130  PRINT CHR$(147)      ; Clear screen again
140 NEXT I
150 PRINT "PRESS ANY KEY TO EXIT"
160 INPUT A$              ; Wait for key press
170 END

 

Which sort of works. But the text is just the regular font size. And it seems to only be on the bottom few lines of the screen. It is nowhere near "large."

 

Any help would be appreciated. Ideally, if the program could be recycled so that I only have to change out the text each week, that would be great.

[Peri Noid]

Graphics mode 8 is a monochrome graphics (not text) mode. It cannot display text with PRINT. By the way, Atari Basic has no features allowing one to select font sizes. In a given text mode the same font is available everywhere on the screen. To get what you want you'd need to either write your own text-printing procedures to print letters in a graphics mode (with color/size of your choice) or play with the display list, mix different text modes on the screen and either use the built-in font or define your own. Anyway, it's a bit more complex.

[_The Doctor__]

Wasn't there graphics/art programs that stamped letters of different sizes and colors to the screen? You then simply displayed the picture? Make several and slide show them would be possible.

Aren't there already billboard programs?

Or are we trying to write our own?

 

https://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-400-800-xl-xe-video-billboard_30479.html

or choose from these, and there are more just no categorized yet

https://www.atarimania.com/list_utilities_atari-400-800-xl-xe-graphics-genlock-information-display_genre_190_8_U.html

 

You could try moviemaker for some fun backgrounds for you uses

https://www.atarimania.com/pgesoft.awp?version=27169

 

or grab the atr from here to add some music and visuals and all the other stuff

https://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-400-800-xl-xe-virtuoso-desktop-performance-studio_31911.html

https://archive.org/download/VirtuosoDesktopPerformanceStudio

 

The were also type ins and antic etc BASIC based offerings in magazines, shareware etc.

Edited Wednesday at 06:57 PM by _The Doctor__

[TGB1718]

1 hour ago, IndyJones1023 said:

To that end, I asked ChatGPT to write me a program and this is what it came up with.

That was your first mistake

 Those so called AI programs never get anything right, still they got the name right Artificial Idiot 🤣

[+MrFish]

3 hours ago, IndyJones1023 said:

I asked ChatGPT to write me a program

  Here we go again, again...  

 

3 hours ago, IndyJones1023 said:

Which sort of works. But the text is just the regular font size. And it seems to only be on the bottom few lines of the screen. It is nowhere near "large."

Yeah, because ChatGPT doesn't know pee-diddly squat about Atari 8-bit computer programming.

 

3 hours ago, IndyJones1023 said:

Any help would be appreciated. Ideally, if the program could be recycled so that I only have to change out the text each week, that would be great.

There is no help for ChatGPT Atari 8-bit computer programs. The only place to recycle them is here.

 

 

3 hours ago, IndyJones1023 said:

These screens wouldn't be very difficult to reproduce. They would need to be rendered in BASIC Graphics mode 15 (+ 16). Then the bits for each character would need to be retrieved from the built-in character set, scaled appropriately, and plotted to the screen in the desired color. It looks like the scaling would be 2x for each pixel in width and 4x for each pixel in height -- since mode 15 pixels are wider than high, and the finer resolution is needed to produce the smaller "THE" text. The smaller "THE" would have to be rendered as a custom plot, because it doesn't match the built-in character dimensions in any scaling; but it would be done simply enough.

 

[+MrFish]

2 minutes ago, MrFish said:

These screens wouldn't be very difficult to reproduce. They would need to be rendered in BASIC Graphics mode 15 (+ 16). Then the bits for each character would need to be retrieved from the built-in character set, scaled appropriately, and plotted to the screen in the desired color. It looks like the scaling would be 2x for each pixel in width and 4x for each pixel in height, since mode 15 pixels are wider than high, and the finer resolution is needed to produce the smaller "THE" text. The smaller "THE" would have to be rendered as a custom plot, because it doesn't match the built-in character dimensions in any scaling; but it would be done simply enough.

An easier way would be to import the graphics to Graph2Font. The colors could easily be changed any time necessary. But, then that wouldn't be Atari BASIC programming; if that's one of the points of the exercise.

 

[+MrFish]

Here's the screen rendered in Graph2Font for the Atari. The main font you used is actually the Namco standard font. So, I've used that here too.

 

retro scene.xex

 

 

[TGB1718]

Best quickie your going to get with BASIC is this, not quite what you want, but a starter, just messes with the

display list about 1/2 way down the screen to switch between GRAPHICS modes 1 and 2.

 

 

[IndyJones1023]

17 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said:

Wasn't there graphics/art programs that stamped letters of different sizes and colors to the screen? You then simply displayed the picture? Make several and slide show them would be possible.

Aren't there already billboard programs?

Or are we trying to write our own?

 

https://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-400-800-xl-xe-video-billboard_30479.html

or choose from these, and there are more just no categorized yet

https://www.atarimania.com/list_utilities_atari-400-800-xl-xe-graphics-genlock-information-display_genre_190_8_U.html

 

You could try moviemaker for some fun backgrounds for you uses

https://www.atarimania.com/pgesoft.awp?version=27169

 

or grab the atr from here to add some music and visuals and all the other stuff

https://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-400-800-xl-xe-virtuoso-desktop-performance-studio_31911.html

https://archive.org/download/VirtuosoDesktopPerformanceStudio

 

The were also type ins and antic etc BASIC based offerings in magazines, shareware etc.

I tried the video billboard program, but I cannot figure it out without the instructions.

 

The Message Display Program from your second link looks promising.

 

I had Movie Maker back in the day! Very prescient, as I'm now a filmmaker, lol. I'll check that out again.

 

I may check out that Virtuoso program, as well.

[IndyJones1023]

This is what would be ideal. A BASIC program that would allow me to type in some text and do what's in the animated GIF. Or some program on the 800 (stock) that can render animated GIFs would solve my issue, as well.

[+MrFish]

Here's a simple TBXL program that can reproduce the screens.

 

It allows you to scale the text to any factors on the X and Y axis.

It's using the Atari font; but it would be trivial to allow using other fonts.

 

 

[Edit: Updated listing to include fixing the two lines that were nested one level too deep and executing redundantly.]

 

[+MrFish]

 

[IndyJones1023]

17 minutes ago, MrFish said:

Here's a simple TBXL program that can reproduce the screens.

 

It allows you to scale the text to any factors on the X and Y axis.

It's using the Atari font; but it would be trivial to allow using other fonts.

 

 

 

Your effort is appreciated! Any chance you can copy/paste that code rather than screen shotting it?

[+MrFish]

 

[_The Doctor__]

I think he'd like the .ATR or listing to cut and paste.

 

[Mark2008]

Because AI Engineer is what I do for a living, I have a slightly different view on improving the output from a large language model like ChatGPT.

 

What you'd want to do, is basically give it the answer, and then it'll repeat the answer.  

 

That is far more useful than it sounds, in practice.

 

Let's say I asked ChatGPT the time right now:

 

ChatGPT

Quote

I can’t check the time for you, but you can easily find it on your device or a nearby clock. If you need help with something else, let me know!"

 

Now let's say I said to ChatGPT, The time is 6:32PM. Tell me the time.

 

Quote

The time is 6:32 PM.

 

Now, as I accurately told it the time, it accurately told me the time.

 

That may seem ridiculous, and in this trivial example it has no point.

 

Now imagine, you have a retriever augmented generation system that can scan 10,000 documents.  Can you read 10,000 documents in an instant and accurately recall all the facts?

 

This is where, a properly designed system becomes amazingly useful.  You do have to feed it the answer, but it may be an answer you would never have reasonably found.

 

I now use AI every day, to goose my output by many multiples of what I could do without it. Highly recommended.

Edited Thursday at 11:37 PM by Mark2008

[+MrFish]

18 hours ago, IndyJones1023 said:

Your effort is appreciated! Any chance you can copy/paste that code rather than screen shotting it?

Yeah, I was planning to post it. I posted the screen shot first because it's easy to read with the keyword highlighting and forced gaps between sections.

 

[Edit: Code removed. Updated version posted further down the thread.].

 

17 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said:

I think he'd like the .ATR or listing to cut and paste.

And, the ATR. The tokenized program is BIGTEXT.TTB.

 

[Edit: ATR removed. Updated version posted further down the thread.]

 

[TGB1718]

Unfortunately from personal experience asking AI anything technical is like asking a 4 year old for the same answer.

It keeps spewing out the same answer no matter how you rephrase the question.

 

For example when I bought a Raspberry Pi 5, the way you access the GPIO pins is different, an in spite of finding

some documents on-line, there never seems to be any suitable examples for your particular program.

Asked AI and the examples that come back may as well be written by a random word generator.

 

Yes AI may have a place somewhere, but certainly nothing technical unless it's been "groomed" for a particular subject.

[IndyJones1023]

https://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-400-800-xl-xe-turbo-basic-xl_s12966.html

 

Is that the Turbo Basic I should be downloading?

[pirx]

yes

cheers from Miami btw

[IndyJones1023]

Cheers!

 

I scrolled up to find the ATR of the program. I am trying to figure this out. Can you believe my minor was computer science? I mean, I went in a different direction in life and forgot it all (obviously).

 

I am able to load the program and list it, but how can I change the text? I can't seem to figure that out.

 

Thanks again for all the help!

[_The Doctor__]

Line 120

line 170

line 200

 

You can change the text in those lines and tweak as needed

Edited Friday at 02:19 PM by _The Doctor__

[+Stephen]

Think of the BASIC editor on these machines as being in a word processor.  You can use the arrow keys to go up to the line you want to edit, and insert characters, delete characters, overtype, etc.  Pressing enter on a line you are editing "saves" it in memory, then you can just run the modified program again.

 

EDIT - sorry, upon seeing the above answer, I think I misinterpreted your question.

[_The Doctor__]

I think your answer is way better than mine, he should be able to do what he wants or needs now.

He needs to know when he saves the changed file that the .ATR disk protection in altirra needs to be turned off so it actually writes to the hard drive and not virtually

The reason why? see my post, I'm hungry and the sandwiches are good! Eat mor chikn!

Edited Friday at 02:25 PM by _The Doctor__

[IndyJones1023]

Okay, I'm getting the hang of it. I even figured out how to insert and delete spaces on my own! lol

 

If I change the text to something longer, how do I change how far indented the text is?