Norton Utilities For The Atari 8-bit

Nelson — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 18:40:33 +0000

Continuing with the theme of my last post, I will now give my account of my adventures with my Atari 130XE 8-bit computer.

The Atari 8-bit was the first computer I owned. My mother bought it for me in 1984. This computer came equipped with 128-Kbytes of memory (which was 64-Kbytes more than the norm at the time), built-in Atari BASIC, a cartridge slot, and an expansion slot.

By the time Norton Utilities 7 came out for the IBM PC I already owned several, and SpartaDOS 3.2d (a command-line DOS) was already a hit with the Atari 8-bits. This was a great OS that allowed me to easily code command-line programs I was already coding on the IBM PC for the Atari 8-bit .

At that time I was working with huge .arc files (.arc is the extension of the archival shrinking program used before .zip came along) and when I needed to unerase some of these out of necessity I always ended-up damning the unerase command of SpartaDOS because it was so buggy. So I devised a plan to write my own. This idea later merged into a goal to convert many of the Norton Utilities command-line programs to the Atari 8-bit.

My language of choice on the Atari 8-bit was Action! by OSS, Inc. ¹ Action! was easy to program in and generated some of the fastest and most compact code I have seen on the Atari 8-bits.

Here are a few lines of code of UnDel (my unerase version) written in Action! ²

SET $E = $2200
SET $491 = $2200

;SET $E = $2100
;SET $491 = $2100

;SET $495 = $A ; increase variable table

BYTE RTS = [$60]

; primitive system library routines
INCLUDE "D2:>SYS>SYSLIB.ACT"

; IO routines
INCLUDE "D2:>SYS>SYSIO.ACT"

; misc. routines
INCLUDE "D2:>UNERASE>SYSMISC.ACT"

; string routines
INCLUDE "D2:>UNERASE>SYSSTR.ACT"

; Modified SECTIO.ACT
INCLUDE "D2:>RTNS>MSectIO.Act"

; Modified BLKIO.ACT
INCLUDE "D2:>RTNS>MBlkIO.ACT"

; Modified REAL library
INCLUDE "D2:>UNERASE>MREAL.ACT"

; UnErase Code:

byte Version = $701, ; SpartaDOS Version
      prompt = [0], ; prompt user before unerasing file
      integrity, ; integrity flag
      drive = [0], ; drive to read sectors from
      UD_flag = [0], ; unerase dirs also
      DO_flag = [28], ; dir open flag (update or read[list deleted])
      dir_flag = [0], ; unerase as dir(1) or file(0)
      A_flag = [0], ; attribute scan flag
      a_bit, ; archive attribute scan (Set or Cleared)
      ss, ; density of sectors (128 or 256)
      sd, ; density of sectors for SectIO routines in MSectIO
      wr, ; MSectIO write command — write or write with verify
      n_a, ; three byte note (xio 38)
      n_b,
      n_c,
      lsb, ; 24 bit numbers in lsb, nsb and msb format
      nsb,
      msb,
      bit, ; bit to read or modify
      byyte, ; byte who's bit will be read or modified
      Key, ; used by the the GetKey function
      CWD_flag = [0],
      l

byte array arg1(30), ; comm-line argument
      path(30),
      bin(8), ; bin data from ml routine decbin
      str_real(20), ; hold a string real-number
      hold(128), ; do a cwd back to the user's cwd dir
      boot(128), ; boot sector
      BMaps(256), ; store bitmaps
      SMaps(256), ; store sectormaps
      fcomp(13), ; file1 for dir entry compare
      cmpfile(13), ; file2 for dir entry compare
      subdir(29), ; put the path
      fname(13), ; and the filename
      raw(24), ; holds raw dir entries
      atEOL(1) = [$01 $9B], ; Atari EOL

INCLUDE "D2:>RTNS>DecBin.Act"
,
INCLUDE "D2:>RTNS>BinDec.Act"

card p, n, ts, fbm, cBMap = [0], BMap = [0], dosvec = 10,
UC_flag = [0] ; recover dir entry count flag

real rDensity, r256, r65, rnum1, rnum2, realr, ; real result
rBMap, bits

. . .

Proc Main()

byte num

;close(1) ; use when compiling in
; SpartaDOS 3.2x

device = 0 ; initialize ACTION!'s system device

error = MyError ; now give ACTION! the address of MyError Proc

ZCrName = dosvec + 3 ; ZCRNAME

Path(0) = 0

ValR( "65536″, r65 )
ValR( "256″, r256 )
ValR( "8″, bits )

pute()
printe( "UnErase Version 1.0 1-Jan-1996″ )
printe( " Copr. 1996, Nelson Nieves" )
pute()

; make sure that we are in SpartaDOS 3.2d or X:

if Version < $32 then
    printe ("Not SpartaDOS 3.2d or X!")
    if peek($700) <> 'S then ; if in another DOS give the user a chance to
      GetKey()               ; read the message
    fi
    Return
fi

;cmlinput() ; puts command line
; arguments into lbuf
; for debugging

num = NumArgs() ; get number of comm-line arguments

if num = 0 or num > 5 then
    Usage()
    Return
else
    for l = 1 to num do
      GetArgs(0, arg1)
      if Proc_Args(arg1) = 0 then
        Usage()
        Return
      fi
    od
fi

if Path(0) = 0 then
printe("Must specify drive or path!")
Return
fi

PathParse( Path, subdir, fname )

if fname(0) = 0 then
scopy(fname, "*.*")
fi

;setblock( fcomp+1, 12, $20) ; put spaces in fcomp

for l = 0 to 12 do
fcomp(l) = $20
od

fcomp(0) = 8 ; set fcomp string to the length of 8

for l = 1 to fname(0) do
    if fname(l) = '. then
      scopys( bin, fname, l, l+4)
      makestr(fcomp, bin, 0)
      exit
    else
      fcomp(l)=fname(l)
    fi
od
fcomp(0) = 12 ; just incase
fcomp(9) = '. ; just incase

SetUp()

ChkDisk()

_dir() ; do a dir? and put the result in hold

OpenDir()

if DO_flag = 28 then
    if UC_flag = 0 then
      pute()
      print("No dir entry")
    else
      pute()
      printc(UC_flag)
      print(" dir entr")

      if UC_flag < = 1 then
        print("y")
      else
       print("ies")
      fi
    fi

    printe(" recovered.")
else
    if UC_flag = 0 then
      printe("No deleted dir entries.")
    fi
fi

User_cwd()

usr(dosvec, 0) ; exit to dos

Return

Many of these program survive today, mostly online in many of the Atari 8-bit archives and in one of my own Atari 8-bit websites.

One of the last programs I had started was a defragmentor for the Atari 8-bit. Because of the 128 Kbytes limit of the Atari 8-bit it was to be composed of two command-line programs to accomplish the task. The first program was to be the directory optimizer (this would have removed many of the deleted entries in the directories prior to running the defragmentor—and possibly freeing up sectors.) But by then, it was too late, the Atari 8-bit was already dead and I had no free time to continue investing my time in the project.

On Wikipidea I noticed that the description given to Action! is that of a language similar to BASIC and C, this is wrong in my opinion, Action! has the best of both C and Pascal, not BASIC. [back]
This is an older code, where I used a lot of floating point functions (which I later recoded into integer functions [in assembly] for a more compact and faster program). I lost the most recent versions of the codes to many of the programs, although the compiled binary versions of the programs on my website are the most recent versions. [back]

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Norton Utilities For The Atari 8-bit