When you boot the Translator disk, use one of the commercial "fix"
disks (such as FIXXL), or run Matt Ratcliff's "ROM OS to RAM OS" pro-
gram (Appendix 19), you turn your OS from ROM based to RAM
based. This allows you to change it by POKEing directly into mem-
ory. When you use the Translator or the Allen MacroWare XL BOSS
chip, you have the 400/800 operating system in memory instead of
the XL/XE OS.
This section describes many changes which can be made to the
400/800 OS when in the XL/XE RAM. In all cases, Revision B OS is de-
scribed since the Translator and Allen MacroWare don't use the Re-
vision A OS. These changes can be POKEd into memory if you have
the Translator booted or the XL BOSS installed. For 400/800 owners, if
you have the hardware for making your own PROMs or EPROMs, you
can make these changes into the PROMs and replace them in your
OS board. The same applies for the Newell Industries RamRod
board.
I have tested and used both the Newell RamRod and the Allen
MacroWare XL BOSS and consider them both excellent products and
highly recommend them. Much of the following material was de-
rived from their manuals.
You can change the character set directly by POKEing here
rather than reserving space in memory for an altered set. See
the section on character sets in the main memory map and
54017 ($D301). (XL/XE users can change this and the inter-
national set also.)
To increase the cassette baud rate by almost one-third and re-
duce the time of the leader from 20 to 10 seconds, POKE the
following:
POKE
Address Value Hex
60294 00 $EB84, $00 low byte, write baud
60299 04 $EB8B, $04 high byte
61250 00 $EF42, $00 low byte, baud rate init
routine
61255 04 $EF47, $04 high byte
61346 00 $EFA2, $00 baud rate open routine
61351 04 $EFA7, $04 high byte
61371 02 $EFBB, $02 leader time
The buzzer/bell time for warning sound prompts. Initially 127
($7F), you can reduce it to any time; 63($3F) is half the time.
This location also affects the key click sound time.
Default (startup) color value tables. These values are moved to
the shadow registers 708-712 ($2C5-$2C8) on power-up or RE-
SET. The screen startup is blue; to change it to black, POKE
65219 ($FEC3), 0.
The keyboard table; you can redefine the entire keyboard by
POKEing here (see the XL/XE map section). One trick is to
change the keyboard so that the cursor (arrow) keys work on
pressing, and you have to press SHIFT and arrow to get -, =,
+, and *, and CONTROL and arrow to get , ,
, and . Do
this by:
POKE
Address Value Hex
65284 30 $FF04, $1E
65285 31 $FF05, $1F
65292 28 $FF0C, $1C
65293 29 $FF0D, $1D
65348 43 $FF44, $2B
65349 42 $FF45, $2A
65356 45 $FF4C, $2D
65357 61 $FF4D, $3D
65412 92 $FF84, $5C
65413 94 $FF85, $5E
65420 95 $FF8C, $5F
65421 124 $FF8D, $7C
(XL/XE owners: Your keyboard definition table begins at 64337,
so to use this modification, subtract 941 from the addresses
given above.)
1200XL owners: You can use your function keys as cursor keys
by POKE 65281, 30 ($FF01,$1E), POKE 65282, 31 ($FF02,$1F),
POKE 65297, 28 ($FF11, $1C) and POKE 65298, 11 ($FF12,$1D).
XL/XE only: To make the HELP key a start/stop key equivalent to
CONTROL-1, POKE here with 17 ($11). The HELP key returns a
keycode value at 732 ($2DC) of 17 ($11) for normal use, 81 ($51)
for SHIFT+HELP, and 145 ($91) for CONTROL+HELP.