I was down on my luck in 1990/91 when a friend gave me his "fully loaded" Atari 800 as a hand me down. Twin floppies, printer and modem. Had this cart and I got to know the program well. For an early 80's 8-bit word processor on 40 columns it was above average. Ran faster and smoother than Bank Street Writer ever did on the Atari and was easier to use. Enough features easy enough to use to get a lot done, and small enough to fit on an 8k cart ! Switched to AtariWriter+ later. This little word processor helped me write nice resumes !
To this day I think the Atari 800xl and 130xe computers I got second hand proved the whole line of Atari 8-bits was underrated. |
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this was released as a full price product, by 2 bit systems. A friend had the disk version, I remember it in a green cover. this is just modded for firebird
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It was very useful tool to play adventure text-graph games. If there was some real problem getting too much time to solve some riddle, or to find a proper word, or action, etc. - it was enough to check disk containing a game with this program Sherlock to be ready for further journey. Great tool, very useful it was, I remember. I was changing many demos and programs, games, etc. - using this Sherlock. Wherever I saw some readable text, I was changing to my own characters and texts directly on the disk, then admiring my genial job as a pirate. Actually on the PC computers it's easier. It's enough to change whatever in files just using Notepad, or no matter of what kind the simplest text editors. Obvious. |
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I wrote a lot of papers on this program, both in high school and college.
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Thanks for dumping this! This program needs a ramdisk, so at least 128k. On a 64k machine it will generate an error message. |
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The Altirra emulator supports tablet input for this title, though you have to add it manually:
1. Input > Input Mappings...
2. Click Add... call it "Mouse -> Atari Tablet" or similar
3. Click Edit...
4. Add Controller... , choose Tablet (Atari touch tablet), OK
5. Axis 1 -> Edit... , Source : Mouse Pos X (pad)
6. Axis 2 -> Edit... , Source : Mouse Pos Y (pad)
7. You can map Left/Right/Up/Down to the arrow or WASD keys on your keyboard or leave them blank
8. The Stylus button was a button on the pen. It draws when the stylus is DOWN, and toggles the tool screen when stylus is UP.
I mapped the buttons on the pen & tablet as follows:
Stylus button -> Mouse LMB
Left tablet button -> Mouse X1B
Right tablet button -> Mouse X2B
Raise stylus -> Mouse RMB |
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Correction Mystery House was written for The Apple II Computer not the Atari. |
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Interesting tidbit about the VersaWriter. In 1980 Roberta Williams of Sierra On-Line used the VersaWriter to draw the digital images used in her first graphical adventure game “Mystery House “ for the Atari Computer.
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Hamsoft is a cartridge used with a Kantronics "The Interface" or "The Interface II". This was software for the Ham Radio community that allowed the Atari Computer to send and receive Morse code/ RTTY/ & ASCII code. |
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Russell Knight and myself coded all our games using the Mac65 cartridge. An essential piece of kit! |
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