Printing to the screen was a little too ambitious as the next step.  Instead I looked at something arguably more useful; comparison and branching.  Since part of what my PREFS program does is unique to the Atari XL/XE series I decided to have it check for those versions of the OS.  If they are found, then the XL/XE portion of the code is executed, otherwise it will just exit.

OS Version Detection

There are two memory locations in the Atari which reflect the OS version.  It moved by one byte between the original Atari 400/800 OS and the Atari XL/XE OS.  The older location is $FFF8 (65528).  There are three values representing different revisions and television display standards (North American  NTSC and European PAL – although the delineation is not that cut and dry).  For this programs purposes I only need to check for the XL/XE so the older location is only being documented.

• 221 = Atari 400/800 OS, Revision A, NTSC
• 214 = Atari 400/800 OS, Revision A, PAL
• 243 = Atari 400/800 OS, Revision B, NTSC

The newer location is one byte lower in memory at $FFF7 (65527).  There are several values that it can have.  For my purposes I’m only concerned with values 1-4, 10 and 11.

• 1 = Atari XL/XE OS, Revision 1
• 2 = Atari XL/XE OS, Revision 2
• 3 = Atari XL/XE OS, Revision 3
• 4 = Atari XL/XE OS, Revision 4
• 10 = Atari XL/XE OS, Revision 10
• 11 = Atari XL/XE OS, Revision 11

New Instructions

If/then logic in 6502 assembly is implemented with a combination of comparison and branching instructions.  There are three comparison instructions: CMP, CPX, CPY.  CMP compares values in the accumulator, while CPX and CPY compare values in the X and Y registers respectively.

There are eight branch instructions.  I’m only going to cover the ones I use, others will be introduced as I need them.  For now, BCC and BEQ are of interest.

• BCC tells the processor to Branch if the Carry flag is Clear.
• BEQ tells the processor to Branch if the values compared are equal, but more precisely if the result of the comparison leaves the zero flag set.

If / Then Construction

The comparison and branching instructions are not very useful by themselves.  Coupling them together allows you to build the if/then constructs which make them very useful.

Here are five examples of combining the instructions into useful if/then constructs.  The LDA instructions here load a value using Immediate Addressing mode (the specified value) written as “LDA #value”.  To load the accumulator with a value from a memory location, you would use the Absolute Addressing mode which is written as “LDA $hhhh”.  As you will see later, I use absolute addressing in the updates to my program.

• Accumulator = VALUE2 :

LDA #VALUE1
CMP #VALUE2
BEQ

• Accumulator <> VALUE2 :

LDA #VALUE1
CMP #VALUE2
BNE

• Accumulator >= VALUE2 :

LDA #VALUE1
CMP #VALUE2
BCS

• Accumulator > VALUE2 :

LDA #VALUE1
CMP #VALUE2
BEQ
BCS

• Accumulator < VALUE2 :

LDA #VALUE1
CMP #VALUE2
BCC

Putting It To Use

I’ve modified my PREFS program with the appropriate constructs.  I’ve added many definitions since last time and renumbered to make room for expansion.

10       *=  $3800
20       .OPT OBJ
49 ; Defines
50 RMARG =   82
51 CFORE =   709
52 CBACK =   710
53 KDELY =   729
54 KRATE =   730
55 CLICK =   731
60 OSNEW =   $FFF7
61 OSOLD =   $FFF8
97 ;
98 ; Set universal OS stuff
99 ;
0100 ; Set left margin to 0
0110     LDA #0
0120     STA RMARG
0200 ; Set background color
0210     LDA #4
0220     STA CBACK
0300 ; Set text color
0310     LDA #$0C
0320     STA CFORE
0399 ;
0499 ; Do XL/XE section?
0500 ; XLXE OS R1,R2,R3,R4
0505     LDA OSNEW
0510     CMP #5
0520     BCC XLXE
0530 ; XLXE OS R10
0540     LDA OSNEW
0550     CMP #10
0560     BEQ XLXE
0570 ; XLXE OS R11
0580     LDA OSNEW
0590     CMP #11
0600     BEQ XLXE
0610 ; No Match
0620     JMP DONE
0999 ;
1000 XLXE
1005 ; Set key repeat rate
1010     LDA #2
1020     STA KRATE
1100 ; Set key delay
1110     LDA #14
1120     STA KDELY
1200 ; No key click
1210     LDA #1
1220     STA CLICK
1899 ;
1900 DONE
1910     RTS
1920     .END

Here is a breakdown of what the program code is doing.  The main differences are in lines 500 through 620.

• Lines 10-61 : Assembler directives and definitions.
• Lines 100-320 : Set the preferences that work across all Atari OS versions.
• Lines 505-520 : Comparison logic for XL/XE OS versions 1 through 4.  Load the accumulator with the value from the OSNEW location. Compare the accumulator value to 5 (one higher than the values I want to include). Branch on Carry Clear (if the value is less than) to the XLXE code section.
• Lines 530-560 : Comparison logic for XL/XE OS version 10.  Load the accumulator with the value from the OSNEW location.  Compare the accumulator value to 10.  Branch if its equal to the XLXE code section.
• Lines 570-600 : Comparison logic for XL/XE OS version 11.  Load the accumulator with the value from the OSNEW location.  Compare the accumulator value to 11.  Branch if its equal to the XLXE code section.
• Lines 610-620 : None of the comparisons matched so we need to jump past the XLXE code section to the program completion code denoted by the label DONE.
• Lines 1000-1220 : Set the preferences that only work on Atari XL/XE OS versions.
• Lines 1900-1920 : Program completion

How do I know it works?

I made a copy of the program and added addition code to it.  The additional code caused it branch to different XLXE sections which set the screen colors differently.  I then tested it using different OS’s in the emulator, and saw the color differences as expected.  No screenshots this time since nothing changed on the output.

Now, back to trying to print something on the screen!