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STE documentation
Assembled
after depressing hours
of experiments and tests
that did usually not
work out as planned
by :
The Paranoid
Paranoia
Think
you can handle it ?!
(of
the Lunatic Asylum)
Preface:
The
Atari STE is, without
a doubt, a nice machine.
It has so many features
the Atari ST lacked:
-
4096 instead of 512
colours
-
Horizontal and Vertical
hardware scrolling
(also
called hardware windowing
of large virtual screens)
-
Blitter
-
8 Bit DMA stereo sound
(Up
to 50 KHz replay rate)
-
National LMC 1992 soundchip,
connected over Microwire
serial port
Treble,
Bass, Left/Right/Main
Volume Control
-
256KB EPROM containing
the TOS, socketed
-
4 30-pin SIMM-slots,
up to 4 MB RAM
-
Extended and analogue
capable joystick ports
Unfortunately,
you will pretty soon
find out that the STE
also contains a lot
- and i mean a lot -
of pitfalls.Whatever
feature of the STE you
want to use, it will
either not work as planned
or require special treatment.
If it works as planned
and does not require
special treatment, it
will definetly not work
on the TT or the Falcon.
So this documentation
is just a little compilation
of the usual traps especially
programming beginners
might step in and how
to dodge these traps.
This
documentation is given
on an "as is"
basis. Paranoia does
not give any warranties
about correctness about
the given information
here. We can not be
held responsible for
any loss of data, damage
to your hardware or
whatever might happen
to you, your software
or your hardware after
reading this document.
Every chapter will describe
the special registers
for a certain feature
and afterwards list
the traps you should
look out for.
In
the bitset tables, "0"
means this bit cannot
be set and is automatically
assumed "0",
"1" means
this bit cannot be set
and is automatically
read as "1",
"X" means
it can be read/written
and can feature "0"
or "1". In
the Tables, "yes"
means this register
exists in the model
mentioned while "no"
means that this register
does not exist. "ro"
means "read only"
and refers to a register
that cannot be written
to, "rw" means
"read/write"
and declares a register
that can be read as
well as written to.
[1][2][3][4][5][6]
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