I have a text file for an Atari Basic game: http://www.at...

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Answer by horsie
Submitted on 6/8/2005
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(From http://www.atarimagazines.com/v3n12/startingout.html) ACCESS FROM BASIC If you're like many new Atari users, you will soon get quite familiar with the commands to SAVE or LOAD a program from BASIC. But you may be a bit confused about LISTing or ENTERing a program. These four commands are a function of the BASIC language and are the same no matter what DOS you use. When you type: SAVE: "D:MYGAME.BAS" from BASIC, the disk whirrs and you have copied the BASIC program in memory to the disk (device D:) under the filename MYNAME.BAS. The program is still in memory and it is now also written on the disk. By using the command SAVE, the program is written on the disk in what is called a "tokenized" form. This simply means that it's there in a kind of code. If you want to know what this tokenized code looks like, LOAD a program into memory and type: SAVE "S:". You'll see a bunch of garbage scroll across the screen. This is the tokenized program. If you simply type LIST, the same program will scroll across the screen in standard ATASCII form and be quite readable. Now, if you type: LIST "D:MYGAME. LST", this same program will be LISTed to disk, but will now be on disk in the same ATASCII form that it was when listed on the screen. A SAVEd program may be RUN from disk or LOADed from disk. A LISTed program may only be ENTERed from disk. For the example above, you would type: ENTER "D:MYGAME.BAS" Once ENTERed, it may then be RUN. Also, if a program is already in memory when a second program is ENTERed, the second program will merge with the first. This is not true of a LOADed program. Caution! do not type LIST "D:MYGAME.LST" when there is nothing in memory. You will then have written a file to disk consisting of nothing and possibly wiped out a file of the same name that was already there. If you have a printer, you may list your program to it by typing: LIST "P:". You have now listed your program to the printer device. The best way to master all these commands is to put together a disk of duplicated program files and experiment. As long as you use backups you have nothing to lose and the computer will be only to happy to teach you.

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Question by Jeff
Submitted on 5/28/2004
Related FAQ: Atari 8-Bit Computers: Frequently Asked Questions
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I have a text file for an Atari Basic game: http://www.atariarchives.org/adventure/software/chateau.txt I have the ability to run .BAS files like those from the Antic archive: http://www.atarimagazines.com/software/software.html I would like to convert the text file to the .BAS file format. How do I do this?

Answer by Orion Pax
Submitted on 1/27/2005
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BAS and TXT are the same. The atari stored all BAS file formats as standard atascii, or in this case ascii. Just try renaming it to BAS instead of TXT. Or just type it in your self.

Answer by Greaz
Submitted on 5/6/2007
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open the text put in a rem or somthin useless and then cilck save as then game.bas I dont know try it out !

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