''De Re Atari'' (Latin for "All About Atari"), subtitled ''A Guide to Effective Programming'', is a book written by Atari, Inc. employees in 1981 and published by the

Atari Program Exchange Atari Program Exchange (APX) was a division of Atari, Inc. that sold software via mail-order for Atari 8-bit computers from 1981 until 1984. Quarterly APX catalogs were sent to all registered Atari 8-bit owners. APX encouraged any programmer, not ...

in 1982 as an unbound, shrink-wrapped set of three-holed punched pages. It was one of the few non-software products sold by APX. Targeted at developers, it documents the advanced features of the

Atari 8-bit computers The Atari 8-bit computers, formally launched as the Atari Home Computer System, are a series of home computers introduced by Atari, Inc., in 1979 with the Atari 400 and Atari 800. The architecture is designed around the 8-bit MOS Technology 650 ...

and includes ideas for how to use them in applications. The information in the book was not available in a single, collected source at the time of publication. The content of ''De Re Atari'' was serialized in ''

BYTE The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable un ...

'' beginning in 1981, prior to the book's publication. The release of Atari 8-bit technical details through the magazine and book quickly resulted in other sources being published, such as ''COMPUTE!'s First Book of Atari Graphics'' (1982). Atari published official documentation for the hardware and a source listing of the operating system the same year, 1982, but they were not as easily obtainable as ''De Re Atari'' and tutorials in magazines such as ''

COMPUTE! ''Compute!'' (), often stylized as ''COMPUTE!'', is an American home computer magazine that was published from 1979 to 1994. Its origins can be traced to 1978 in Len Lindsay's ''PET Gazette'', one of the first magazines for the Commodore PET. ...

''. Following the closure of the Atari Program Exchange in late 1984, ''De Re Atari'' went out of print.

Background

Atari at first did not disclose technical information on its computers, except to software developers who agreed to keep it secret. ''De Re Atari'' ("All About Atari") was sold through the

mail-order catalog, which described the book as "everything you want to know about the Atari ... but were afraid to ask" and a resource for "professional programmers" and "advanced hobbyists who understand

Atari BASIC Atari BASIC is an interpreter for the BASIC programming language that shipped with Atari 8-bit computers. Unlike most American BASICs of the home computer era, Atari BASIC is not a derivative of Microsoft BASIC and differs in significant way ...

and

assembly language In computing, assembly language (alternatively assembler language or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence bet ...

". An article on Player/Missile Graphics by ''De Re Atari'' coauthor Chris Crawford appeared in ''

Compute! ''Compute!'' (), often stylized as ''COMPUTE!'', is an American home computer magazine that was published from 1979 to 1994. Its origins can be traced to 1978 in Len Lindsay's ''PET Gazette'', one of the first magazines for the Commodore PET. ...

'' in 1981 Another article by Crawford and Lane Winner appeared in the same month in ''

''. ''De Re Atari'' was serialized in ''BYTE'' in 1981 and 1982 in ten articles. ''De Re Atari'', and its 1981-82 serialization in ''

'', were the first public, official publication of Atari 8-bit technical information. It was based on Atari's documentation written in 1979-80 for third-party developers under non-disclosure agreements. Individual chapters are devoted to making use of the features of the platform:

ANTIC Alphanumeric Television Interface Controller (ANTIC) is an LSI ASIC dedicated to generating 2D computer graphics to be shown on a television screen or computer display. Under the direction of Jay Miner, the chip was designed in 1977–1978 b ...

and

display list A display list, also called a command list in Direct3D 12 and a command buffer in Vulkan, is a series of graphics commands or instructions that are run when the list is executed. Systems that make use of display list functionality are called ...

s, color registers, redefined

character set Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to graphical characters, especially the written characters of human language, allowing them to be stored, transmitted, and transformed using computers. The numerical values that make up a c ...

s, player/missile graphics, the

vertical blank interrupt A vertical blank interrupt (or VBI) is a hardware feature found in some legacy computer systems that generate a video signal. Cathode-ray tube based video display circuits generate vertical blanking and vertical sync pulses when the display pict ...

and display list interrupts (a.k.a.

raster interrupt A raster interrupt (also called a horizontal blank interrupt) is an interrupt signal in a legacy computer system which is used for display timing. It is usually, though not always, generated by a system's graphics chip as the scan lines of a fra ...

s), fine scrolling, and sound. Additional chapters cover the

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

Atari DOS Atari DOS is the disk operating system used with the Atari 8-bit computers. Operating system extensions loaded into memory were required in order for an Atari computer to manage files stored on a disk drive. These extensions to the operat ...

, and designing intuitive human interfaces. Lead author Chris Crawford used many of these features in the

computer wargame A computer wargame is a wargame played on a digital device. Descended from board wargaming, it simulates military conflict at the tactical, operational or strategic level. Computer wargames are both sold commercially for recreational use ...

Eastern Front (1941) ''Eastern Front (1941)'' is a computer wargame for Atari 8-bit computers created by Chris Crawford (game designer), Chris Crawford and published through the Atari Program Exchange (APX) in 1981. A scenario editor and assembly language source co ...

'' released in 1981. Another of the book's authors, Jim Dunion, used custom display lists in the DDT

6502 The MOS Technology 6502 (typically pronounced "sixty-five-oh-two" or "six-five-oh-two") William Mensch and the moderator both pronounce the 6502 microprocessor as ''"sixty-five-oh-two"''. is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by a small ...

debugger A debugger is a computer program used to test and debug other programs (the "target" programs). Common features of debuggers include the ability to run or halt the target program using breakpoints, step through code line by line, and display ...

to produce a partitioned, IDE-like display. DDT was later incorporated into the MAC/65 assembler.

Reception

''De Re Atari'' was successful; the manager of APX later said that it and ''Eastern Front'' "paid the bills, i.e. were our biggest sellers".Kevin Savetz
"Fred Thorlin: The Big Boss at Atari Program Exchange"
April 2000 '' Mapping the Atari'' described ''De Re Atari'' as "an arcane, but indispensable reference to the Atari's operations and some of its most impressive aspects". ''The

Addison-Wesley Addison–Wesley is an American publisher of textbooks and computer literature. It is an imprint of Pearson plc, a global publishing and education company. In addition to publishing books, Addison–Wesley also distributes its technical titles ...

Book of Atari Software 1984'' stated that the book had "a wealth of information, but tends to be obscure and includes numerous errors".

References

External links

''De Re Atari'' online
{{Chris Crawford 1982 non-fiction books Computer books Atari 8-bit computers