''Mapping the Atari'', written by Ian Chadwick and published by COMPUTE! Books in 1983, is an address-by-address explanation of the memory layout 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 ...

. The introduction is by

Optimized Systems Software Optimized Systems Software (OSS) was a company that produced disk operating systems, programming languages with integrated development environments, and applications primarily for Atari 8-bit computers. The founders of OSS previously developed A ...

co-founder Bill Wilkinson. The book covers the 64K address space of the system's

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 ...

processor from low to high, including addresses used by the operating system or mapped to hardware registers, as well as how to use them. For example, location 756 (2F4) CHBAS contains the starting memory address that tells

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 ...

where to find the character set. The author explains how to use this feature to build custom

character sets Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to graphical character (computing), characters, especially the written characters of human language, allowing them to be stored, transmitted, and transformed using computers. The numerical v ...

. An updated version covering changes to 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 ...

and newer machines like the 130XE followed in 1985. ''

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 ...

'' magazine serialized the book in 1989 and 1990.

Reception

''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'' recommended ''Mapping the Atari'', calling it "the most valuable reference book for machine language programmers". ''

'' introduced the serialized version of the book as follows:

References

External links

*{{IA, ataribooks-mapping-the-atari, ''Mapping the Atari'' 1983 non-fiction books Atari 8-bit computers Computer books