This article has been taken from Z*MAG on-line newsletter issue 201. Tidied by Dean Garraghty.¢¢===================================¢* LIVING WITH AN 8-BIT by Jim¢ Brozovich¢===================================¢Reprint from Michigan Atari Magazine¢¢¢If you are like me, you purchased your Atari system years ago when only the Fortune 500 could afford an IBM system. The trusty old Atari has been much help in family budgeting, income tax preparation (via Antic Syncalc spreadsheets), and helped immensely in my recent job search. But at work, IBM was king, and I became a power user of Lotus 1-2-3, Javelin Plus, and custom built decision support models.¢¢This lead to a desire to upgrade to a "real" machine and relegate the trusty old Atari to a kid's game machine. Being the frugal sort, I always resisted this temptation by making my Atari a more robust machine with every conceivable upgrade possible, ranging from the Newell 256KXL memory upgrade including the Ramrod XL operating system with 80 Column upgrade and to two US Doubler equipped 1050s. But no matter whether I added extra memory or 80 columns in Atariwriter Plus+ or double density drives, I still did not have IBM compatibility.¢¢As the price of IBM clones dropped, more and more co-workers were buying their first PCs or scraping their C64s for the new clones. Eventually, I became the outcast and was looked upon as being the strange one for not being able to take work home. Once again, I was faced with the prospect of scrapping an investment of over $2500 in hardware and software and years of accumulated knowledge about the intricacies of applying the 8bit Atari to productivity applications.¢¢I was almost ready to make the plunge to the IBM world when I noticed an ad in Antic Magazine for the Happy 7.1 Upgrade and software claiming that it gave IBM file compatibility to the 8bit Atari without resorting to null modem cables or telephone hook-ups. Also, Happy dropped their price from $249.95 to $99.95 (does this say something about the life cycle of 8bit products?) which made the decision easier. I promptly called up my friendly mail order house because no local merchants stocked the product. By the way, it's getting harder to find any 8bit products on store shelves in the Detroit area. Anyway, less then a week later the man in the "Big Brown Truck, " UPS to those of you without kids, delivered my Happy 1050 Upgrade, Happy Disk Controller, and Version 7.1 software.¢¢Being a hardware hacker made installation a simple matter for me, no soldering or desoldering required. But if you can't tell the difference between a Phillips screwdriver and and a floppy disk, you might want to find someone to do the installation for you. After printing out the documentation, I was eager to translate an Atari file into IBM format so that I could take it to work to and see if this thing really worked. Much to my chagrin, I discovered the Happy cannot Format IBM disks so the test had to wait.¢¢Formatting disks for use with the Happy 1050 must be done from the MS-DOS machine using the Format A:/1 command because the 1050 is single-sided and the IBMs, except some early PCs are double-sided. After formatting a supply of disks on the IBM machine, I proceeded to make copies of files from the Atari to the IBM and visa versa.¢¢My objective in this whole process was to be able to transfer numeric data between Syncalc and Lotus 1-2-3 and textual data from Atariwriter Plus to IBM readable ASCII text files. The later proved easy once I learned to use the Save ASC option from Atariwriter Plus and use the Text Translation = Yes Option in the IBMXFR program supplied by Happy. The resulting text files on the IBM had none of the the text formatting options they had in Atariwriter Plus. My IBM word processor, Volkswriter, was able to load the files with only one problem. That is, any imbedded print characters in the files such as Cntl U for underlining caused the data within the print codes to be garbled in the translation. Removing all of the embedded characters with Atariwriter Plus before saving the files in ASC format solved the problem but it does make compatibility a little less complete because the necessary formatting commands must then be reentered in the IBM file.¢¢The Syncalc translation process proved to be much more complicated. My first attempts were with DIF files created by Lotus 1-2-3 version 2.01. The Happy IBMFXR program translated them OK, but when I tried to load them into Syncalc using the Load-Data Option, weird things happened -- only part of the file came through and some of it was garbled. Going from a Syncalc DIF to Lotus 1-2-3 was OK but I couldn't go from 1-2-3 to Syncalc.¢¢A little bit of research turned up the fact that with Version 2.01 of 1-2-3, Lotus made some changes in the way the program's Translate Utility creates DIF files. To be more explicit, in version 2.01 of Lotus, the Translate Utility ignores all non-needed blank cells when creating a DIF file. This is different from the previous versions of Lotus and other programs that account for all the cells in a range including the blank cells when creating the DIF file.¢¢Anyway, a way around this problem was suggested in the June 1987 issue of Lotus magazine on page 132. To create an old style DIF file in Lotus 2.01 use the following procedure from within 1-2-3:¢¢1) Retrieve the file to be translated.¢2) Put a label-prefix apostrophe in cell A1-type an Apostrophe hit Enter.¢3) Copy A1 to the entire relevant portion of the spreadsheet as follows:¢¢/C From A1 Push Return¢-To A1..(Type period) Push End Key, Push Home Key.¢¢4) The file will look erased but you will notice that a label-prefix apostrophe has been placed in each cell of the relevant portion of the spreadsheet.¢5) Re-load the original file using the File Combine, Copy, Entire File method.¢6) Re-save the file under a new name. This yields a file with no non-blank cells for the Translate Utility to ignore.¢7) Translate this new file to DIF using the Lotus Translate Utility and your single sided Atari readable disks. The new file will load into Syncalc with no problems.¢¢One point that must be made is that spreadsheets transferred in this way will not work from one program to another ie. Syncalc spreadsheets will not run in Lotus 1-2-3 and visa versa. The documentation supplied with the Happy 7.1 Software makes this clear. Using the DIF files described above is only a way of transferring data between programs and not a way of transferring models between programs.¢¢As far as program compatibility goes, it may be possible to move Visicalc models from the IBM to the Atari and use Syncalc's translate utility to get them into the Atari. This of course assumes that there are people still out there using Visicalc on the IBM PC. In general, if you are really looking for complete compatibility between your work based IBM and your Atari 8bit, the Happy 7.1 Upgrade will not serve your needs. You'll have to go out and buy a clone or an ST to get full program compatibility.¢¢This limited compatibility didn't hinder me from getting utility out of the program because the applications I was attempting to coordinate between the two machines involved only the exchange of data and not the transfer of models. In other words, if you want to be able write a memo on your Atari at home over the weekend and then take the disk in to work and print it out and distribute on your IBM on Monday, then the Happy 7.1 Upgrade is for you. If, on the other hand, you are developing a capacity planning model in Lotus 1-2-3 and want to be able to see your kids before they go to bed, your choices are more limited, either buy the clone or ST or learn to work late.¢¢My own applications point up a limitation that you have on the Atari 8bit, for productivity programs, that you don't have on more robust machines like the IBM. Namely, what I do is go on-line with Dow Jones News Retrieval and download stock prices and news headlines about a certain group of companies. This data is entered into a Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet that does some calculations on the data and serves as a base for editing the news headlines and then finally is used to print out a report. In Lotus, I can import my downloaded ASCII data directly into the spreadsheet which I can't do with Syncalc.¢¢In Syncalc, I must type in the numeric portion of the data directly into a spreadsheet model, then I Print the file to disk as a print file. This file can be loaded into Atariwriter Plus and then merged with the rest of downloaded file which Atariwriter Plus can load and edit. This resulting file can then be converted into IBM format for distribution. It would be nice if Syncalc would allow you to import ASCII text files into a spreadsheet thus saving an extra step that is not required on the IBM PC. If anyone knows of any utilities that can translate ASCII text files into DIF, Syncalc, or Visicalc format, I would like to here from you.¢¢One other feature of the Happy 7.1 Upgrade you might want to consider before you purchase it, is its obvious ability to make backup copies of your protected software. If you are like me, all of the productivity programs that I use regularly are copy protected and in many cases the manufactures are going out of business, merging or simply not distributing there products locally anymore. This means it is becoming increasing important to have backups of your software because if you destroy your original disk, it might be next to impossible to easily replace it in these days of sparse 8bit software availability.¢¢The Happy 7.1 Upgrade performs this task admirably even on the Synapse software where it has to use PDF files to make copies that only run on a Happy equipped drive. Even with these limitations, it nice to know I now have backups for my protected disks. In conclusion, now that you are aware of the limitations of this product, if it still looks like something that will fill your needs for limited IBM file compatibility, then I heartily recommend you buy the Happy Version 7.1 Upgrade. After all, $99.95 is still a lot cheaper than the $999.00 needed to get into an acceptable XT clone machine that is also being made obsolete by the boys from Big Blue.¢¢[Also, US Doubler owners can use one of the programs to read MYDOS true DD disks on the PC. - News-Disk Ed.]¢
