Another Drive

My Atari 130XE's owner's manual says that I can use up to four disk drives with my computer, but when I try to use more than two, I get an ERROR 160 message. Can I use four drives or not?

Lawrence Everett Van Buskirk

Since most people use one or two drives with their computer, Atari DOS is set up to use two. A memory location keeps track of which drives are allowed. The following table will help you determine the value to POKE into location 1802.

On the 130XE, drive number 8 is the ramdisk. Add up all the values from the table above for the drives you are using. For example, if you want to use drives 1, 2, and 3, add 1 + 2 + 4, so you would use this statement:

POKE 1802, 7

Now, go to the DOS menu and use option H to write your modified DOS to disk. The next time you boot up with this disk, the new drive will be recognized.

Note that each drive you use will take away 128 bytes of your free RAM.