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From: sinner@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Ken E Sinner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Switch Back
Message-ID: <4510@uwm.edu>
Date: 16 Jun 90 14:06:19 GMT
References: <382@trwrb.dsd.trw.com> <4044@baird.cs.strath.ac.uk>
Sender: news@uwm.edu
Reply-To: sinner@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Ken E Sinner)
Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Lines: 27


In article <4044@baird.cs.strath.ac.uk> rmacgreg@cs.strath.ac.uk writes:
>Ummmm, what is this 'Switch Back' thing?  If its just a way of getting the
>ST to think that the internal drive is B and the external one is A (which is
>what it sounds like) then there is an easy and cheap way... wire a 2 positon
>switch between pins 19 and 20 in the sound chip so that in one position pin 19
>goes to hole 19 and 20 to 20 and in the other pin 19 goes to hole 20 and 20 to
>19.  The only problem is that any warranty goes bye bye 

Switchback is a combination hardware and software product.  The hardware
is a thing that plugs into the ST's printer port.  When you press a
button on it, it saves the currently running program to a file.  This
is supposed to allow you to save games in the middle, backup protected
software, and in general allow you to do stuff that you could do with
something like Revolver.  (I've never used the product, so the
preceding description is based on other's reports and some educated
guess work.)  The problem is that, to my knowledge, Alpha Systems
doesn't have a list of programs with which it is guaranteed to work,
and from my experience with Revolver, things like games tend to do
things that make Revolver and similar products useless, such as poking
wierd memory locations, locking out the keyboard, punting the AES, and
the dreaded "If it ain't on drive A:, I don't see it."

So I basically am trying to compile a list of programs, especially
games, that are known to work with Switchback.

-ks