Credits: BGM v0.5 was written entirely in C language. Textpro (4.54 and 4.56) was used for all editing. Spartados (3.2 and SDX) was the only DOS used during development. I don't even own a copy of DOS 2.0 or 2.5. The No Name C compiler was used for all compilations. The Lightspeed C linker and runtime libraries were used to create the executable object program. Pokey Player was is used to play the music in BGM. The tune was a sample from PP written by Bach. Backgound: I have wanted a backgammon program for use at home for a long time. I started playing backgammon in college in 1975. I never was very good, but enjoyed the game and the people I played with. Several years ago the my project at work started using Un*x on 386 PC/AT clones and it came with several games, including backgammon. That version of backgammon is quick and competent. (And fun!) I would play a quick game while compling programs, and started planning a version for the Atari. Many years ago, I got a copy of a backgammon game written in C for the public domain. Now, I had no excuse. It had to be ported to the Atari. I wanted the game to play like the Un*x version. It was easy to play, and used a nice full screen Ascii display. I sketched out an Atari display, and started hacking out the code in the evenings at home. BGM is the result. Technical Details: The original source for BGM was found in the C Users Group distribution of C language software. I am not sure of its orignal authorship. The CUG software was moved from the MSDOS diskettes to the Un*x system on my PC at work. I left the system running one night with the modem enabled. I called my PC from my Atari at home. I first tried to get Kermit to transfer the file, but the verson of Kermit I was using on my Atari didn't cooperate. So, I used an ordinary modem program to capture the file as I listed it. Once on my Atari, I backed up the BGM source, and began hacking it apart. The original source was very ugly code. I spend lots of time just making the code tolerably readable. I partitioned the code into several source files. I changed most of the variables and structures to use byte variables rather than integer. This was for performance reasons. I optimized and structured the code in just about every area. I created a new set of display functions and command input routines that are styled after the Un*x version of BGM. All editing was done with Textpro. I have nothing but praise for Textpro. It is a fine editor for C code. It was very easy to use an alternate character set to include curly brackets, which are used to start and end blocks of code. It was easy to define keystrokes to enter the curly brackets (option-, and option-. instead of esc-ctl-; and esc-ctl-<). I was originally planning to use Lightspeed C for the entire program, but there are some problems with their compiler. It does not accept comments longer than one line. It does not support data structure or multi-dimensional arrays. And, it does not accept curly brackets ({}), but instead requires the use of $( and $). The No Name C compiler, adapted by Steve Kennedy from the Deep Blue C compiler, was available from SPACE, and it supported the missing features. It was also advertised as being compatible with the Lightspeed linker and runtime system, so I tried it. It works as advertised. It does not have the nice command line features of the Lightspeed C compiler, but I can overlook those minor inconviences to get the added features. I have an 800XL with a 256k memory upgrade from Chris Tiggemann, 2 1050 disks with ICD's USDoublers, ICD's P:R:Connection to connect to a CTS modem, Gemini 10x, and Brother DX15 printers. I use SpartaDOS exclusivly. I typically boot SpartaDOS SDX and load up a RAMdisk with the utilities, compiler, linker, libraries, and Textpro with the autoexec.bat script file. I edit and compile from diskette to diskette, backing up about once every four or five sessions. Special Thanx to: Debbie. Mark K Vallevand. 92Feb07