                ATARI SCORES AGAIN


Any Atari fans watching the Rapid Racing canoeing on ITV'S World Of Sport
back in april (1984 & 1985) may have spotted Atari getting credeted on
various score readouts. This in fact was the annual Lowenbrau sponsored 
Rapid Racing championships held in Bala, North Wales. The event attracts
the worlds top canoeists from all disciplines to compete against each 
other over four different races in four days. The entire event is covered
by a large tv crew, with all the results data processing provided by an
Atari Home Computer. The Atari also provided most of the score displays
and competitors names etc  that appeared overlayed on the TV screen.
                The computer equipment included an old Atari 800 with an
810 disk drive, high speed printer, 850 I/O box, 3 monitors, a sophisticated
computer/TV interface adapter and various other boxes of tricks. All these
were arranged in a mobile caravanette and operated in conjunction with the
timing computers by a team of two people.
                The 20K machine code program was written for Atari by
none other than Archer MacLean (author of DROPZONE amongst other things).
The program is a cleverly thought out menu driven system allowing a non 
technically minded user to operate it . It gives the user instant access 
too and from a wide variety of functions . It can cater for up to 64 named
and numbered competitors in four independant sets of race results, allowing
both mid point and finish times. Results can at any time be quickly printed
or dispalyed on demand in a wide variety of presentation styles and can
be based on points or times for any race or all four races combined.
The user can also edit an rearrange screens prior to display so that special
messages can be generated as requested by the TV director.
                The actual Atari equipment belonged to Archer MacLean who
says its five years old now and is probably one of the most travelled 
system in use. It performed as faultlessly as ever despite being used in a
very damp atmosphere at some very arkward to reach riverside locations - 
except when the generator ran out of petrol!

