The ATASCII character set, from ATARI Standard Code for Information Interchange, alternatively ATARI ASCII, is the variation on ASCII used in the Atari 8-bit family of home computers, starting with the 1979 Atari 400/800 and going all the way to the XEGS.

Like most other non-standard ASCIIs, ATASCII has its own special block graphics symbols (arrows, blocks, circles, line segments, playing card colors, etc.) corresponding to the control character locations of the standard ASCII table (characters 0–31), plus a few other character locations.

The inverse video^* display mode of ATASCII is implemented quite simply by letting the first half of the character set (the inverse one) being the bitwise negation of the second, normal, half.

(* also called reverse video by other manufacturers)

See also: PETSCII, Spectrum Character Set

External links

• ATASCII concise graphical overview   (4.2KB GIF image)
• ATASCII <–> IBM ASCII tables (mostly plain ASCII text)