Came up with the idea for this project when I first posted it here. Posted it as a way to motivate myself to really look into it and see if this is even possible.

Currently trying to learn Atari BASIC using the Altirra emulator on my desktop. I have just about burned myself out after working a 10 hour shift, and trying to learn this stuff.

Taking a break now to figure out how I am going to create and test programs on my PC and get them onto my physical Atari 1200XL. I have a few Atari 410 Program Recorder audio cassette drives, that should still work, but I have no idea how to write the program on my PC and convert it to a .cas file to write to the tapes. I have found http://a8cas.sourceforge.net/ and am hoping it will be able to help me out. Once I have figure out how to get my programs from Windows 7 onto an audio cassette, I will begin testing the original hardware to make sure everything still works. I have a cheap audio cassette recorder with a line in jack, so I could convert the .cas files to .wav files, then play them into the recorder and record them to cassette. I have not sorted out the details yet, but this is the best chance I have at getting programs onto my Atari without actually typing them in manually. I'd really just like to keep multiple copies of my programs on cassette, in case i need to load them into my Atari.

Another problem that needs solved: How to load my program into the Atari every time I start it up. I can always load them from cassette, but this may take quite a long time for bigger programs. I may be able to find a cartridge that I could write the programs to, but I have not looked into it yet.

Realizing how big this project really is. I may need to start an entirely new project just to restore my Atari and hardware to working condition...