The screen of the reader is divided into three sections.
The top section displays the magazine title, issue number and the year of issue. The middle section is devoted for the text. The bottom section displays the name of the author of the reader, configured mode, name of the opened file, and current page number. The "<" and ">" symbols indicate the first and the last page.
The Flop reader allows you to browse the contents of the magazine as a hypertext. The controls are very easy to use.
Press the up arrow and down arrow keys (without CTRL) to move the cursor over the existing text or to page up or to page down.
Press the right arrow key to activate the selected item under the cursor (to enter the next level of text, to load and run a binary load file, or to display a picture). Press the left arrow key or ESC to go back.
To exit the reader, press ESC at the main screen.
To invert colors of the text and background, press the Inverse Video/Atari Logo key.
You can control the reader also with a joystick. Move the joystick up and down to move the cursor or to page up or to page down. Move the joystick to the right to activate the selected item. Move the joystick to the left to go back.
The Flop Reader can operate disk drives in two distinct modes (MD11 and MD12). Press the M key to switch between modes.
In the MD11 mode, the reader assumes there is only one disk drive available. For reading contents of the side B, you must insert the disk with side B to drive 1.
In the MD12 mode, the reader assumes that the disk with side A is inserted to drive 1 and the disk with side B is inserted to drive 2. The reader reads files from the corresponding drives without need to swap the disks.