[Coco] Re: Gadgets

[Arthur Flexser]

On Wed, 6 Apr 2005, L. Curtis Boyle wrote:


> > On the CoCo2 there was a POKE 359,57 to keep the mode "idle" even while  

> > at the OK-prompt, but this is quite dangerous with Disk Basic (forgot  

> > why). Or if you e.g. use SOUND 1,1 it will play forever because you're  

> > disabling a RAM hook which is timing the sound's duration. POKE 359,126  

> > will return to normal behaviour.

> 

>      POKE 359,57 changes the BASIC PRINT hook to just do an RTS; in other  

> words, it disables the print hook. This is dangerous because any PRINT I/O  

> (PRINT #x, which could be disk files, cassette files, and the printer) is  

> NOT going to be done normally, since the routine to handle that is being  

> entirely skipped. You can re-enable it again (if you want to just  

> temporarily change the screen), by doing a POKE 359,&H7E, which re-enables  

> the JSR to the PRINT hook routine.


That POKE 359,57 is more dangerous even than you've described.  If you try to
save anything in Ascii format, such as a Basic program or a file from a word
processor that uses Basic's I/O routine, it will APPEAR to save correctly, and
only later do you discover that the saved file contains no data!

Art