[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