Re: Update on "ORCA troubles galore"

[ag471@yfn.ysu.edu (Eric S. Ford)]

In a previous article, mcafee@umich.edu (Sean McAfee) says:

>Oh, and I almost forgot-- Twice, I booted ORCA.Sys16 and tried compiling
>from there.  Both times I got the same "illegal character" errors that
>I was getting from GNO.  But once, something even weirder happened.  Midway
>through a compile, the output began being restricted to a smaller region
>of the text screen--the same kind of effect you get in Applesoft if you
>mess with the zero-page screen-boundary bytes (does ORCA use the same
>bytes?).  Vertically, the text was able to use the whole screen, but the
>horizontal output was limited to (approximately) the 20th to the 50th
>positions.  I interrupted the compile; the ORCA prompt was now sitting
>in this restricted region.  I was able to quit normally.

This sounds similar to some experiences I had with ORCA/C when I had some
minor syntax error or variable definition that caused ORCA to trash memory.
It seems the first thing ORCA does when it encounters an error the compiler
doesn't recognize is to eat portions of itself.  The problem was made worse
in that I had to reboot after each attempted compile until I finally 
located the offending statement.


-- 
Eric S. Ford	 	   "Life is a crap sandwich.  The more bread
ag471@yfn.ysu.edu	    you have, the less crap you have to take."
E.Ford6@genie.geis.com	  				- Tom Servo