Re: Applesoft commands

[nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <52u3cr$5no@nonews.col.hp.com>,
Warren Tustin <warren@col.hp.com> wrote:
>  Also, I did spend an hour searching around on web pages for the 
>  Applesoft BASIC commands and agree that this would be a nice addition
>  to the FAQ (or at least a pointer to them).  (I was writing the program
>  with an increment of 50 on the line numbers).

   By the time all these updates are done to the FAQ and my www site,
people will be able to build an Apple II from parts (Jameco's # is
listed in the FAQ; what more do you need? :) , learn to program in any
available language, and rebuild Appleworks just by reading all of the
web site. :)

   [I'll put it on my postit note tacked to my monitor of things to
add one of these months. Well, that's actualy the third postit note
performing that function; when I finish one, a lot more
suggestions/ideas warrant another. No promises if/when it'll be done.]

>  I also was wondering about memory.  I stumbled on fre(x) to tell me how
>  much memory is available.  Does the - number mean (32768 - (-N))? 

   It should. However, most people tended to ignore the official
purpose of fre(), and instead used it for garbage collection of
strings. fre(0) forces a garbage collection of unused but allocated
memory.

> Does a lot of the 128k get used by BASIC?

   The only thing that gets put in the upper 64K of memory is half of
the 80-column text screen. Applesoft Basic was never really updated
throughout the years, except for minimal lowercase support, and a
little bit more with the ProDOS Basic Interpreter. Beagle Bros' 'Extra
K' package (was commercial, then released only to first the Beagle
Bros BBS and later Scantron Quality's BBS) was one of the few packages
that actually added any functionality to Basic with regards to the
upper 64K

>  The IIc vintage is (255) in the 64447 location (I think that is the addr).

   Shouldn't affect Applesoft Basic, to the best of my knowledge. The
relevant info on that revision (serial port problems, etc) is detailed
in the FAQ.

Nathan Mates
--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.visi.com/~nathan/      <*>
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