Re: Lowercase characters for Apple][ +

[ah499@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (John Daniels)]

gray@feline.uucp (Kelly Gray) writes
 
>> (my comments about replacing the character ROM
>> on a Rev.7 or later ][+ were here.)
>
>   The ROM that I was referring to is _not_ the character ROM. The RDKEY
>subroutine located in the F8 ROM (the leftmost of the six next to the
>CPU) contains an instruction that forces all keyboard characters to
>uppercase, even if the keyboard is generating lowercase characters. If
>you are using a program that reads the keyboard directly, this will
>have no effect, but any BASIC program will use this subroutine and so be
>unable to get lowercase characters from the keyboard. Modifying the F8
>ROM will get around this problem, at the expense of requiring a caps
>lock key (or holding down the shift key) while typing any applesoft
>program code.
>--
>
><o_o>    Kelly Gray
>         gray@feline.uucp (preferred)
>         gray@admin.humberc.on.ca

oooops.
 
I didn't think of the $F8 ROM because I didn't see any connection there to the
problem of getting lowercase from a ][+.  All you say above is _true_ but if
what someone wants is to get lowercase output for programs made to get
lowercase ouput from a ][+ then the $F8 is irrelevant.  ASCII Express, Bank
Street Writer, FrEDWriter, Appleworks (modified with Plus-Works) and others all
work fine with the shift-key mod and/or the Encoder Board switch.
 
If the switch is added to the Encoder Board after cutting the bowties then that
is a caps lock switch and is a nice mod for anyone wanting lowercase off their
][+.
 
                                                John Daniels
                                                ah499@cleveland.freenet.edu