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Re: Computing Editorial (please read)



"Dave Althoff, Jr." <dalloff@gcfn.org> writes:
>While defending GOTO, I wrote this code stub--

>: 1000 PRINT CHR$(4);"PR#3":PRINT:PRINT
>: 1005 HOME:POKE 36,35:PRINT "Main menu:"

>I just realized that in two lines there are workarounds for two 
>different undocumented Apple ][e firmware 'features'...

>Maybe that's why Microsoft can't seem to fix their bugs.  You live with 
>them long enough, you internalize the workarounds...

>a) In the original Apple ][e firmware, if you did a PR#3 to start the 
>   80-column display, sometimes a VTAB instruction would not work 
>   properly unless you printed something to the screen first.

>b) HTAB did not work on the original ][e 80-column firmware.

You cannot blame MS for those two bugs - the //e 80 col firmware is all
Apple's fault :-).

P.S. In my OSI Superboard BASIC there is a bug in the error message printing
of BASIC. The errors are two characters long and terminated by having bit 7
of the last character set. The code that actually prints the errors however
uses the fact that they are all two bytes long and forgets to clear bit 7
of the 2nd char resulting in error messages where the 2nd char is a graphic
symbol. Not sure if this is an OSI bug or MS.
--
David Wilson  School of IT & CS, Uni of Wollongong, Australia