Mille Borne in Applesoft BASIC

[+hloberg]

the problem with the alt character set change on FLASH is only in the Apple IIe enhanced I have found. I know there is a soft switch that turns off the alt character set but I haven't got it to work for some reason.  it's probably  because I don't understand how soft switches work.

[The Usotsuki]

As I said, the softswitch is activated with "POKE 49166,0".  If you want to make sure it isn't hit on a machine that doesn't know what to do with it, do "if peek(-1101)=6 then poke 49166,0" - it'll trip on the original //e, but it does have an effect there too even without the MouseText.

 

("peek(-1101)=6" is a check used by Apple themselves.)

 

The //c and IIgs support MouseText too.

[micahcowan]

On 9/22/2020 at 9:06 PM, hloberg said:

the problem with the alt character set change on FLASH is only in the Apple IIe enhanced I have found. I know there is a soft switch that turns off the alt character set but I haven't got it to work for some reason.  it's probably  because I don't understand how soft switches work.

A softswitch is just a "switch" that's triggerable by software; by reading or writing a particular memory locations (sometimes it matters which, and which value is written, others it doesn't - depends on the particular switch - they're all documented in the technical reference manual for the machine in question). So the POKE @The Usotsuki and I had mentioned is the softswitch. Writing a value to that location via POKE (any value - I'd said 1, @The Usotsuki said 0, but either will work fine - it's the fact of writing that matters, not the value) will tell the enhanced //e (and //c's, and IIgs's) to display the primary character set when FLASH is used, rather than MouseText. At least, if it's a normal one

 

13 hours ago, The Usotsuki said:

As I said, the softswitch is activated with "POKE 49166,0".  If you want to make sure it isn't hit on a machine that doesn't know what to do with it, do "if peek(-1101)=6 then poke 49166,0" - it'll trip on the original //e, but it does have an effect there too even without the MouseText.

Does it? I'm surprised I haven't seen it documented in the Apple IIc Technical Reference Manual (Appendix F - Apple II Series Differences). Also, is it actually known to be unsafe to trip this switch on older machines? 

 

13 hours ago, The Usotsuki said:

("peek(-1101)=6" is a check used by Apple themselves.)

Do you mean specifically for determining if poke 49166,0 is safe, or just for checking whether the current machine is an Apple //e or higher?

[The Usotsuki]

To see if it's an Apple //e or higher - in which case poke 49166,0 will do the same thing (even on a non-enhanced //e).