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APPLE II DEVELOPMENT FORUM CONFERENCE LOG
Tuesday, January 29, 1991  10:00 p.m. Eastern Time
Topic:  Open Topic
Forum Leader:  Dave Sugar (AFL Dyfet)


AFL Marty  How's Twilight coming?
AFL Marty  (or shouldn't I ask)
ShanoJ     Uggh... Got the cde review back from Matt... He ONLY found 35
           things wrong with
ShanoJ     it... :( Jim want's me to change ALL of them (some of them aren't
           mistakes but
ShanoJ     things he'd like to see added). That should only take me about 5
           decades... :(
AFL Marty  So you did pretty good then.
AFA Gary J Oh, I thought it would be more like 35 minutes :)
AFL Marty  :)
AFL Dyfet  What kinds of things?
ShanoJ     He want's to do things like a Twilight toolset that includes
           standard functions
ShanoJ     that all of the blankers can use... Also a Twilight manager that
           keeps track
ShanoJ     of the blankers in cool ways.... Only about half of the things
           were actual
ShanoJ     bugs, and I want to just fix those and release it. Then we can go
           back and aff
ShanoJ     (err, add) the spiffy things in a later version... I don't think
           Jim agrees,
ShanoJ     though... :(

AFA Gary J Open topic tonight, eh?  (I have a question when things are slow
           :)
Apple Guru Does anyone know of a HD for the //c?  (internal, NOT Applied
           Injinuity)
AFL Dyfet  Not off-hand, Guru....
Apple Guru Good.....maybe mine will sell then!   :-)
Windrider5 does anyone know what resource type $800C is?
AFL Dyfet  GA Dave :)
Dave Lyons It's rCtlDefProc, as revealed by typing 800c\rtype in Nifty
           List.
Dave Lyons (Gee, I hope that was in 3.0... :)  BTW, will be uploading 3.2
           soon.  I know I said that last
Dave Lyons week, but now I fixed redirecting to slots, which I discovered I
           had broken horribly.  ga
JWankerl   Yep, it was in 3.0.  
AFA Gary J (of course.... :)   (Nifty List 3.2, no doubt :)
FeinDavid  We want it yesterday!
Apple Guru Nifty List 3.2      RSN!!!
AFL Dyfet  Now, what was your question, Gary? :)
AFA Gary J :)
FeinDavid  Tanks gary.... 8)
AFA Gary J Oh, let's see.  Can anyone tell me a good way to detect an
           entrance into the
AFA Gary J control panel?  I want to do something AFTER it has occurred.
Dave Lyons Can't think of one off hand; what do you want to do?
Apple Guru I thought that was supposed to be "invisible"
JWankerl   There's a vector for going to the Desk Accessories menu, I
           believe.
AFA Gary J Well, I want to determine if the speed has been changed, for one
           (via normal
AFA Gary J IIGS speed, or transwarp/zip chip CDA)
FeinDavid  Patch the vector, and then allow access...
AFA Gary J Yes, there's a vector, but it doesn't return.
FeinDavid  There is a byte you can check for the speed...
Dave Lyons If you want to know when the CP updates the system state to match
           the battery-RAM, you could
Dave Lyons  *carefully* chain into the ToBRAMSetup vector, I suppose.
FeinDavid  If you sense a enterance into the control panel, then you can set
           a flag that
FeinDavid  tells you to check the speed...  make it a standard check at that
           flag.
AFA Gary J Ah, that's an idea, Dave.  (other ideas I had included checking
           the border
AFA Gary J color, and see when it changed, but that requires that I look
           constantly)
Apple Guru Do a timing loop based o VBLIRQ
FeinDavid  Which dave? he he?
AFA Gary J I'm not concerned about what to do AFTER the detection, it's
           doing the 
AFA Gary J detecting and surviving afterward, that I want :)
AFA Gary J Dave L:  Can you define "*carefully*"?
Apple Guru Like I said, software timing loop, called on VBLIRQ real easy way
           to sense spee
JWankerl   Based on VBL?  That's 60/sec always, eh?  :-)
AFA Gary J I know how to sence speed changes, I just don't want to do it all
           the time.
Dave Lyons Gary, I just mean to be sure you preserve Bank, D, *and* the
           processor flags when you do that, since
Dave Lyons the Carry flag is significant going into that routine (see
           firmware ref--says whether to update
Dave Lyons the slot settings or not).  Also note that the vector is called in
           SEP 30 mode (not emulation,
FeinDavid  No, just making sure that speed does not affect an application.
Dave Lyons but 8-bit native).
Apple Guru JWankerl....Yes, VBLIRQ is every 1/60'th sec.
AFA Gary J Thanks, Dave.
Coach101   Does a speed change cream your program or just render its output
           less than attractive?
Apple Guru I think Gary is doing something with copy protection  YEACH
AFA Gary J Coach:  Speed changes the performance of my program :)  There are
           some speed
AFA Gary J sensatitive delays (it just makes things easier for the user)
           that I want to
AFA Gary J update.  (Not copy protection, sorry :)
JWankerl   Gary:  You should probably use GetTick to time your delays.
Apple Guru Gary....GOOD....I hate CP 
Coach101   It just occurred to me that protecting a user against a user's
           overt action (changing speed)
Coach101   seemed like a lot of trouble for an infrequent occurance.  ga
Apple Guru Hmmmm....I ALSO hate programs that watch my speed. It's MY fault
           if my speed
Apple Guru setting causes problems if noted in manual
AFA Gary J Well, I also want to keep the border a certain color... it just
           looks better 
AFA Gary J that way :)
Coach101   If we torture Gary long enough the truth will come out :)  :)
JWankerl   Continue storing your color value there based on a heartbeat
           interrupt.  :-)
AFA Gary J :)
AFA Gary J Well, if I do that, I can just check the border color in my loop,
           and if it
AFA Gary J changes from what I set it to, then someone has probably entered
           the control
AFA Gary J panel :)
Apple Guru I thought thats what I said RE: VBLIRQ
Coach101   awk
AFA Gary J (Unless they had it set to the same color I'm putting it at :)
AFA Gary J But, I'd prefer to not have to use time in my loop for mundane
           things like that.
Apple Guru what user would ever see 1/60'th of a second???
AFA Gary J It's not that kind of timing that I need to check.  It's more
           like a counter
AFA Gary J type of thing, much like a flashing cursor rate, or that sort of
           thing.
JWankerl   Yeah.  And if they enter the control panel, they deserve to get an
           ugly border.
AFA Gary J (But, it effects the performance of the program)
Apple Guru JW....very true!!
JWankerl   As I said before, use GetTick to time your loops.  
Apple Guru Sounds good to me too. Unless there are other routines using it
AFA Gary J GetTick won't do it in this case.  It's more a matter of how many
           times through
AFA Gary J the loop.
Apple Guru (that only counts in REAL critical code)
AFA Gary J Right, Guru.
Apple Guru <==-- tried using GetTick in CP routine.......yeach....:-(
AFA Gary J Oh well... (enough of my babbling).... on to other questions :)
Apple Guru IDEA!!!!!!
AFL Dyfet  Yes Guru?
Apple Guru Check just PAST your stack pointer, look at OLD return address! 
Apple Guru That could tell you if Cntrl Panel was up!
AFA Gary J Yes, but I'd still have to check that constantly.  It would be
           easier to
AFA Gary J check the border color :)
Apple Guru well....I DID try....:-)
AFA Gary J (or the text color, which nobody will see in an SHR program :)
Matt DTS   What's this about checking to see if the CP is up?  I've been
           kicked off and missed some of this.
Matt DTS   Synopsis, please.
AFA Gary J Matt:  I was just looking for a way to determine when the user
           had entered the
AFA Gary J control panel... so that I could check a few things AFTER the
           fact.
Matt DTS   Control Panel NDA or CDA?
AFA Gary J CDA
AFA Gary J (Control - Open-Apple - ESC) 
Matt DTS   What is it you want to check?
AFA Gary J I want to check the system speed (for one thing) and the border
           color.
AFA Gary J (parts of the program look real bad under certain border color
           settings :)
Matt DTS   The answer, of course, is to redesign your program properly
           instead of ignoring the user's choices.
AFA Gary J :)
Matt DTS   (like for the border color.  I *HATE* it when some dweeb
           programmer thinks I didn't mean it when I
AFA Gary J I'm not ignoring the user's choices :)   I want to check the
           speed because it
Matt DTS   chose the border color I chose.)
AFA Gary J effects the performance of the program.
AFA Gary J The border color...well, I could grant you that one :)
Matt DTS   Well, anyone can change the speed at any time, but I believe...
Matt DTS   ...that the control panels only do so by calling TOBRAMSETUP as
           described in the Firmware Reference.
Matt DTS   You could patch that out and see if it tells you what you want to
           know, even though you are playing
Matt DTS   with the unguaranteed and the unsupported.
AFA Gary J Is TWGS and Zip speed settings in BRAM?
FeinDavid  no.  each has it's own setting.  However, the ROM 3 has a vector
           that tells 
FeinDavid  current system speed, 1, 2.6, or >2.6 MHz..  You also have to
           fight with the
FeinDavid  Zip GSX that has 15 different speed settings.
Matt DTS   Yeah, and it would be nice if Zip or TWGS actually *used* that
           vector, but they don't.  <sigh>
AFA Gary J I'm not that concerned with super accurate speed detection.  I
           just need to
AFA Gary J tweek a few values if the speed changes.
Matt DTS   If you're after accelerator speed, you don't want to check the
           Control Panel.  You want to check the
Matt DTS   CDA menu.  That's a different ballgame.
AFA Gary J CDA menu then :)
AFA Gary J (I think of them as the same.... but I know they're not)
Matt DTS   CDA menu is easy.  Patch the tool call _ChooseCDA.
AFA Gary J _ChooseCDA?  Hmmm.....
Matt DTS   Right Dave?
AFA Gary J Ok... I'll have to give that one a try.  
AFL Dyfet  Okay, let's give A2 a chance for his question....:)
AFL Dyfet  GA A2...
A2GS       Thanx....actually it's not a question...but a small bug I found
           about
A2GS       20 minutes ago in 5.04....I've been able to reproduce it several
           times...so I
A2GS       just thought I'd mention it....
Matt DTS   So mention it already!
A2GS       keep in mind it's NOT serious......It seems that if you open a
           window which
A2GS       (just thought I'd get Matt a little revved up :)
AFL Dyfet  :)
A2GS       contains icons, and one of the icons on the right side of the
           window is cut off
A2GS       to a degree....the filename will remain cutoff when you scroll or
           open the
A2GS       window to display the whole icon....to see the whole icon in it's
           normal form
A2GS       you have to click on it (at which point things go back to normal
           for that icon)
A2GS       from what I've been able to find this problem only turns up when
           you initially
A2GS       open the window and the icon is cut off at that point (to begin
           with)....
A2GS       otherwise everything seems to be fine....one MAIN point which may
           be relevant
A2GS       (probably not) when I discovered this bug I was using some custom
           system fonts,
A2GS       but this problem never shows up in any other case when I use
           5.04...so I don't
A2GS       think it's the source (but then again who knows?)
A2GS       GA
Matt DTS   Oh.  this is a Finder thing.
Matt DTS   It's relevant - the Finder does not work well if the system font
           isn't Shaston 8.
A2GS       BTW (I still love 5.04, even with this bug) :)
Matt DTS   Someone will probably print this out and show it to Andy, but it's
           a low-priority thing unless we start
Matt DTS   shipping different system fonts.  GA.
A2GS       The font was Shaston 8 (I believe, but wouldn't bet the farm on
           it)
Matt DTS   How is Shaston 8 a "different system font"?
A2GS       excuse me....MY MISTAKE...I meant to say that I was using CUSTOM
           SYSTEM ICONS
AFL Dyfet  OIC
Matt DTS   Oh.  Well, then it sounds like a bug.  I just tried to reproduce
           it and I can't...
Matt DTS   ...so send detailed mail on how to reproduce it to "ShrinkIt" and
           Andy will see it.  GA.
A2GS       (I tried it for 2 different disks it it showed up in 3 cases (when
           I opened
A2GS       enough folders to get the right kind of setting))
AFL Dyfet  What Matt suggests would be the best way to handle it....Okay,
           let's get to
AFL Dyfet  Mark's question.  Go ahead, Mark...
MarkJnnngs Yes a couple of quickies.  I'm writing my first desktop
           application after makin
MarkJnnngs a pretty workable game which I uploaded last year.  I only can
           write in C.  
MarkJnnngs I'm using Orca C and Design Master as my "Sample" code.  I can't
           find anything
MarkJnnngs there that handles modeless dialogs.  Is there much C code
           around?
AFL Dyfet  Go ahead Matt...
MarkJnnngs And should I still use the Dialog Manager for modeless dialogs?
           GA
Matt DTS   Modeless dialogs are (generally) a pain in the patoot.
Matt DTS   Anything you can do with the Dialog Mgr you can do with extended
           controls and TaskMaster in a window
Matt DTS   more easily and more flexibly.
Matt DTS   DTS has several samples in C (APW C, though), the most
           complex/robust of which is "Lister".
Matt DTS   Although it doesn't directly compile under ORCA/C, you can get a
           lot of good information from it.
MarkJnnngs OK I'l go about it that way. 
Matt DTS   There's other samples available as well, many here on AOL.  GA.
AFA Gary J Yes, check our our source library.
AFA Gary J (All C files have a   C:   in the file subject heading)
MarkJnnngs Also, I downloaded 5.04 last night and I get I/O error $27 when I
           unshrink.
Matt DTS   Either your source or destination disks is physically bad.  Try
           unshrinking to different floppies.
MarkJnnngs I tried 2.  I'll try a third, but on the second one I verified it
           first 
MarkJnnngs and it said it had no bad blocks.
Andy Stein Sounds like a bad download.
AFA Gary J It may be a bad spot on the disk the ShrinkIt file is on.
Matt DTS   Try validating your shrunk files in the Finder and see if they can
           be read.
Matt DTS   ShrinkIt wouldn't return an I/O error unless it got one reading or
           writing from the disk.  A bad
Matt DTS   archive (or download) can't usually create that error.
Apple Guru 3.5" disk??
MarkJnnngs Good idea. Andy, the game was called Propagannihilate.
MarkJnnngs Yes 3.5" disk
Apple Guru If the problem starts showing up more often, and on other disks,
           your upper
Apple Guru head may have broken loose. (guessing due to problem w/verified
           disk)
MarkJnnngs I did hear some unusual clanking sounds out of the drive, come to
           think of it!
MarkJnnngs I have 2 3.5 drives; I tried switching the source and destination
           disks and
MarkJnnngs the same error occurred.
AFA Gary J Try moving the source file to a different source disk.
AFL Dyfet  It sounds like it's on the disk with the shrunk files...as Matt
           suggested, a
AFL Dyfet  validate from Finder should determine if that is the case...
Apple Guru error on same drive?
MarkJnnngs can't answer that for sure, AG.
AFL Dyfet  Okay, let's give Parik a chance here :)...GA Parik...
AFA Parik  how are the textfile technotes for nov & jan progressing?  I have
           the paper
AFA Parik  versions but electronic is faster to access.
AFA Parik  ga
Matt DTS   As far as I know, they're in distribution, whatever that means.
Matt DTS   I stayed up all night one night to get them done, but I'm not
           responsible for getting them out the
Matt DTS   door (thank God).  Sorry.
AFA Gary J Both November AND January, Matt?
Matt DTS   Yup.
AFA Gary J (great...I'll be looking :)
A2GS       Buy a Quickie with In-Words and Scan them into E-form  :-)
Apple Guru :)
AFA Gary J Not the kind of data that's quick to access, unfortunately :)
AFL Dyfet  Okay, Jonah, what is your little ? :)
AFL Marty  Jonah's cat does all his typing for him.
ShanoJ     Well, yesterday I noticed that after going into GSBug and exiting
           with a G,
ShanoJ     whenever I had the caps lock key on and was typing, the speaker
           would click
ShanoJ     once for each keypress... Any explanations of that? Also, is it a
           bug in GSBug
ShanoJ     that it leaves the GR screen switched in instead of the text
           screen?
ShanoJ     (I don't use the caps lock key much... :)
Coach101   Geez, you just found that feature :)
AFA Gary J That's a feature.
Coach101   Not a bug....   At one point it (GSBUG) did it all the time (Cap
           locks or not)!
Coach101   For me GsBUg has always left the screen that I "entered" from up
           when I exited...  What ahppaend
Coach101   in your case?
ShanoJ     Well, if I'm in a desktop program, go into GSBug with the four
           finger salute,
ShanoJ     hit G to return, and then quit to the APW shell, the GR screen is
           active and
ShanoJ     NOT the text screen.... (oh, I did a \s before the G)...
Coach101   One more thing, when you hear those KeyClicks, keydn events will
           *NOT* go to desk accessories.
AFA Parik  (why not hit "R" to return?)
Dave Lyons (R is usually the best way to return)
Matt DTS   G means "go" and doesn't necessarily restore the mode from when
           you entered, Jonah.  No duh.  :)
Coach101   Did you try exiting with an R; thats what I do and it seems to
           work right.  I just used a G and it did
Coach101   not work correctly for me.
ShanoJ     Hmm... Kinda weird that it kept doing that even after I exited
           (clicking, that 
ShanoJ     is).
ShanoJ     Hmm... Okay, I'll start using R then... Think I need to be sent to
           Remedial
ShanoJ     Debugging Tools 101? :(
ShanoJ     Didn't know about Ctl-T in NiftyList, and now this... :(
Coach101   Did you catch the comment about the KeyClicks meaning that Key
           down events are not going to 
Coach101   desk accessories.  That is the reason for the KeyClicks, to let
           you know things are not normal.
ShanoJ     Yup, caught that. I knew that happened when GSBug was switched in,
           but didn't
ShanoJ     think it should continue after I've G'd. Then again, it might be
           the G that's
ShanoJ     doing it... 
AFA Parik  come to kansasfest and you can learn alllllllllll about debuggin
ShanoJ     Planning to, Parik! :)
Matt DTS   Anything else tonight?
AFA Gary J What's the proper procedure for patching tools?
AFA Gary J (Having never researched that one :)
Matt DTS   Do it carefully and don't tail-patch.  :)
Matt DTS   (Of course, you might have to tail-patch.  Dave?)
AFA Gary J (Like ChooseCDA, for example :)
AFA Gary J DA Lyons should know this stuff :)
Dave Lyons OK, I'm here....
Dave Lyons Gary, it's not a well-defined area.  What do you want to patch?
AFA Gary J ChooseCDA, of course :)
Dave Lyons If you're patching at System.Setup time, life is good.  You need
           to use GetTSPtr to determine
Dave Lyons where & how big the function pointer table is for the tool set you
           want to patch,
AFA Gary J An application needs to do this, temporarily, Dave.
Dave Lyons Oh, for an application, temporarily:  Use GetTSPtr to get the
           current FPT for that tool, allocate
Dave Lyons a chunk of memory full of zeroes the same size as the old FPT
           (4*the first longword), fill it with
Dave Lyons zeroes & copy the first longword, and fill in the entries for the
           tools you want to patch--and feed
Dave Lyons that to SetTSPtr.
Dave Lyons Your patch will go away when you do a TLShutDown.
AFA Gary J Thanks, Dave.  (good explanation)

AFA JoeyS  Wanna try a Basic.System question?  :-)
DangardAce Basic.System!  That's prehistoric.  
AFA JoeyS  :P~~ Pete...
DangardAce Joe, just put all your gosubs first and use line numbers that are
           powers of 2.
AFA JoeyS  :P again, Pete.  My question is a little stranger than THAT...
AFA Gary J Pete :)
DangardAce Okay then, just use 1 character variables.
DangardAce :)
Matt DTS   Joey:  Cough up $100/year and Software Licensing will give you the
           source to BASIC.System.  :)
AFA JoeyS  Don't push me; it's been a bad year...
AFA JoeyS  LOL Matt... gee, thanks.
DangardAce Or better yet, don't put spaces in REM statements.
AFA Gary J (just don't use REM statments)
Apple Guru <==-- must have missed something, but maybe not....I think I smell
           BASIC here:(
AFA JoeyS  (the question, was, in theory, use of m/l subroutines in
           Applesoft, butttt...)
DangardAce There used to be this great program called Basic Enhanced Software
           Tricks..
DangardAce it let you compress lines to the maximum amount, 256 chars. per
           line..
Apple Guru B.E.S.T. was for DOS 3.3.....yeuch
AFA Gary J :)
DangardAce Too bad no one ever revamped it for ProDOS.
Apple Guru Sensible Software sorta folded......
DangardAce I thought they were still selling Sensible Grammer..
DangardAce Things haven't been the same since Quadrant 6112..
Apple Guru SS is still around, but is running out of owners basement now
DangardAce like most Apple II companies
AFA JoeyS  Oh, well, okay.  :)
AFA JoeyS  So anyone want to take a stab at the Basic.System question?? 
           :-)
AFA Gary J Go for it, Joey :)
DangardAce What, meshing ML with AppleSoft?
AFA JoeyS  LOL.  Okay.  I have an amper routine, &GET, that's supposed to
           read characters
AFA JoeyS  (primarily intended for reading from disk) as a string, and return
           the C/R
AFA JoeyS  terminated string to a passed var.  That all works just fine. 
           Then I decided
AFA JoeyS  I wanted to add some code so that it'd set a flag when it read in
           a null (end
AFA JoeyS  of a record in a random access file).  That doesn't work nearly as
           well; the
AFA JoeyS  code just "jumps" to the next record.  The m/l code in question
           looks like...
AFA JoeyS  jsr $fd0c ; get char / and #$7F / beq got_null
AFA JoeyS  The routine never ever gets to get_null.  I know the code is fine,
           since if I
AFA JoeyS  invoke the routine without a Basic.System READ in effect (i.e.
           typing chars at
AFA JoeyS  the keyboard), it will correctly set the flag when I type ^@.  Any
           ideas?
Apple Guru Are you passing back a C/R for a null string?
AFA JoeyS  Actually, I wanted to treat the null as a terminator the same as
           C/R, and  
AFA JoeyS  therefore return the chars I'd read to that point, but also set
           the flag. 
AFA JoeyS  That's all easy once I can actually convince the routine to give
           me the nulls
AFA JoeyS  in the first place.
Apple Guru AND #$7F.....BEQ NULL, BMI NULL
AFA JoeyS  If I mask the high bit the BMI should always fail, yes?
AFA Gary J BMI Null?   It should never be minus.
Apple Guru Yes.....It shouldn't be, but I bet it is (for some strage
           reason)
AFA Gary J (AND #$7F takes care of that)
AFA Gary J (Unless of course, you've set a 16-bit accumulator :)
Apple Guru Running on 6502 or 65C02 or 65816?
AFA JoeyS  Uhh, well, I see no reason why the processor should ignore my AND
           #$7F... :-)
AFA JoeyS  This is pure 6502 code -- not C02, not 816.
Apple Guru 6502 ....SOME manufacturers chips had bug in flag setting on
           AND's
AFA JoeyS  LOL... right.  No, the code itself would seem to be functioning
           correctly,
AFA JoeyS  since as I said, it works as expected when I give it a null from
           the keyboard--
AFA JoeyS  only when READ'ing from a disk file does it not do so.
AFA JoeyS  (and actually, the code loop jsr $fd0c ; get char / jsr $fdda ;
           prbyte /
AFA JoeyS  jmp start ; loop   never displays 00, either, when reading from
           disk)
AFA Gary J Have you tried setting a break point there and seeing just what
           value IS 
AFA Gary J returned?
AFA JoeyS  Yeah, well, see my previous line, Gary, for what I did try.  :)
AFA Gary J It must not be zero, or it just may not be going to your routine
           at all.
Apple Guru Just for yuks......test for NEG after your AND. Pdos might be
           messing you up
Apple Guru if it works right from the keyboard
AFA JoeyS  Shrug, I can try it, couldn't hurt.  But I'm honestly not sure
           what that will
AFA JoeyS  accomplish after the AND.  But who knows?
AFA Gary J Just because it works for the keyboard doesn't mean it will work
           from disk.
AFA JoeyS  Well, I know that, Gary.  :)  I want to find out WHY it doesn't
           work from disk,
AFA JoeyS  and more importantly, how to make it do so.  :)
AFA Gary J (I know you know, Joey :)
Apple Guru <-- betting that Hi bit is set
AFA Gary J Obviously, the disk read is returning something other than a 00,
           or your
AFA Gary J code is somehow being missed.
AFA Gary J (bypassed, branched around, or otherwise avoided)
AFA JoeyS  Well, like I said, a loop of get-byte, print-byte, loop when
           reading from the
AFA JoeyS  disk never returns the 00's used for record padding... even though
           Block Warden
AFA JoeyS  definitively shows that they're there, and my datafile isn't
           messed up or
AFA JoeyS  anything.
Matt DTS   Are you using MLI read calls or Basic.System read calls?
AFA Gary J Are you using MLI in your asm code?
AFA Gary J You could test for eof, and feed your routine a zero.
AFA JoeyS  I wouldn't get EOF, since I'm NOT at EOF, I'm at EOrecord.
AFA Gary J Oh, sorry.  Missed the bit about EOrecord.
AFA JoeyS  I'm using jsr $fd0c (monitor get char), which is the same call
           used by 
AFA JoeyS  Applesoft's GET command.  I want to avoid the overhead of zillions
           of reads.
Apple Guru you can't OPEN, READ, etc from AL calls to B.S. MUST use MLI
Apple Guru per P8 tech manual
Matt DTS   BI may be using $00 as a newline character so reads terminate. 
           Normally BASIC programs don't want to
Matt DTS   get returned zero bytes, so Basic.System undoubtedly filters them
           somehow.
AFA JoeyS  Hmmm, that's an interesting thought, Matt.  Should I try disabling
           newline
AFA JoeyS  mode totally before entering the routine?? (but that brings up the
           same 
AFA JoeyS  problem, namely that of repetitive MLI calls, which I want to
           avoid for
AFA JoeyS  performance reasons)
Matt DTS   It's probably not Newline mode; it's probably done inside
           Basic.System.
Apple Guru Matt...thats why P8 tech manual says MLI cals for read/write
AFA JoeyS  Oh.  Ummm, okay, but when using a GET I$ command (Applesoft GET)
           in a loop
AFA JoeyS  purely in Applesoft (s-l-o-w...), I$ =does= equal "" (null) when I
           read a null,
AFA JoeyS  and as I said I've traced the Applesoft code and found it to use
           the same
AFA JoeyS  jsr $fd0c routine.  IGSC...
Matt DTS   Did you open the file with the same record length both times?
AFA JoeyS  Yup.  All parameters of the OPEN, READ, and even CLOSE commands
           were exactly
AFA JoeyS  the same.  Just that in one version I used something like
AFA JoeyS  & DO: & GET I$: ? I$: & STOP IF PEEK(222)=5    (peek(222) = 5 is
           the condition
AFA JoeyS  I supposedly set up when I read a null), whereas in the other I
           use
AFA JoeyS  & DO: GET I$: ? I$;: & STOP IF I$=""
AFA JoeyS  The first doesn't work, the second does.  <shrug>
Dave Lyons I've been browsing thru the BASIC.SYSTEM source, and I have noted
           that there *is* special handling
Dave Lyons for the GET statement.
AFA JoeyS  There is??  WHERE??
Dave Lyons Inside BASIC.SYSTEM there is...in the routines that handle getting
           input from disk instead of
Dave Lyons from the keyboard.  Apparently during the here's-a-statement
Dave Lyons trap it notes the command and stores a $BE into PROMPT ($33) if
           it's a GET.  The input stuff
Dave Lyons checks to see if $33 contains $BE & behaves differently.
AFA JoeyS  (Matt smiles and reminds me of the $100 Basic.System source code
           offer)
AFA Gary J :)
AFA Gary J Check "Beneath Apple ProDOS" instead.  It's only around $20 :)
Apple Guru :-)
Apple Guru Gary....Where can I get a NEW copy of BAP????
AFA JoeyS  Oh WOW... that very well could be it; there's another similar
           weird thing that
AFA JoeyS  happens when trying to output via COUT, and it also involved the
           Prompt ZP
AFA JoeyS  loc.  I'll have to try this puppy out... :))
AFA JoeyS  (Gary: I've got BAP, as well as Little's "Advanced ProDOS for
           Programmers";
AFA JoeyS  neither of 'em extensively cover the BI)
AFA JoeyS  Dave: I'll run now and try this out, and drop you a note with the
           results
AFA JoeyS  either way, 'kay?
Dave Lyons Ok.
AFA JoeyS  Thanks!   Later, all...
Dave Lyons Yeah, you may be able to just store a $BE into $33; it shouldn't
           get overwritten until the next
Dave Lyons Applesoft statement executes, or until you call GETLN.
AFA JoeyS  ...right; in another routine where I wanted to output via COUT, I
           think I had
AFA JoeyS  to LDA #0, STA $33 to get it to work right; as you said, $33
           stayed intact
AFA JoeyS  while I was in my routine.
AFA JoeyS  I'll get back to ya' in mere minutes... :)
AFA JoeyS  Byeeeee.
AFA JoeyS  <--- (woo, excited, my two week old problem may be solved :)