Commander X16

Yep, it's a bug! Thanks for the report. I'll fix it in the next version.

By the way, in any prompt, pressing F8 will "escape" from the prompt.

On 12/19/2020 at 1:45 PM, mjallison42 said:

Use the "view mode" to examine defined labels. This shows all defined labels , even outside of the program region. It is missing the ability to define a label outside of the program region.



 

Is defining a label/symbol outside of the program region something that will be added?  I see that F2 (View) followed by F3 (SYMB) shows all of the symbols.  It would be a nice feature to be able to define additional ones (maybe there already is and I just missed it?)

Also, there are times when I'm backing out of something and I hit F8 too many times and I end up exiting the program.  Maybe make EXIT F12 instead of F8 - so that it is all the way at the end of the keyboard? ( and leave F8 as the BACK key for everything else, and have no other function assigned to F12?)

On 2/21/2021 at 12:31 AM, mjallison42 said:

By the way, in any prompt, pressing F8 will "escape" from the prompt.

Maybe I'm missing the obvious here, but why not use ESC for that?

I'd like to, but my experiments (using the emulator) don't appear to support ESCAPE. I need to check with the kernal guys to see if ESCAPE will be supported. 

It looks like STOP will be used in place of ESCAPE

Ah okay, a quick test shows that ESC and Ctrl-C both interrupt a Basic program, so it's probably mapped to the Stop key in the emulator. Using the WASD keyboard, RUN/STOP, 40/80 (and potentially RESTORE, but how do I check that?) don't work as expected. I suspect there's a reason for it, but is it a good reason? I imagine it might be a pain to get Scroll Lock key presses consistently on all supported platforms, or something like that?

Looks like I'll need to dig into the source and use a similar technique. Thanks for the tips.

Hello.

I'm by no means an expert on PS/2 scan codes.

According to tables available on line, for instance here https://techdocs.altium.com/display/FPGA/PS2+Keyboard+Scan+Codes, it seems that the only key with prefix $E1 is the Pause/Break key.

The Esc key make code is $76.

Looking at the Kernal source at kernal/drivers/x16/ps2kbd.s

• 
  Keyboard scan routine starts at line 125
  


• 
  At line 132 it branches to line 177 (label: down_ext) if the PS/2 prefix is not 0
  


• 
  If the PS/2 prefix is $E1 we got the Pause/Break key
  


• 
  I have no working Pause key on my Mac, so I cannot test what happens. However, it seems that the X register is loaded with value #6 on line 205, which is moved to A register on line 208 and divided by 2 on line 209 before sent to the keyboard buffer.  6 divided by 2 is the code for the Esc key. So I would guess that Esc and Pause/Break is ending up doing the same. 
  

The Esc key breaks Basic code.

In assembly programs, I would say that the Esc key doesn't have any function, other than what you tell it to.

I'll probably be doing an update on the X16 in a month or two.  It might be good to show this assembly environment off again.  Has anyone written anything in the environment that would make for a good demonstration?