PEB troubles.

[+mizapf]

I guess it is the "default" in terms of what the computer expects to see, but the computer doesn't boot by default to "upper" case, so, between that and the fact that the "lower case" letters are really "upper case" in appearance, I have to say it is a bit confusing. Add to that that the manual nowhere mentions the upper case requirement...

 

I wonder where I learned it from, back in those days. It was never a question whether to switch cases; you always had to remember to release AlphaLock when using the joystick.

 

Maybe it was mentioned in the blue BASIC manual? All BASIC commands were written in uppercase; similarly, all assembler constants use uppercase consistently. Certainly this comes from the TI-99/4 which had no lowercase.

 

I remember that uppercase was the default for the VC-20 and C-64 as well.

[+Lee Stewart]

I have the CorComp double sided double density controller, and it also recognizes dsk1 as well as DSK1. But not Dsk1 or any other such combination.

 

It also recognizes DSK4, unlike the TI controller.

 

...lee

[mozartpc27]

 

I wonder where I learned it from, back in those days. It was never a question whether to switch cases; you always had to remember to release AlphaLock when using the joystick.

 

Maybe it was mentioned in the blue BASIC manual? All BASIC commands were written in uppercase; similarly, all assembler constants use uppercase consistently. Certainly this comes from the TI-99/4 which had no lowercase.

 

I remember that uppercase was the default for the VC-20 and C-64 as well.

 

Yes, but on the Commodore, first off, all commands worked in both upper and lower case, and second of all, the "upper case" characters that appeared on the screen were ready-to-use in terms of writing commands. if you shift-lock a Commodore in BASIC, the characters that are printed are the special graphical characters - those would not be recognized by BASIC. To get lower case characters in Commodore BASIC, you had to hit shift while holding down the Commodore key, and, like I said, if you did that, all BASIC commands would still work just fine.

[Casey]

TI BASIC will happily accept any and all commands in lowercase as well, converting them to uppercase when you enter them into a program. Character case on the Commodore machines is a bit of a misnomer, really. They had 2 distinct character sets, which were switched in and out by using the Shift-Commodore key combination (or a POKE on the older machines that didn't have a Commodore key.) I don't believe switching the character sets changed the PETSCII value of the character, just what it looked like. A shifted S displayed as a heart suit symbol on the "default" character set, but a capital S on the upper/lowercase set. It was a bit odd to work with - A shifted space is a distinctly different character than a non-shifted one, but they appear the same on the screen. They cause very different results however, especially in file names.

[apersson850]

Yes, the TI will also accept BASIC commands in any case. Pascal is the same. Variable, VARIABLE and Vari_Able are the same thing. But device names are different. They are coded in the DSR, and the DSRLNK program compares the name literally against what's in the DSR.

As Lee wrote above, the CorComp controller will also understand DSK4 (and dsk4), but it takes a trick to convince the p-system to use more than three drives.

Edited July 3, 2017 by apersson850