User`s guide
SAFJ;TY RULES FOR REMOVING
DISKETIES
Always remove diskettes before turning a drive off or. on.
If
a diskette were in place
and the door closed at power on or off, you could lose part
or
all
of
the data on that
diskette.
Similarly, do
not
remove a diskette
from
its drive when the green drive activity light
is
on! That light only glows when the drive
is
actually in use. Removing the diskette with it
on may result in your losing information currently being written to the diskette.
LOADING A PACKAGED PROGRAM
To
use prepackaged BASIC programs available on diskette, here
is
the procedure:
After turning on your computer system, carefully insert the preprogrammed diskette
as described on the previous page. For purpose
of
demonstration, use the Test/Demo
diskette included with the disk drive. The following commands will load a program from
the diskette into the computer:
BASIC
2:
LOAD
''program
name''
,device number,relocate flag
Example:
LOAD
"HOW
TO
USE'!,8
BASIC 3.5:
DLOAD
"program
name"
,Ddrive
# ,Udevice
number
,relocate
flag
Example:
DLOAD
"HOW
TO
USE"
After each command press the RETURN key
In both cases the exact name
of
the program wanted is placed between quotation
marks.
Drive#
is
optional.
Next is the device number
of
your disk drive which, unless you change it,
is
always 8
on the 1541.
If
you have more than one drive however, you will need to change the device
number
on
any additional drive (see Appendix A for instructions on setting a drive's
device number) .
14
Last is the relocate flag.
It
can have one
of
two values, 0 and 1. If the relocate flag is
o
or
omitted, all Commodore computers that use the
1541
automatically relocate the
programs they load to live in the part
of
computer memory reserved for BASIC
progra~ns
.
If
the relocate flag value is
I,
auto-relocation
is
turned off, and the program
1s
loaded mto
the exact part
of
memory from which it was originally saved. This feature allows
machine-language
and
other
special
purpose
programs
to
come
into
the
computer
at
the
correct
location
for
them
to
operate
properly.
At
this
point
in
your
learning,
the
only
thing
you
need
to
know
about
the
relocate flag is
how
to
use it.
Simply
include
the
1
at
the
end
of
the
LOAD
command
if
a
particular
program
doesn't
run
properly
when
loaded
the
usual way. . .
After you type
in
the command and press the RETURN key, the fOllowmg will
appear on the screen:
SEARCHING FOR
"HOW
TO
USE"
LOADING
READY .
•
When the word READY and the flashing cursor reappear on the screen and the green
light goes off on the drive, the program named
"HOW
TO
USE"
on the Test/Demo
diskette has been loaded into the computer. To use it, just type the word
RUN and press
the
RETURN key.
The
same Load command will also allow you to load other prepackaged programs
from the Test/Demo
or
other diskettes. Merely substitute the exact program name that you
want to use between the quotation marks
in
the above example, and that will be the
program the computer will load (a list
of
Test/Demo programs
is
shown in Chapter 3, in
the section entitled
"What
a Directory
Shows")
.
Note: here and in the remainder
of
the book, we will assume you are
in
graphic
mode, seeing upper case letters and graphic characters when you type. This is the normal
condition
of
all Commodore computers covered by this manual when they are first turned
on.
If
you now see lower-case letters when you type without using the SHIFT key, you are
in text mode instead.
Press the COMMODORE key (
(k
),
at the lower left comer
of
your
keyboard, together with a
SHIFT key
to
switch to graphic mode.
HOW
TO
PREPARE
A NEW DISKETTE: BASIC 2
A diskette needs a pattern
of
magnetic grooves in order for the drive's read/write
head to find
th~ngs
on it. This pattern
is
not on your diskettes when you buy them, but
adding it to a diskette is simple once you know to do it. Here is the procedure:
FORMAT FOR THE DISK NEW COMMAND
OPEN 15,device
#,15,"Ndrive
#:diskette
name,id"
CLOSEJ5
This Open command will be described more
fully,
in Chapters 4 and 5. For now, just
copy it as is, replacing only the parts given in lower case. These include: the device
15