Dedicated to the Tandy/Radio Shack MC-10 Micro Color Computer and the Color Computers 1, 2 & 3

(The following Article was featured for the September '99 edition of this page)

Little E does big job to BASIC

First off, this program is not an original work from yours truly. This utility was written by H. Allen Curtis and got printed in the April 1984 issue of The Rainbow magazine. I decided to take the information presented there and reproduce it here for the benefit of (how many?) still active MC-10 users around the world. Little E adds an EDIT command to the MC-10, a much needed feature that Tandy left out when the MC-10 was designed. How many times have you wished to just correct a typo in a fast and easy way instead of retyping the whole thing over? - this utility will save you a sizable amount of time when entering Basic listings into the MC-10.

Snap your fingers and type away the following Basic program - double check everything before you hit ENTER at every line (this is one of those moments when you wish the MC-10 had a numeric keypad!): 

MC-10 Little E Basic Editor 10 CLS:X=256*PEEK(16976)-11 20 CLEAR25,X 30 X=256*PEEK(16976)-10 40 FORZ=X TOX+265 50 READY:W=W+Y:PRINTZ,Y;W 60 POKEZ,Y:NEXT 70 IFW<>29479THENPRINT"DATA ERRO R":STOP 80 EXECX:END 90 DATA 198,18,58,255,66,152,134 100 DATA 126,183,66,151,198,35 110 DATA 58,255,66,170,57,189,0 120 DATA 243,129,101,38,248,122 130 DATA 66,28,189,251,212,134 140 DATA 126,183,66,169,127,0 150 DATA 181,189,0,235,126,228 160 DATA 13,254,66,128,150,166 170 DATA 167,0,57,125,0,181,38 180 DATA 17,124,0181,236,2,147 190 DATA 165,39,1,134,57,183,66 200 DATA 169,126,226,113,134,57 210 DATA 183,66,169,206,64,0,255 220 DATA 66,128,166,0,151,166 230 DATA 189,248,104,129,9,38,10 240 DATA 141,202,140,64,127,36 250 DATA 242,8,32,232,129,21,38 260 DATA 20,254,66,128,140,64 270 DATA 128,36,7,166,1,167,0,8 280 DATA 32,244,254,66,128,32 290 DATA 211,129,10,38,12,141 300 DATA 164,140,64,96,36,204 310 DATA 198,32,58,32,192,129,8 320 DATA 38,10,141,148,140,64,0 330 DATA 39,188,9,32,178,129,19 340 DATA 38,23,206,64,127,188 350 DATA 66,128,39,7,9,166,0,167 360 DATA 1,32,244,150,166,167,1 370 DATA 134,96,32,156,129,3,39 380 DATA 136,129,13,39,11,189 390 DATA 249,201,140,64,127,39,1 400 DATA 8,32,154,206,66,177,223 410 DATA 244,8,223,181,206,64,0 420 DATA 223,183,166,0,43,34,129 430 DATA 64,37,6,129,96,37,4,139

The format for the e command is:

e line number

That's a lower case E. To use the command you'll have to switch over to lowercase by doing the SHIFT-0 sequence. Once the command has been typed and [ENTER] is pressed, the line to edit will appear on top of the screen with the cursor flashing at the home position. Three arrow keys are used to move around the cursor to the position you desire (restricted to the first 128 positions of the screen):

RIGHT arrow - Move the cursor one position to the right without changing anything

DOWN arrow - Move the cursor down one position without changing anything

LEFT arrow - Move cursor to the left without changing anything

Characters can be deleted from the program line by pressing the L.DEL key in the MC-10. To insert characters you need to first insert spaces (as many as needed) using the SHIFT-@ combination. When a character is typed, the character is overstriked on what was under it before and the cursor moves one space to the right. Pressing the ENTER key twice will accept the changes and enter the modified line into the program and, if you don't want to accept changes press the BREAK at any time to abort the e command. Please note that the whole line can be modified including the line number , this allows you to transpose line numbers and comes really handy since the MC-10 doesn't have a RENUM command to help in a neat arrangement of a revised Basic program.

RPHWeb

Actually, this was first edited using the HTML editor found in Netscape Gold (remember this one?), back then the page resided in the Delphi personal web space. When that died, the page was moved to Tripod and maintained with (oh sacrilege!) MS Frontpage. I got wise, moved out of Tripod and now use NetObjects Fusion...