Date   : Mon, 05 Jan 1998 17:35:59 -0000
From   : Paul Theobald <PT@...>
Subject: Re: Certain *-commands

>----------
>From:      Jonathan Davies[SMTP:jjd@...]
>Sent:      Monday, January 05, 1998 1:44 PM
>To:        bbc-micro@...
>Subject:   [BBC-Micro] Certain *-commands
>
>On my BBC B, certain *-commands don't seem to work. Perhaps these are
>Master-only commands...
>
>These are commands such as *SRLOAD, *MRUN, etc. These commands are necessary
>to get some games to work.
>
>Can anyone tell me (i) what they do (ii) if there is any way to get them to
>work (iii) how to get around my problem.

(i) *SRLOAD (and also *SRSAVE, *SRREAD, *SRWRITE) are commands only
available on the BBC Master.  They load data into and out of sideways
RAM.

    *MRUN (and also *MLOAD) are commands available in various DFS ROMS
(but not the standard Acorn one), used to load in a program from disk,
and then copy it to another location in memory before running.  This was
typically used to load a program at page &E00 (which was not normally
available since various ROMS including the DFS use this memory as
workspace), to maximise the amount of memory available.

(ii) You may be able to find copies of these commands, possibly under
different names, in various 'utilities' ROMS, or occasionally as
standalone programs with some games.

(iii) If you can't find a copy of the utilities, you could try writing
them yourself.  They're relatively short programs, though you'll have to
resort to machine code for the *SR commands at least, and probably best
for the *M commands too.  I recommend you get hold of an Advanced User
Guide for the details, unless some bright spark on this list can provide
the info.