Micro­power

Secondly, POKE & DOKE are often used to change options in the monitor. You will know that under NAS-SYS the command K1 gives you lower case as the standard print output. This can be achieved from BASIC directly, or in the course of a program by the statement POKE 3111,1. Similarly, if you want to turn on output to your printer in the middle of a program, you can use the various DOKE instructions outlined in the manual. N.B. Different values apply in NAS-SYS 3 from those in NAS-SYS 1.

A third use might be to store a value which is to be picked up later by a machine code subroutine. The example which follows allows you to generate sounds from a BASIC program by flipping Bit 5 of the keyboard port.

Sub-routine:

6000 DOKE 3200,23533:DOKE 3202,3330:DOKE 3204,19437
6010 DOKE 3206,3328:DOKE 3208,8254:DOKE 3210,211
6020 DOKE 3212,30731:DOKE 3214,8369:DOKE 3216,-4613
6030 DOKE 3218,75:DOKE 3220,-20723:DOKE 3222,211
6040 DOKE 3224,30731:DOKE 3226,8369:DOKE 3228,7163
6050 DOKE 3230,-19590:DOKE 3232,-7648:DOKE 3234,201
6060 RETURN

Main routine:

1000 GOSUB 6000:DOKE 4100,3200   (Dec. Addr. of M/C routine)
1010 DOKE 3330,X                 (where X=no. of complete loops)
1020 FOR I=A TO B, STEP C        (where different values of A,B & C
                                 give different sounds)
1030 DOKE 3328,I:U=USR(0): NEXT I:

Memory location 3330 (0D02 hex) is DOKE’d with the value which will control the length of the sounds generated, while 3328 (0D00 hex) is DOKE’d with the frequency parameters.

Another use to which I have put these instructions was in the creation of an array in a large program when I was short of memory. The original array was something like A(8,8), i.e. 64 variables, requiring 6 bytes each. By using DOKE to put values in memory and DEEK to retrieve them it was possible to use only two bytes for each variable, e.g. if the start of the array is 3584, to put the value X into what was previously A(I,J), you enter DOKE 3584+​[16*(I-1)]+​[2*(J-1)],​X. The instruction is a lot more cumbersome but there is still a significant saving in memory usage.

Random Numbers

Random numbers are very useful in games programming, both in games of chance like Pontoon or Fruit Machine and also in more complex programs like Star Trek, where you wish to vary the results of selecting a particular option in the course of the game.

The RND function does not, in fact, generate random numbers at all; it merely starts with a pre-determined value and then produces new numbers according to a formula. These values are always in the range 0 to 0.999999. If the argument used