(09-16-2022, 03:23 PM)mnrvovrfc Wrote:(09-16-2022, 01:39 PM)madscijr Wrote: :CALL CLEAR. Wait, wrong computer LOL, on TRS-80 Model III had to clear the screen to get it away from "large" character mode, no wonder Family Computing Magazine and others were full of the "PRINT CHR$(147)" at one end and "CLS" at the other. Of course, that could be done with "WIDTH" in M$QB and descendants. The "CALL CLEAR" on Texas Instrument computer, however, was something I couldn't believe when I read about it a long time ago. Really, no button assigned to clear the screen? Maybe the screen didn't have that much to display anyway. Must have been even smaller than VIC-20 then.
Eventually I would like to create some equivalent functions in QB64 to run my old TI programs. The biggest challenge will be CALL SOUND!
Imagine small children being taught to program in BASIC and could just press a button labelled "CLEAR", or could even do a control-key combination to do it, but the selected few on a certain computer have to pretend it's COBOL.
Ha! I don't recall being bothered that my TI computer had a key to clear the screen. But it was my first computer so I had nothing to compare it to. The same with the program editor, didn't it limit you to one line at a time? What a pain it was to go back to that years later!
Yes, I think maybe TI cut costs on the TI99/4A by using a smaller keyboard with less keys, and they had to eliminate some common keys? Cheap keyboards seem to have been a popular way to keep costs down back then, remember those awful membrane keyboards on the Atari 400 and Timex Sinclair 1000? That might have been okay on a Speak n Spell, but not for a computer you'd be typing on for hours!