🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <ben.2630@epmooch.UUCP> ben@epmooch.UUCP (Rev. Ben A. Mesander) 
writes:
> If memory serves me right, the old Commodore PET machines could be
> physically damaged (ie smoke) by poking the wrong value into the wrong
> memory location. Good design...

Yep.  Way back in 1982, I bought a Comodore SuperPet (6809 AND 6502 CPUs, 
switch selectable, two operating systems, ran FORTRAN, BASIC in two flavors, APL and Pascal.  COBOL was promised, but never delivered).  Also got two SSDS drives, 330 baud modemand EPSON MX-80 printer, all for ONLY $5200... Gosh, it seemed like a good deal back then,with a full 128 K of banked memory).

Anyway, I was running a game called "FROG" which ran great on the older 
PETs.  It included a poke into some system location.  When I ran it the first time, the display went down to about 1 inch, and there was a LOUD squeal fron the case, accompanied by a piquant smell.  

Even after a immediate reboot, my IEEE-488 port would only talk to the 
disk drives, not themodem.  After replacing the board itself (under warranty), I still got "TIME_OUTS" from my comm program when trying to do file transfers.  Eventually, they had to replace the entire 
unit.  

I would have been happy to only have reformatted by floppys!!


David A. Cook

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