18 Jul
2014
18 Jul
'14
10:12 a.m.
From: Chuck Guzis: Friday, July 18, 2014 9:00 AM
On 07/18/2014 02:27 AM, Philip Belben wrote:
One possibility that I haven't seen discussed, is that the DELs are
there to provide a delay for the IMSAI. It's conceivable that the
BASIC interpreter ponders it's navel for a short time after a
line is received. Adding a couple of frames of "ignore me"
would give the interpreter two character times to catch up.
If the interpreter was sometimes/often ready early, then
"ignore me" was the harmless thing to send.
Vince
When the IMSAI (or whatever machine) reads these
tapes in to run them in
BASIC,
Does it need to see two characters there?
Do they have to be DEL?
I thought that I was pretty clear about that--DEL, AFAIK, is the only
character *by definition* is supposed to be ignored--and that goes all
the way back to ECMA-1 (1963) when 6-bit codes were used by data
processing equipment (FWIW, ESCape was defined as 62 decimal/76 octal,
but that was later changed).
Does the IMSAI expect the DELs? I doubt it, since they convey no
information and DELs can appear anywhere in the data stream. If you're
using something other than an ASR33 (e.g., a "glass TTY") in
half-duplex, I doubt that they're necessary.