64 Column Print Utility

This is a program utility, it is used to print up to 64 characters per line in normal video mode.

It’s fairly simple to use. At the beginning of your program you MUST DIM A$(64, or more), this is the variable that will hold the string to be printed, any variable can be used as long as it is the very first variable in memory, so W$(90) is OK. Also note that only the first 64 characters of the string will be printed.

This print utility was made for complete use of a line (64 characters) so it may not be very flexible, however there are some possible changes…

• USR 26740 to print string
• 26849 Character set (768 long)
• 26752 string length divided by 2

10 DIM A$(64)
20 LET A$="BYTE POWER"
30 POKE 26752,5 (10/2)
40 PRINT AT 10,10;
50 RANDOMIZE USR 26740

This will print at 10,0 the string in 64 column mode.

You will notice that some of the characters are not what they should be, such characters are @ (the “a” in circle on the “2” key), # (number character), © (copyright sign), FREE (under the “A” key) and STICK (under the “S” key). It just wasn’t possible to draw these characters in a 4 by 8 pixel graphic.

All characters take 8 bytes with only the 4 most significant bits of each byte being used.

The length 26752 holds the length of the string to be printed divided by 2. When the program prints it prints 2 characters at a time, it’s much faster that way but it does limit its flexibility. So if you wish to change the length of the string, you should POKE 26752,INT ((LENGTH+1)/2). For 64 it would be 32, for 63 it would still be 32. For 30 characters it would be 15, etc…

Before I forget, the MC is in a REM at line 0, so you don’t have to load CODES after loading a program that uses this routine. You just save it with your program.