Safe Machine Code Routines

More and more programs are appearing in SYNC, under the rubric of “machine language.” There was a time, not too long ago, when personal computer users were notoriously shy about venturing into these jungles. Nowadays, though, even someone who is not quite comfortable in Basic can manage to key in and run programs in Z80 machine code. Unfortunately, there are still a few bugs in the system. The Sinclair machines are really designed for Basic, not for special machine code routines. True, there are commands-PEEK, POKE, and USR-that are handy for putting these fast, specialized routines wherever the programmer desires. Unfortunately, there is nowhere to put them.