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- Apple II
- Technical Notes
- _____________________________________________________________________________
- Developer Technical Support
-
-
- Apple II Miscellaneous
- #15: Compatibility Across Apple II Models
-
- Written by: Dave Lyons January 1990
-
- This Technical Note explains how you can get in big trouble by using a soft
- switch before checking to make sure it exists on the particular Apple II model
- being used.
- _____________________________________________________________________________
-
- When a soft switch location is defined on one Apple II model but not others,
- it is not safe to read the soft switch and later decide whether to use the
- value that was read. The following two examples demonstrate the hazards of
- this method.
-
- An application must read KEYMODREG ($C025) only after determining that it is
- running on an Apple IIGS (using IDROUTINE at $FE1F). Reading KEYMODREG and
- later ignoring the result if not on an Apple IIGS does not work.
-
- NEWVIDEO ($C029) is also defined only on the Apple IIGS. Again, an
- application must know that it is running on an Apple IIGS before reading or
- writing this location. (If your application uses double-high resolution,
- check for an Apple IIGS before attempting to set the monochrome-double-hires
- bit in NEWVIDEO.)
-
- Both of these locations are reserved on the Apple IIc Plus, and reading from
- or writing to them currently causes the Apple IIc Plus ROM to be swapped out
- and replaced by additional ROM, instantly killing your application.
-
-
- Further Reference
- _____________________________________________________________________________
- o Apple IIGS Hardware Reference
- o Apple IIe Technical Reference Manual
- o Apple IIc Technical Reference Manual, Second Edition
- o Miscellaneous Technical Note #7, Apple II Family Identification
-