HFISCHER%USC-ECLB%MINET-CPO-EM@sri-unix.UUCP (12/15/83)
I am submitting the Screen Saver program from the December Softalk to the Info-IBMPC library. I have only found one product Screen Saver is not compatible with, IBM's APL language. (It seems to work well so far with all else I have tried, including word processors, Kermit, Basic, Logo, debug...) With APL the problem is that once APL finishes loading, when you press a key strange things happen, such as garbage spitting on the screen and the CPU locking up (unloadable, and, yes, believe it or not, un-cold-startable). I have never seen any software which makes the processor unable to restart by cycling power, except scrnsave and APL. Apparently something somewhere in the system has a large electrolytic capacitor which takes forever to discharge, and that item is screwed up with this software combination. Waiting a good half minute apparently is enough to clear this incredibly strange situation. The only fix I can think of is to have your APL startup procedure peek at the interrupt vector and if it sees scrnsave, quit right there. Herm Fischer [SCRNSAVE.BAS has been added to the Info-IBMPC library. -Ed.]