[comp.sys.atari.st] OSS Personal Pascal

ugmuldoo@sunybcs.uucp (Thomas Muldoon) (03/05/89)

  Does anybody out there own or have programmed in OSS's Personal Pascal?
I'm having a few problems.  First does Personal have a random number generator?
I looked all around and could not find one. The result is having to write
my own, but I would much rather use a built in one. Second how do you
clear the screen in Personal??  I know you can import the procedure 
Clear_Screen from the GemLib but this does not set the cursor back to the
home position. Is there any clear screen or home function which does this?

      Thanks for any and all help

  Tom Muldoon 
  V101N2QG @ubvmsc
  State University of New York at Buffalo

cs163afu@sdcc10.ucsd.EDU (Some call me...Tim) (03/06/89)

In article <4499@cs.Buffalo.EDU> ugmuldoo@sunybcs.UUCP (Thomas Muldoon) writes:
> ...
>  First does Personal have a random number generator?

The easiest way to get a random number is with the XBIOS random
function.  

FUNCTION Random : Long_Integer ;
XBIOS(17) ;

This returns a 24 bit random number.

> ...
> Second how do you clear the screen in Personal?? 

I usually use an escape sequence to do this.

write(chr(27),'E') ;   { ESCAPE 'E' -- CAPITAL E -- clears the screen }

This information comes out of Atari ST Internals from Abacus
Software, but there is apparently another book available that is a
lot better organized, though the name escapes me...I can find it if
there's any interest.

-----------
Tim Mensch                		Disclaimer:  No one is responsible
EMAIL : tmensch@ucsd.edu    			     for what I say.