[comp.sys.cbm] geoFile

marshall@cs.arizona.edu (Ron D. Marshall) (02/02/91)

I discovered something last night that I thought was rather interesting.  It may
be old news to the rest of you, but here it is:

I recently purchased a used C-128 and GEOS 128 2.0.  A couple of days ago I 
tried to run geoFile with GEOS 128 and it told me "This program can't be run
under 128 GEOS." (or something like that.)  This kinda aggravated me.

So I did some exploring.  I started with the File Header block and found that
byte #$60, which the Programmer's Reference Guide says should always be set
to $00 was instead set to $80.  So, just for fun, I made a *backup* of my
geoFile workdisk and then changed that byte back to $00 with a simple basic
program.

GeoFile now runs under GEOS 128.  It is still only 40 columns, but I can live
with that.  The big advantage is that I can use DeskTop 2.0 and my 1581 drive.
I tested GeoFile for quite some time last night, making it do just about every
thing that I could think of.  It performed well.  Does anyone know of anything
that might go wrong?

There seems to be no technical reason why GeoFile is not set to work with
GEOS 128.  All I can think of is that it must be a marketing decision.  
BSW wants us to all go out and buy GeoFile 128.

--Ron.
(marshall@caslon.cs.arizona.edu)