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Contents / Reference section / Previous chapter / Next chapter / Index
The computer includes a large and powerful operating system. This can be accessed from user-written machine code routines or from BASIC. If a BASIC statement starts with an asterisk then the whole of the rest of the statement is passed to the operating systems directly. The operating system (O.S.) commands include,
| *LOAD | Loads a section of memory (not a BASIC program) (see page 393) |
| *SAVE | Saves a section of memory (see page 392) |
| *RUN | Loads and executes a machine code program (see page 392) |
| *CAT | Displays a catalogue of files on the cassette/disc/net (see page 391) |
| *KEY | Programs one of the user-defined keys (see page 141 and 441) |
| *OPT | Determines how the computer reacts to errors during loading of cassettes and the amount of detail given during cassette operations (see page 434) |
| *FX | Enables the user to control a large number of the computer effects such as flash rate (see page 418) |
| *TAPE | Selects the cassette filing system running at 120 characters per second (1200 baud) |
| *TAPE3 | Selects the cassette filing system running at 30 characters per second (300 baud) |
| *DISC | These two statements select the disc file system |
| *DISK | so that all future file operations (e.g. LOAD and SAVE) work to the floppy disc units |
| *NET | Selects the network file system for all future file operations |
| *SPOOL | Copies all screen output to a named file (see page 402) |
| *EXEC | Uses a named file to provide input as if it had been typed in at the keyboard (see pages 394 and 402) |
| *MOTOR | Can be used to turn the cassette motor relay on and off |
| *TV | This can be used to move the whole of the displayed picture up or down the screen and also controls the picture interlace (see page 435) |
| *TELESOFT | (provisional) |
| *TERMINAL | (provisional) |
| *ROM | Selects the ROM cartridge file system |
The BBC Microcomputer User Guide was written by John Coll and edited by David Allen for the British Broadcasting Corporation.
Optical character recognition and original formatting effort by Mark Usher.
HTML version maintained by: Kade "Archer" Hansson; e-mail: archer@dialix.com.au
Last updated: Monday 12th February 2001