What are Beagle Bits? Just a hodgepodge of juicy Apple bits for a variety of publications that specifically answer questions about Beagle Bros software and its workings. Many of the bits come from Call-A.P.P.L.E. magazines and Open-Apple, II Computing, II Alive, and several others that A.P.P.L.E. owns or has gained permission to reprint. If you have a bit that is not here and you think it should be included, please give us the quote and magazine reference, and we will place it here with the rest of the bits.
Q. I have a problem with $7BC that is inexplicable
A. See 1980, Bert Kersey. That will explain everything related to Beagle Bros.
Q. What Programs Support RGB On The Apple II?
A. One of the programs that does support RGB double-resolution is Beagle Graphics. Mark Simonsen wrote Beagle Graphics, and he says Apple-compatible RGB cards are supposed to support at least three modes of double-high· resolution. The monochrome mode has a resolution of 560 x 192 pixels (one bit per pixel) and no colors; the color mode has a resolution of 140×192 pixels (four bits per pixel) with 16 colors; and the mixed mode combines these two.
Q. How can I get Line numbers above 63999 in Applesoft?
A. Normally Applesoft doesn’t allow line numbers above 63999. JoAnne McVicar and Larry Dove, two teachers from Livonia, Michigan, said they learned this trick from the “Bigliner” program on the Beagle Bros Utility City disk.
Q. Who took away the ProDOS Protection of HGR and HGR2 Pages and Input Anything (Bert Kersey)
A. The two ProDOS features you mention were included in early versions of BASIC.SYSTEM, but were removed because of intractable bugs. Somehow, they didn’t get removed from the manual, however. Speaking of bugs…
Q. Who developed ProntoDOS and Frame-Up??
A. Well that would be Tom Weishaar, developer of the Beagle Bros programs ProntoDOS and Frame-Up. Both programs appear frequently on best-seller lists of Apple utility programs. ProntoDOS was chosen as one of the best new programs of 1983 in Softalk‘s annual reader poll (Softalk, April 1984, page 73). He had also had written Softalk’s DOStalk on a freelance basis.
Q. You say the S.H. Lam technique for entering Monitor commands from inside BASIC programs (Feb pages 12-13) works from within a subroutine. But the same routine appears on the Beagle Bros “Peeks, Pokes and Pointers” chart and the chart says it won’t work within a subroutine. Who’s right?
A. Both of us. In the version shown on the Beagle Bros chart, D823G is tacked onto the end of the Monitor command string. In the Open-Apple version, D9CG is taken on. Both Formula cause the Monitor to jump to charmed spots within Applesoft, however one spot is more charmed than the other and works from within subroutines.
Q. Can I steal a copy of the Mouse Text chart from the Beagle posters?
A. Sure. Do it! Everyone else is too! We encourage you to steal it, use it, abuse it, and make something productive with it!
Q. What is the best program to use for dealing with DOS 3.3 RAM disks?
A. Well, when you dig through the Beagle Bros Software Repository, there is that really cool program written by Harry Bruce and Gene Hite called DiskQuik!
