PET Pause

While trying out one of Commodore's Model 8032 microcomputers, I stumbled upon a key function which would be handy for program debugging. I mentioned it to one of my instructors at Wake Forest, and he suggested that I share it with your readers.

Stopping program listing or execution can be useful for finding statement errors or viewing intermediate results of a calculation. Formerly, the only way to stop a program and the screen scroll was with the RUN/STOP key. This necessitates typing in the CONT command and pressing RETURN in order to resume execution. However, if the program is stopped by means of the colon key on the top row, scrolling may be resumed merely by tapping the back-arrow key, which also serves to slow the scroll if held down.

Interestingly enough, if a pure timing loop is running, the colon key will not halt execution. However, inclusion of a PRINT statement in the loop will enable the colon/halt function.

Jonathan Kerfoot