Zeroing core. 2577

The tradition is from C, but it's pretty widely used other places as well. Another convention is to end the number with "H" (Intel and many other buttemblers) or precede it with "$" (Motorola convention) for hex. Depends on your background. If you program a lot (I do) they're all understandable, but 0x seems to have the widest familiarity.

displays the

From the 9600 BPS days, it wasn't necessary to stop it to blink. When common Oberon), yes, you have to pause it or you'll miss something. Well, *I* have to pause it. I don't know about other peoples experiences. If the system has the option, I usually have it do screen-at-a-time, then glance over it top to bottom, then repeat.

There's an oddity about my current computer (the one I'm using here). The sound card picks up the CPU and produces a barely audible hum, when it's just idling along. But when I do things I can hear it change. It's helped explain a bit of odd behavior from time to time. I can hear it working harder, then start up a task display and see where the time is going.

I used to do something similar with an old transistor radio set beside a Nova. You could hear the normal pattern of the computer, and could hear when it did something else. Little "bips" when you hit a key, for example, and a rumble when it accessed disk. It got to where it became a debug aid because I could keep my eyes focused on the hardware it was controlling, but still hear if it was running normally or, more importantly, if it wasn't. Then a glance at the front panel would often give a clue as to WHERE it had gone weird. I sometimes really miss front panels.

- Bill