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Garth Wilson · 05-20-2015, 05:19 AM

(05-20-2015 12:50 AM)Sylvain Cote Wrote:
(05-19-2015 01:21 PM)Vincent Weber Wrote: Any idea how this was done on a 41 ?

Build escape sequences in alpha then send it (OUTA) to the selected video interface.
Everything must be done manually, it's very tedious but it works.

I don't know anything about Othello, but:

Escape sequences go much faster and take less program memory using synthetic programming, where the ESC character is in a string as if keyed in like "normal" characters. I used this frequently with the Thinkjet printer.
There's also ACA (accumulate ALPHA) which lets you keep sending more ALPHA to piece together a line that can be much longer than ALPHA's 24-character length. Since a CR is not sent each time, the line can be al long as you want. ACX (accumulate X) works similarly, accumulating the number in the X register in the current display mode. When you're done building the line and ready for a CR, use PRBUF.
There's also ACCHR (accumulate character) which lets you send a single character whose ASCII value is in X, without affecting or using ALPHA.
SKPCHR (skip characters) is kind of like a tab, adding X number of spaces to the line being built in the device's buffer, again without using APLHA.

The XIO and probably other modules too offer additional options. I have the HP92198 80-column video interface, but used it more with the HP-71, not so much the 41. When my 41cx was used as the controller connected to a rack of lab test equipment through the HP82169A HPIL-to-IEEE488 interface to test the first $2M of a product in the mid- to late-1980's though, test results were printed on the Thinkjet, using the entire width of the paper. Synthetic programming was used to streamline escape sequences.