Commodore 16 User Manual page 23

r
I
INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this chapter is to begin to acquaint you with some of the
characteristics and capabilities of your Commodore 16, and how to
take the first steps toward programming with your computer.
The Screen Display
Your Commodore 16's comings and goings are seen on your TV or
monitor display screen. Whatever you type, whatever your computer
has to say about what you type, whatever programs you load
. it all
shows up on your monitor screen, whether you're hooked up to a
colour or black and white TV, or a Commodore colour monitor. Your
Commodore 16 screen, no matter what type of monitor or TV you're
using, is 40 columns wide. That means that you can type 40 characters
frOrn the left edge of the screen to the right. There_ are 25 rows, so that
an entirety fulled screen can contain spaces for 1000 (25 X 40)
characters. The Commodore 16's screen display is made up of three
elements' the characters (the fetters. numbers and graphic symbols),
the background, and the border When you first turn your computer on.
the characters are black. the background is white, and the border is
light blue You've already seen how to change the colour of the
characters using the number keys along with a Or 0 in Chapter
2. You can make the characters any of 16 different colours in this
fashion. There are a few other things you can do to make printing
characters more interesting
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Reverse Printing and Changing Colours
Not only can you change the colour M the cursor and characters you
type (and your computer displays) on your monitor screen, you can
also reverse
the
character and background colours. That means that if
you have brook characters on a white background and you turn reverse
printing on (by typing MIL and 9), everything that appears on the
screen is reversed: the characters are M white, white the background
behind those characters is black. You can experiment with changing
the character colour and using reverse printing, by following these
instructions'
STEP 1 Hold down the CTRL key and press the MON key
.
CTRL
STEP 2 Release me keys and nold down the space bar
STEP 3 Hold down the space bar as tong as you want. While you hold
down the space bar, a line the same colour as the letters on
your screen should get longer. II me line gets to the end of the
row, it continues on the next row
STEP 4 Release the space bar (but don't press the AMIN key).
STEP 5 Hold down the CTRL key and press one of the colour keys
(not a colour that's already on your screen). As soon as you
do this, the cursor changes to the colour of the key you
pressed.
STEP 6 Hold the space bar down again. Now your computer draws a
line in the new colour Keep changing colours with the am
.
or .0 keys and the colour keys. Then hold down the space
bar to make more different coloured lines.
STEP 7 Turn off reverse print by holding down all and pressing the
UM, key. Pressing the HENN key also turns off reverse
printing.
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