PEEK (788)

[Commie_User]

If a game is absolutely freaking breaking your balls, get revenge on the bleeding thing by Freezing the utility cartridge and going into the Poke section:

POKE 788,0

And go back to the game. TAKE THAT YOU BUSTARD! That's what you get for scrambling me, mate!

(And it makes Win-Vice go bananas too, more than the proper Commodore systems, on which the poke performs the same action; you have to close the window and open it again!)

[analoq]

If I understand that right, that POKE changes the low byte of the interrupt vector to 0. There's a 1 in 256 chance it will do nothing, the rest of the time it'll execute whatever random data it happens to find at the new address every 50th or 60th of a second.

I don't have an emulator handy but indeed it looks like it would really mess things up! How did you come across such dastardliness? (:

[Commie_User]

The VIC20 handbook told me to do it, way back in the early 90s when I discovered a copy. Whenever I use the poke, it either crashes the micro' or it just blanks the screen and gives you the cursor.

(Worked on the PET too.)

I've used it to crash or freeze one or two of my own programs when you reach the end. Messy but effective for a kid lacking any real books on the Commodore.