Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!tellab5!chinet!edlee
From: edlee@chinet.chi.il.us (Edward Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ti
Subject: Re: Anybody have info on ...
Message-ID: <1991Jun10.042746.15968@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 10 Jun 91 04:27:46 GMT
References: <91160.093541U16028@uicvm.uic.edu>
Organization: Chinet - Chicago Public Access UNIX
Lines: 25

In article <91160.093541U16028@uicvm.uic.edu> U16028@uicvm.uic.edu writes:
>I have two questions to which I hope someone has the answers, and will
>share them with me.
>
>[Sorry, I do not have an answer to the first one.]
>
>Q2)  In one of their newsletters, it was printed that entering
>     CALL INIT
>     CALL LOAD(-31878,0)
>     from Extended Basic would increase the speed of BASIC execution.
>     (This code, supposedly, disabled "something".)
>     Can anyone confirm that this really worked?

CALL LOAD(-31878,0) looks really familiar.  I believe that that disables
sprite motion.  It is a quick way to make all the moving sprites on
your screen stop simultaneously as opposed to using a
FOR I=1 to LASTSPRITE::CALL MOTION(#I, 0, 0)::NEXT I  loop which
causes sprites to stop noticeably in sequence, due to all the overhead
entailed by the XBASIC interpreter and the greater number of
instructions.  If you have a TI-99/4A, XBASIC, and a stopwatch, I
suggest that you do some tests yourself to see if CALL LOAD(-31878,0)
speeds up the non-sprite operations.


-Ed L