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From: csbrod@medusa.informatik.uni-erlangen.de (Claus Brod )
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Tick-tick-tick-CRASH! is not dead in TOS 1.4
Message-ID: <2420@medusa.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
Date: 12 Feb 90 09:46:13 GMT
References: <22199@mimsy.umd.edu> <2087@syma.sussex.ac.uk>
Organization: CSD, University of Erlangen, W-Germany
Lines: 28

grahamt@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Graham Thomas) writes:

>From article <22199@mimsy.umd.edu>, by bane@mimsy.umd.edu (John R. Bane):
>> The dreaded keyboard-repeat-and-lock crash bug is apparently not gone in TOS
>> 1.4.  For those of you who haven't seen it before, what happens is after
>> several minutes of fairly steady typing in an editor (I use Word Writer),
>> the keyboard suddenly starts slowly retyping the last seven or so keys you
>> typed, over and over again.  After about 10 repeats, your program crashes.
>> 
>This is similar to various bugs which many people have encountered with
>First Word Plus.  (No coincidence, probably.  I understand that both
>Word Writer and First Word Plus were written by the same outfit - GST in
>the UK.)

The bug also occurs in TEMPUS 2.0, so it's not a proprietary GST bug.
It must be a quirk in AES; I don't think it's located in GEMDOS or lower-
level routines for they are documented very well here in Germany, and
someone would have come across the bug if it's been in GEMDOS or BIOS.
Since we have recompiled GEMDOS and BIOS source code, but no AES and
VDI source code, the only people to solve the problem are ATARI US.

I once read a msg related to this problem that stated that you could
escape the deadly repetition of the last few keys by pressing a combination
of SHIFT, CONTROL and ALT keys. This allows for quick saving before system
breakdown.

Claus Brod (sorry, I can not be reached here, but I can read public
replies)