RAM area is like a big blank chalk board waiting for you to fill it up. At this point, because you have only defined an E, that’s all you get from RAM.

Downloading Command

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could magically transport some of the ROM characters over to the RAM area so you wouldn’t have to switch back and forth or define an entire character set each time you use the RAM area? In plenty of applications you only need to define a few special characters to be used with the standard alphabet and num- bers. That’s why the FX provides the option of copying (sometimes called downloading) the entire ROM set into the user-defined RAM area.

The downloading command has the format:
LPRINT CHR$(27)" :"CHR$(nl)CHR$(n2)CHR$(n3);

This command is designed with possible future expansion in mind. For now, set all three numbers to 0:

110 LPRINT CHR$(27)" :"CHR$(0)CHR$(0)CHR$(0);

Now you get your custom designed E plus four of the normal characters copied over from ROM. Notice that the E is lower on the page than the other characters even though the high-order bit of the attribute byte is on. In order to save 7-bit users from total frustration, we designed the character to use the bottom seven rows. If you do not have a 7-bit system, you can use the top seven rows for all but lower- case characters with descenders.

Caution: Be very careful about using the Reset Code after defining your own characters in RAM. This code wipes out the entire contents of RAM . . . goodbye user-defined characters!

Defining More Characters

Once the ESCape sequences are in place, adding more characters is a breeze. To see how much of a breeze, simply add more data:

1150 DATA 7,8,16,36,64,36,16,8,7,0,0: 'My A
1160 DATA 127,0,72,0,72,0,76,2,121,0,0: 'My R

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