RECOVERING FROM WRITE STUFF LOCKUPS

Although The Write Stuff is one of the most stable programs I have used on the Commodore,
occasionally the computer locks up. Uh oh, did you save the last ten pages of the great American
novel?

If not, don't cry yet. There are two simple, documented recovery techniques that work 90% of the
time. If you have lost all cursor movement, first hold [RUN/STOP] and press [RESTORE]. Most of the
time this will take you back to BASIC. At this point, type RUN and press [RETURN], and in most
cases you will be back in TWS with your text intact (hint: SAVE it now!).

If this does not work, try the following from BASIC:

TWS 64:: type POKE 787,234:SYS2130, and press [RETURN].

TWS 128: type POKE 787,234:SYS7250, and press [RETURN].

This information appears on page 8 of the TWS C64 manual, and page 5 of the C128 version. The
writer says "if you accidentally reset your computer, POKE....etc." However, a true reset by pressing
the reset button could cause complete loss of the text. This will almost certainly happen with the C128 if
there is a disk with a bootable program on it in the active drive.

I tested this by resetting my C128 after saving this file, then using the POKE/SYS, and it came back up
in the text, but there are some strange things happening that I have seen before that are sometimes a
sign of further problems. The same thing happened using TWS64 on the 128 in C64 mode. In this case,
note the last paragraph.

Commodore writer Jack Blewitt, in an article published in the September 1995 Commodore
Compendium (Cleveland Computer Society), reports another fix: A user was experiencing lockups,
and the techniques above did not work. Jack discovered that if you accidentally hit the [RESTORE]
key, it will lock up; pressing the [COMMODORE] key allowed a full recovery.

(I tried this on the C128 in both modes, but pressing [RESTORE] caused no problems at all.)

Our Write Stuff Companion disk contains a program to help recover lost text when all else fails. It
requires very precise steps in just the right order. The printed TWS Companion book contains
information about this program.

I have experienced unrecoverable lockups when working in TWS and using the "print to memory"
feature. There seems to be no problem with doing a "print to memory" three or four times, but when I
have done it repeatedly, (usually when testing some tricky formatting), the program becomes corrupted.
Prevention being far more effective than cure, I now save the program any time I use this feature.
Saving your data frequently is always a wise move, no matter what program you're using.

Another useful hint: If you seem to be having problems and you have already saved your file, use a
different name for future saves, in case your file is bad. Ironically I experienced just such a problem
while writing this article--the cursor would not go to the bottom of the file, but stopped after the words
"use a different." I saved and reloaded it, and the text below that point had disappeared. Kind of gives
you a chill, doesn't it?

--Dick Estel

(From The Interface, newsletter of Fresno Commodore User Group, via the Commodore Information
Center, http://home.att.net/~rmestel/commodore.html)