Thread: Control-C, etc
View Single Post
Old 11th Jun 2021, 4:37 am   #15
TonyDuell
Dekatron
 
Join Date: Jun 2015
Location: Biggin Hill, London, UK.
Posts: 5,191
Default Re: Control-C, etc

On the Apple ][ and Europlus the 'reset' key is connected in hardware to the reset circuit for the processor. It is not trapped in software like ctrl-alt-del on the IBM PC. This is true of most older machines, reset is a hardware function, no matter what the software is doing, it will work. On the IBM PC, if the processor is not responding to interrupts, then ctrl-alt-del will do nothing.

As an aside, on later Apple ][ machines there was a slide switch on the keyboard encoder board that gated the reset key with the control key so you had to press the 2 together to get a reset. Again done in hardware. I will have to look in the technical reference manual to see what the //e does.
TonyDuell is online now