CompuServe Messages

Actually CBM does hire software engineers to disassemble "problem" programs. That is why there are so many "compatibility hacks" in the 2.04 operating system. They put a lot of work into work-arounds to continue supporting programs that broke the rules. In some cases, the programmers could be "excused" because the rules were never clearly stated. In other cases, programmers just made some erroneous assumptions about undocumented behavior. Commodore engineers really bent over backwards to support a lot of programs. Some things that were found were so flagrantly illegal that they were not supported. Other things would have required too much extra code (it's amazing how fast the ROM space fills up) to maintain a compatibility hack. Still, IMHO, they did a heck of a job! – BobR