sys

DOS command used to make a disk/partition bootable. The actual program name is sys.com.
Useful for making bootable floppies and when completely repartitioning one's hard disk.

System call from Commodore basic to routines stored in ROM or RAM. Nifty to the max, and poke and peek's best friend. Favourites included sys 64738 and sys 64764.

The sys command actually jumps to anything in the 6510 address space, be it RAM, ROM or an IO device.. :-) Not that it's useful to jump to an IO device.

The C-64's CPU had two special memory locations, 0 and 1. Toggling these mem locations changes your memory map, for example makes your IO, ROM etc disappear so you can use the whole 64kB of memory for what ever you like. No prebuilt kernal routines, though.. You've got to build all the lowlevel stuff yourself after that.

The name of the system volume on a NetWare server. The only volume which exists by default and whose name cannot be modified; typically, any system programs should be installed on this volume.

A system call in BBC BASIC versions 5 and above which calls an operating system service. The ARM assembler instruction equivalent is SWI. Examples include SYS "OS_PrettyPrint" and SYS "OS_CLI".

The SYS command in Commodore 64 BASIC starts a machine language subroutine stored on specified absolute memory location. For example,

SYS 49152

starts a program that is stored in the famous 4-kilobyte memory bank, $C000 and forward. It can be used to start programs anywhere in memory, no matter how ridiculous it may be. It is particularly useful for calling system routines in Kernal (sic) ROM, for example,

SYS 64738

performs a warm boot from a BASIC program. Mysterious BASIC routines can also be called, but that'd often be somewhat pointless =)

The routine is expected to end with an RTS instruction. Upon encountering RTS, the BASIC interpreter resumes control (itself, of course, being implemented in machine language and implementing the SYS command with a JSR instruction!)

...

SYS command can also take parameters, as in SYS 49152,20,A%,6942 - the first one is the address of the routine, the rest are left for the subroutine to process. This provides a great way of passing parameters to m/l subroutines - the alternative would be POKEing values and reading them back in the routine. Clean!

In order to read these parameters, you need to first JSR $AEFD - this will check that the SYS command is followed by a comma, and if it isn't, the program execution will end with ?SYNTAX ERROR. This comma check is also provided by some other subroutines:

$B7EB

Read two parameters, separated by comma. First parameter is a word, stored to $14 and $15; the other is a byte, stored to X register.

$B7F1

Read a byte (and store to X), check for a following comma.

$B79B

Read a byte (and store to X).

$B7F7

Read a word, store to $14 and $15. Datatype check routine at $AD8A must be called beforehand.

$B08B

Read a variable pointer. Address of the variable is stored to $47 and $48, name of the variable is stored to $45 and $46.

• If both variable name bytes have bit 7 set, it's an integer (%), stored as highbyte + lowbyte.
• If only the second one has bit 7 set, it's a string, stored as string length + address of the string as Lowbyte+Highbyte.
• If neither has bit 7 set, it's an untyped (float?) variable. Floats are stored as exponent + 4 byte mantissa.

(Note: this information was paraphrased from MikroBitti 11/86, I have not tested it yet myself - there may be errors. /msg me corrections =)