Well - when I was a kid, writing in MS BASIC on my computer, it was a list of PEEKS-n-POKES. My computers at the time were a TRS-80 Color Computer 2 and a Tandy Color Computer 3. I forget most of them, now, but I do recall the most important:<p>TRS-80 Color Computer 1 & 2:<p>POKE 65495,0 - high-speed poke (1.79 MHz - double-speed)
POKE 65494,0 - low-speed poke (0.895 MHz - normal-speed)<p>Tandy Color Computer 3:<p>POKE 65497,0 - high-speed poke (2.00 MHz - double-speed)
POKE 65496,0 - low-speed poke (1.00 MHz - normal-speed)<p>It should also be noted that the POKEs for the CoCo 1 & 2 would also enable a "double-speed" on the CoCo 3 - but IIRC, it only sped up a portion of the system, not everything. There was also an issue on all systems where if running in double-speed, cassette tape and floppy access would have problems (less so on the CoCo 3, as OS-9 Level 2 always ran at double speed). Also, despite what Wikipedia says, the CoCo 3 ran at a true 1 or 2 MHz clock (vs the older CoCo 1 & 2).<p>Ultimately - these were important because in a system where the CPU did virtually everything (including sound - arguably one of the many reasons it wasn't as successful in the marketplace - though much of that could also be contributed to Tandy/Radio Shack's lack of marketing prowess for the machine - which also competed against their more expensive business models, like the Model 3 and 4).<p>More PEEKs and POKEs can be found in a few books published back in the day, that can be found on Archive.org and other sites, scanned to PDF for preservation, if you care to look for them.<p>Virtually all personal computers of the time had these special commands (which were really commands to read (PEEK) and write (POKE) values into memory - useful for a BASIC program to load up and run a machine language program encoded as a series of hex bytes), plus a few others (the Apple series also had the CALL command - CALL -151, was important; it enters the ROM monitor!)<p>PEEKs, POKEs, EXECs, CALLs, VARPTRs, etc - all important when BASIC just wasn't enough for some purposes; it was the way to give your BASIC code more power. It was also hell at times; anybody of that era can attest to spending hours (days in some cases!) painstakingly typing in row after row after mind-numbing row of DATA statements in a BASIC machine code loader, only to RUN it and have it error out (or get all the way thru, and crash the system - and woe unto you if you had been too foolhardy to save it first!). But you did it to get more powerful features in BASIC (I recall everything from extended graphics routines, to more disk commands, better sound output, etc).<p>Some links for those who care:<p>Color Computer PEEKS-n-POKES:<p><a href="http://www.colorcomputerarchive.com/coco/Documents/Books/500_POKES_PEEKS_'N_EXECS.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.colorcomputerarchive.com/coco/Documents/Books/500...</a><p><a href="http://www.colorcomputerarchive.com/coco/Documents/Books/300%20Pokes%20Peeks%20'n%20Execs%20for%20the%20CoCo%20III%20(Microcom%20Software).pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.colorcomputerarchive.com/coco/Documents/Books/300...</a><p><a href="http://www.colorcomputerarchive.com/coco/Documents/Books/" rel="nofollow">http://www.colorcomputerarchive.com/coco/Documents/Books/</a><p>Apple PEEKS-n-POKES:<p><a href="http://apple2.org.za/gswv/USA2WUG/FOUNDING.MEMBERS/HOME.PAGES/EDHEL/texts/pokes.html" rel="nofollow">http://apple2.org.za/gswv/USA2WUG/FOUNDING.MEMBERS/HOME.PAGE...</a><p><a href="http://www.apple2.org.za/gswv/a2zine/GS.WorldView/Resources/GS.TECH.INFO/MEGA.PEEKS.AND.POKES.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.apple2.org.za/gswv/a2zine/GS.WorldView/Resources/...</a><p>Damn I miss those days...