kludgeyness

— The problem is that commodore basic is strange. Every LOAD is treated as if you are loading another basic program. The interpreter runs the basic program in memory from the beginning after the load is finished. Of course, in your case, it is the same basic program as you started with. You need a little kludgeyness to pull it off: 05 IF A = 1 THEN 20 / 07 A = 1 / 10 LOAD "ML PROG AT $C000",8,1 / 20 POKE THE CIA REGS / 30 OTHER BASIC STUFF / 40 END / This way, A is 0 the first time through and the ML is loaded. When your program runs the second time, it skips the load.