Format$

[SMcNeill]

You should _FREEIMAGE tempimage somewhere too. I know it's static in the function, but you should maybe document that?

Also what screen mode is this using/depending on?

In this case, I just figured it isn't worth the effort or overhead.  Our screen here is all of 160 bytes total in size.  Why create that, initialize it, free it, when we can just preserve and reuseit?

(It's a SCREEN 0 screen, 80 character, 1 row.  -NEWIMAGE(80, 1, 0) )

With memory usage this small, why waste cycles freeing it?  It preserve and reuse it.