Hey mark!

 ml> i was being facetious

Stop it or you'll go blind.

 ml> so that leaves BBS software and users' readers

In my case that would be vim and in the case of 0x8d it shows a blue coloured
"<8d>" which it does for nonprintable c1 codes or as some call them escape
codes.  However, given your penchant for a CP437 based editors, they will
actually print a character and the same will happen for most (all?) editors
everyone and their dog is using in fidonet from my observations ... including
the Russians with their CP866 ДОС-думаю (<-my lame attempt at Russian
for 'DOS-think' in utf8 characters) editors.  Oh those Russians.

 ml> in fido's heyday were professional programmers

Which is what led me to suspect there was once an editor that actually used
0x8d and if so it would be docuamented somewhere.  No such luck.

 ml> i was going to write more and a little better but my meds are
 ml> kinda kicking in ATM..

No meds here but I have been having more frequent senior's moments lately so I
can relate.  This seems like a good place to stop.

Life is good,
Maurice

... Don't cry for me I have vi.
--- GNU bash, version 5.0.3(1)-release (aarch64-raspi3b+-linux-gnu)
 * Origin: Little Mikey's CanadARM - Ladysmith BC, Canada (1:153/7001.2989)