hey so basically, on the P8SCII chart, the first row of characters (1-15) seems to be inaccessable when using chr() and there seems to be no keyboard shortcuts to type them out. anyone know anything about this?

They produce various effects when printed in a running program. I included them in a comment in my little character printing tool so you can copy and paste them.
https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=40525