[Coco] CoCo2, a speed demon?

[Robert Gault]

Yes, there used to be a routine (Basic 1.2) which poled the keyboard and 
skipped the Keyin routine if no key was pressed. This was removed in the 
Basic 2.0 code.

I'm not aware of the reason for the change.

Diego Barizo wrote:
> After reading a few times in different websites that the CoCo was a slow 
> computer (I guess ppl is used to MHz=Speed), I decided to do some 
> benchmarking.
> Remembering some tests from an old magazine, I tested some BASIC 
> programs, loops with thousands of gotos, gosubs, ifs...
> After a POKE 65497,0 , my CoCo 3 easily outruns a Model III, a Model 
> 100, an Atari 800XL, and comes close to a Tandy 1100 PC
> But my surprise came today, while testing a CoCo 2. Un-POKEd, it is a 
> lot faster than the 3. When POKEd, they come about even....
> I found this on my POKEs list. Could this be the cause?
> 
> POKE &HA1C1,&H39:FOR F=&HA1CA to &HA1C1
> STEP -1:READA:POKE F,A:NEXT F:DATA 121,39,
> 72,67,0,255,182,2,255,127
> put as the first line of your program
> it will speed up your computer by about
> 15%!! It patches the keyboard scan routine
> 
 ><snip>