Subject: [Coco] 512K Basic by Microcom

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Sun, 2005-12-04 at 07:42 -0500, Robert Gault wrote:

> The value of this program is questionable as on most Coco systems there 
> would be no way to store the large programs created under 512K Basic. 
> This is stated by Microcom who also said, "Future Versions of 512K Basic 
> will support hard drives." I don't know whether they got further than 
> the version 1.0 which I have.

Isn't it possible to merge disk basic programs together? I have a vague
recollection that it is possible. I'm certain you can chain programs
together, but I suspect you can merge them too. If that's the case, then
you could save different files to different floppy's and swap them in
one after another during load.

Not that it is practical to do so... alternatively you could have the
first link in the chain be a decompressor, so maybe you could fit a huge
program on one diskette.

Also it was mentioned you only get 16K of variable space. That kind of
stinks. Considering BASIC uses descriptors for strings one would think
you could make a lot better use of extended RAM.

-- John.