Subject: [Coco] 512K Basic by Microcom

[Robert Emery]

--- Robert Gault <robert.gault at worldnet.att.net> wrote:

> Disk Basic adds the command MERGE[,R] which indeed permits spreading a 
> program out over several disks. The program would need to be saved in 
> ASCII format and there couldn't be any duplication of line numbers. 

Another concern with MERGEing is time. LOADing an ASCII saved program takes
several times longer than the same program in tokenized form. For example,
Color FOG's main executable is about 20KB in ASCII format. LOADing it from disk
that way takes well over a minute, whereas tokenized it takes maybe 15 seconds.
So even patched to work at high speed, I'd estimate that MERGEing a 100KB file
with another file (the first one loaded does not have to be in ASCII format)
would take at least 4-5 minutes. Shades of the Commodore disk drive?

Bob


		
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