[Color Computer] Re: [Coco] assembly programming on a 16K CoCo 2

[James Diffendaffer]

>Okay, ATM I have :
>
>16K CoCo 2 with plain old standard Color Basic
>FD502 floppy with controller and some blank disks
>128K CoCo 3 (which has ECB 2.0 of course)
>and a broken cassette drive with no cables.
>I want to make small assembly-language games on the CoCo 2 as well as 
>the CoCo 3.
>
>Is there any way to get the CoCo 2 to use the floppy?

I believe Disk Basic requires Extended Color Basic.
64K CoCo 2's with ECB are pretty cheap on ebay so I wouldn't bother
with the Color Basic system except to test compatibility.


>Would my best bet be to get another tape drive and the EDTASM+ 
>cartridge?

Not uless you want to play with it.  I think I have two of the EDTASM+
cartridges and could part with one if you really wanted one.

>For the CoCo 3 should I get Disk EDTASM or use the EDTASM+?
>What about Rainbow IDE and Portal-9?
>Are there any web pages with info about this stuff??


Personally, I didn't care for EDTASM+ but I didn't spend much time on
it before I moved away from the CoCo.  I used MACRO-80c which was much
more capable but I don't even use that now.  I strictly use cross
assemblers these days.  They are much faster and I have a much better
keyboard on my PC.

I think Rainbow IDE would probabably be the best way to develope
games.  I started using it a few weeks ago and it looks nice but I
haven't had time lately.  I had some minor nit picks with it but once
you get used to it it works really well.  

One of the nicest things is you can test your stuff with MESS
(emulator) right from the Rainbow IDE.  Once you are finished you can
transfer them to the actual machines through a serial cable or as a
wave file played back by the PC and loaded from the cassette input on
the CoCo. 


BTW, I've seen talk of a BASIC cross compiler that can be used to
develope games for several 8 bit machines.  It might still be in the
wishfull thinking phase but if I find more info on it I'll pass it on.  







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