[Coco] Weird errors

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 12 September 2006 18:30, jdaggett at gate.net wrote:
>Motorola and Microware back in 1980 colaborated to produce a basic
> language for the MC6809 processor. The version that Tandy uses with OS9
> is licensed by them for  the Coco. There was another flavor that ran on
> MDOS Exercisors also.
>
>james
>
>On 12 Sep 2006 at 20:47, Leon Howell wrote:
>> Thanks for the help. I think I'll just use the old compatible commands,
>> and see if I can find Reminder.lzh. I'm using Ar2, so it was probably
>> archived using Ar 1.3
>>
>> Syscalls? Setstats? XMode and TMode? What idiot named this weird half
>> complete language "basic" anyway?
>>
>> And where can I get a copy of Burke & Burke RSB - The only version of
>> Basic available for OS-9?
>>
>> Oh well, enough complaining. No offence intended if you actualy *like*
>> "basic"- 09.

Don't knock it in this company, it'll get me a bit uppity.

It, Basic09, was actually a fairly capable basic. Thats what I wrote the 
edisk emulator in for the Grass Valley Groups series 300 production video 
switcher back in 1989.  Running on os9 level 1.01 on a 64k coco2 with a 
video kit, cooling fan and 2 floppies, it turned out to have several 
advantages over the $20,000 grass valley groups version called "EDISK".  
It had fully english language filenames visible on a 5" crt whereas theirs 
was 2 hex digit filenames on a hexidecimal led display, and the basic09 
version was 4x faster at save/restore than the GVG version, which saved 
their butts many times by getting the switcher fully reloaded in about 
half the first break of the newscast.  Pretty good for a pile of used 
hardware I sold the station for $245.  It ran 24/7/365 for 13+ years and 
they gave it back to me when the last GVG300 switcher was finally retired, 
about the time I retired in 2002.  Its still in a box in the basement.

So no, please don't knock Basic09 in this company.  Properly exploited, the 
only thing I never tried on it was double-precision arithmetic, because it 
was effectively single precision.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
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Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.