[Coco] Newbie questions

Sat Jan 25 13:52:50 EST 2014

I inserted a PCLEAR1 right before the runm command in the menu program and that seemed to do the trick. Of course the menu itself (it's the autoexec program on drive 0) is a basic program that is running before I would get to that game. When we're talking about memory here is it some preassigned amount for running Basic programs, or could I just check a higher amount of memory for the emulator to have (from 512k to 2048k for instance) ? I think I remember reading something in one of the Basic manuals I've been looking at about a command where a program can request extra memory from the system. Probably getting ahead of myself again aren't I? I'm going to look through the coco3 manual Bill pointed me to and see if that doesn't give me an idea of what to do next.

On Saturday, January 25, 2014 6:05 AM, Arthur Flexser <flexser at fiu.edu> wrote:

PCLEAR 1 moved the location where the Basic program loaded downward in
memory (at the expense of allotting less memory to graphics) and freeing
more memory above the loading address for the Basic program itself and
variable and array storage.  PCLEAR 4 is the default at power-up.  It is
possible that the VIRUS-D program was not intended for stand-alone use, but
is supposed to be run by another Basic program that does a PCLEAR 1 before
loading VIRUS-D.  Or maybe the whole problem was that before, you were
using it after running another program that allotted memory differently,
rather than running it right after startup.  You could insert a PCLEAR 1
into the program itself if
 the problem is not that it is too big to load at
all with PCLEAR 4 in effect.

Art

On Sat, Jan 25, 2014 at 4:11 AM, Sean Margules <s_man501 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Wow. Yeah, that worked. The game loads after PCLEAR1. Thanks Art. So what
> did I just do?
>
>
>
> On Saturday, January 25, 2014 1:50 AM, Arthur Flexser <flexser at fiu.edu>
> wrote:
>
> The ?OM ERROR is "out of memory".  This would typically occur with a Basic
> program.  A possible cause might be that the
 program was written for
> cassette and that a disk system doesn't have enough memory to run it on
> account of the extra memory that disk requires.  Can we assume you're
> running the program from a fresh power-up?  Do you get the OM error just
> from loading the program, without attempting to run it?  (LOAD"progname")
> If so, try PCLEAR 1 before loading, and type RUN if the error doesn't
> occur.  There's no line number accompanying the error message, right?
>
> Art
>
>
> On Sat, Jan 25, 2014 at 1:13 AM, Sean Margules <s_man501 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Art,
> > The error
 message is ?OM ERROR
> >
> > Bill,
> > I can't find the DECB manual in the repository : (  A search for "Disk
> > Extended Color Basic" tells me my princess is in another castle. There
> are
> > two Basic09 manuals and one TSC basic, but TSC basic seems pretty
> primitive
> > compared to RGBDOS. Also, trying to read that manual is making my brain
> > bleed (not that it'll stop me). I'll keep scrounging around though. Some
> > stuff is coming back to me a little at a time.
> >
> >
> >
> > On Saturday, January 25, 2014 1:00 AM, Arthur Flexser <flexser at fiu.edu>
> > wrote:
> >
> > Sean, what error message are you getting when you try to run the game?
> >
> > Art
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 11:37 PM, Sean Margules <s_man501 at yahoo.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > I've been trying to work with just RGBDOS, (because I have a hard drive
> > so
> > > why not use it?) and I'm pleased to report that I've been able to back
> up
> > > just about any .dsk image I care to AND RUN IT which is quite a step
> > > forward for me. I used the (very) little bit of Basic I still
 remember
> > from
> > > when I was a kid to make myself a menu I can run the different floppy
> > > images from so I don't keep getting my names and syntax mixed up (run
> for
> > > basic, runm for bin, dos for sierra games, etc.)
> > >
> > > Only residual issue I'm having is that there is one game (VIRUS-D)
> which
> > > is one of several on the disk (VHD slot now), which gives me an error
> > > whenever I try to run it (from the menu or just with the "run"
> command).
> > I
> > > was thinking perhaps hyphens are illegal characters in run commands?
> > >
> > > Is there a reference out there for the type of
 BASIC used in RGBDOS? I
> > > found one for BASIC09, but it sure does look like that is rather
> > intimately
> > > connected to the Nitros9 OS, which I've been avoiding for the time
> being
> > as
> > > instructed. Thanks,
> > >
> > > Sean
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > On Wednesday, January 22, 2014 11:11 PM, Nick Marentes <
> > > nickma at optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> > >
> > > Sean Margules <s_man501 at ...> writes:
> > >
> > > >
> > > > Ok ok. No more Drivewire or HDBDOS till I get a better  handle on
> this
> > > stuff. Promise.
> > > >
> > >
> > > You'll thank us for setting you on a structured path to CoCo nirvana.
> >  :)
> > >
> > > Seriously, you'll enjoy it more and learn with less frustration.
> > >
> > > As I said before, I've seen newbies turned off when they dive in at the
> > > end.
> > >
> > > Hard drives can come in when you start exploring OS-9.
> > >
> > > Learn the basics before jumping in to the advanced.
> > >
> > > Nick
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Coco mailing list
> > > Coco at maltedmedia.com
> > > http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
> >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Coco mailing list
> > > Coco at maltedmedia.com
> > > http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco

>
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