[Coco] 4K Coco Basic Programming Contest

[Kip Koon]

Hi Allen,

I found a Coco 2 in storage with believe it or not just the Color Basic Rom
in it!  I was quite surprised.  I didn't think I still had a Coco 2 with
just Color Basic 1.2 in it.  The Color Basic Rom is soldered in and there is
a socket for the Extended Basic Rom.  

So I fired it up and was greeted with the all too familiar but not seen in a
VERY long time power up message.

----------------------------

COLOR BASIC 1.2

C 1982 TANDY

 

OK

----------------------------

I typed in "CLEAR 200, 4095" then I checked the amount of free ram and it
reported 2343 bytes free!  Cool.  With a CLEAR 0, 4095 I of course have 2543
free bytes if I don't need string variables.  Cool Beans!  

Now to find my Cassette Recorder.  Oh here it is in storage also!  Now where
are some cassette tapes?  I might have to buy new ones so I can get good
clean recordings of programs.  Oh yes, some cleaning fluid for the Cassette
Recorder's Record and Play back heads.  It's a fair bet that is not sold
anymore.  Wow!  I had forgotten how difficult this was!  Anyway, back to
setting up my 4K Coco 1 Basic Programming Development Station.

Of course I could remove the Extended Basic Rom from my old coco 1 I found
two days after finding the above mentioned Coco 2.  Come to think of it, all
my Coco 1s have 64KB of ram in them so to get a 4K Coco 1, I'd have to CLEAR
0, 4095 on anything I have to get down to the 4K limit requirement of the
contest.  So with a Coco 1 Color Basic machine with 64K limited to 4K of
free ram, how close have I come to meeting all your criterion for the
contest?  

The only other thing I could possibly think of doing would be to buy that
Coco 1 4K machine on ebay which is just a bit out of reach for me since I'm
trying to save for the CoCoFEST trip this year.  It's still a bit iffy on
that front at this point.  

Anyway, I think I'm just about setup to enter my program for the 4K Coco 1
Basic Programming Contest on a machine that is as close as I can get to a
real 4K Coco 1!  It seems like I remember saving programs 3 times onto my
cassette recorder to make sure I had a good copy.  Boy that takes me back!  

My first computer was a Coco 1 64K Color Basic machine with what I found out
was an F motherboard.  I bought an Extended Basic Rom from a fellow Coco
Club member in the Spartanburg Color Computer Club.  I served as president
of that club right before I entered the Air Force in 1986.  Well, I better
get busy and continue working on one of my many projects.  Thanks Allen for
getting us all thinking about what it was actually like learning to program
our very first computer!  Take care my friend.

 

Kip Koon

 <mailto:computerdoc at sc.rr.com> computerdoc at sc.rr.com

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