[Coco] FLEX+ runs on a COCO3

[John E. Malmberg]

jimcox wrote:
> 
> Having never used Flex, I'm curious what the big deal seems to be about 
> it.  Could you enlighten me?  How is it better or different than OS-9?

Flex-09 was the first commercial alternative operating system for the COCO.

It is a single user operating system with some background tasks.

Very lightweight, the entire OS, + editor, + assembler would fit on a 
single 35 track double density floppy.

Unlike OS-9, it supported double sided drives on all of the COCO floppy 
controllers.

I would consider it the equivalent of CP/M for the 6809 series computers.

I could not say it was superior to OS-9 though.  OS-9 may be more memory 
hungry than Flex and fit better on a COCO-3 than a COCO.

The sources to Flex are supposed to be publically available now, but I 
have not found a working download site.

I wrote a program that allowed me to run COCO DECB under FLEX out of ROM 
with FLEX doing the screen and keyboard I/O.

This gave me ROM basic with the 51 * 20? HIRES screen, and scriptable 
under FLEX09 control.

For text based BASIC programs, that was my preferred environment.

I could use the Flex text editor to write a BASIC program, and then 
script it into the interpreter and save it to a DECB formatted disk.

That program only works with DISK BASIC 1.0, After I find a way to 
transfer the Flex disks to another O.S., I plan to modify the program to 
work with DISK BASIC 1.1 and post it.

-John
wb8tyw at qsl.net
Personal Opinion Only