[Coco] What good is 512K? (was: Coco Digest, Vol 26, Issue 50

[Robert Emery]

For OS-9, it does basically the same thing that more ram does for your PC...
allows more processes to run at once, allow for faster execution by using a
ramdisk, allow more features (or bugs) to fit into your software.

Most would say that it does nothing for *stock* Basic, but this is simply not
true. Built-in Basic commands can't directly use it, but a few pokes can give
you extra buffer space for HGET/HPUT, more HSCREENs to flip between, even use
it to store data that will survive a reset. I used some of these tricks to
enhance Color FOG, but I chose to limit the requirements to 128K, which means I
only had one spare 8K block to play with, but that block would normally be
inaccessible to Basic.

There are also commercial games that required it, many released while the CoCo3
was still in production. My favorite is Sinistaar, which I enjoy on the CoCo3
more than the arcade version. Of course, bragging rights are nice too. We take
what we can get!

cheers,
Bob

--- Richard Ivey <rrivey at yahoo.com> wrote:

> What does putting a 512k board in a COCO 3  actually do for it, anyway? 
> There isn't much out there that can  take advantage of it, right?  Or is it
> for the "after-Tandy" era  software that has since come out.  Or is it
> bragging rights over  Atari and Commodores?  Thanks
> 




	
		
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