[Coco] I just got an odd idea, Once a coco is put into all ram mode could basic be completely whiped away and somthing else put in it's place ?

[Salvador Garcia]

 This is an interesting question.

I don't have experience with doing this on the CoCo, so I'll rely on past experience with similar systems to speculate.

My first thought would be that you can't.

The CoCo does not have a fully developed OS, like NitrOS09, OS/9, Linux, Windows, etc.where the language is run as an application. Remember GWBASIC under MS-DOS?

Instead, the CoCo's BASIC is closely coupled with the software that manages the CoCo's resources which itself might use BASIC's ROM calls. If you attempt to clear BASIC you'll have to be careful because you might be wiping out code that the management program uses, causing the computer to become unresponsive or crash. To wipe out BASIC and then load something else, you might have to do it in stages:

1. Load your own monitor system to take over the CoCo completely, eliminating any dependencies on the existing code.
2. Have the loader load the new OS into memory and initialize all resources and interrupt vectors
3. Have the loader transfer control to the newly loaded OS and carry out any clean up to free whatever resources the loader used.

I would prefer to have a more traditional loading system where the loader boots on startup and bypasses all the BASIC/monitor code like I *think* NitroOS9 and OS/9 does. I emphasize "think" because I don't really know how these OSes load. :-)

Salvador


    On Tuesday, April 2, 2019, 4:30:20 PM CDT, Steve Pedersen <666jacktheknife666 at gmail.com> wrote:  
 
 

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