[Coco] I think you'll like this (especially Allen)

[Allen Huffman]

> On Mar 20, 2025, at 8:32 PM, Andrew Ayers via Coco <coco at maltedmedia.com> wrote:
> 
> You mention quite often in this series "things they could have easily fixed" in/on the CoCo 3.
> 
> Maybe you already know this...but they (Microware) likely couldn't, not without modifying the BASIC.
> 
> If they could've modified the BASIC, they very well might have done just that - along with a host of other things:


During my years at Microware, two of the programmers that worked on the CoCo 3 where still at the company (the third had gone to Microsoft, if I recall).

They could not re-assemble a new version of the BASIC, but did modify it through patches. It has modifications to all kinds of places once the ROM was loaded into RAM. That would have been enough for them to do more, but that was not their task. It was to support the CoCo 3. Somewhere there may be a scan of the CoCo 3 Tandy document (the one that famously mentions 256 colors). I wonder if it might shed some light on things.

That said … does anyone know (Tim Lindner? William Astle?) if the ROM inside the CoCo 3 contains an UNMODIFIED Color BASIC and Extended BASIC, with the new code just overlaying on them once loaded into RAM?  Or is my above statement not true and they WERE allowed to modify the ROM?

--
Allen Huffman - PO Box 7634 - Urbandale IA 50323 - 515-999-0227 (vmail/TXT only)
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