[Coco] FLEX+ runs on a COCO3

[Willard Goosey]

>From: "John E. Malmberg" <wb8tyw at qsl.net>
>Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 23:21:00 -0500
>
>It is a single user operating system with some background tasks.

??? I didn't realize it had anything in the way of multitasking.
>
>Very lightweight, the entire OS, + editor, + assembler would fit on a 
>single 35 track double density floppy.

For 1980, that's not such a big accomplishment, really.  CP/M started
out with 500K 8" ss/sd drives and could be fairly happy on 90K 5.25"
ss/sd drives.
>
>Unlike OS-9, it supported double sided drives on all of the COCO floppy 
>controllers.
>
Don't blame OS-9 itself for Tandy Brain Damage.  ccdisk ignored all
the rules about how an OS-9 device driver was supposed to work.

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

High praise, indeed.
>
>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.

>From what I've read, Frank Hogg pushed FLEX hard for the CoCo1 and
CoCo2.  An 8K OS leaves a lot more memory free than the 30-odd K DECB
and OS-9L1 do.  On a CoCo3, the size of your OS image isn't as
important.
>
>The sources to Flex are supposed to be publically available now, but I 
>have not found a working download site.

I wonder how expandable FLEX itself is?  Could it be made to know
about hard drives?  What are the limits on its file system?
>
>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.

Well, DECB is a Microsoft BASIC.  From what I've seen under CP/M, MS
BASIC doesn't have to take over the whole machine, it just wants to. :-)
>
>This gave me ROM basic with the 51 * 20? HIRES screen, and scriptable 
>under FLEX09 control.

Does FLEX+ support the 40/80 column text screens?  I dislike using
PMODE screens for text.

Also, does it emulate a cursor-addressable terminal?  One of my pet
peeves with DECB is that BASIC doesn't.

>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.

Then there's the issue of transfering files from one OS to the
other... I know there were DECB/OS-9/FLEX transfering programs, but
are they findable?

I'm quite interested in this CoCo3 FLEX.  My CoCo 3 only has two
operating systems, obviously it needs more! :-)


>-John
>wb8tyw at qsl.net
>Personal Opinion Only

Willard
-- 
Willard Goosey  goosey at sdc.org
Socorro, New Mexico, USA
"I've never been to Contempt!  Isn't that somewhere in New Mexico?"
   --- Yacko