[Coco] Re: Does NitrOS9 limit apps to =<64K?

[Robert Emery]

--- David J Bush <twixt at cstone.net> wrote:
> Robert Emery <theother_bob at ...> writes:
> > What an interesting statement, considering that Basic was always downplayed
> > as being unable to access all that memory (of course I know better *now*)
> > and OS-9 was "all that and a bag of chips".
> 
> Well, of course most Disk Basic users didn't know or care about assembler.

But ML is not *required*. For example, just a few pokes allows a 128K user to
use the one unused block to double the HGET/HPUT buffer size, or store other
data there. That data will still be there when another program is executed.
There's also LPEEK and LPOKE. The next evolution of Color FOG may require
512K... can't think of any Basic software with that requirement currently (but
I'm sure someone will point it out if it exists.)

It's not that Basic programmers didn't know or care about assembler, just the
steep learning curve, nearly vertical compared to Basic's nearly horizontal (or
OS-9 which is apparently circular). I tinkered with assembler, wrote some
semigraphics routines that worked as well as some patches to the ROM. But to
accomplish something in assembler would take so much time to develop, compile,
test, debug, recompile, etc... I could have 10 basic programs written and have
the answers I needed already. If I were writing arcade games, that's another
matter of course. I still intend to learn 6809 assembler better. It's on my
to-do list anyway.

Bob


	
		
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