[Color Computer] [Coco] Re: OS-9 as Replacement for DECB.

[James Diffendaffer]

> I concurr that DECB or RSBASIC what ever you wish to call it has a
> need for modernization. From my limited inspection of the
> dissaembled ROM in the tre, it is becoming quite evident that SECB
> is nothing more than a layer on top of ECB and CB from the CoCO1
> and 2.

If you look at the Dragon ROMs you'll find that CB and ECB were
consolidated (all Dragons had ECB) on it so it's code might be a
better place to start but integrate SECB into it.

> IF some hardware is  needed to be developed to off load software
> tasks then we have plenty here that can design that and make it
> work. 

An interpreter isn't going to gain a huge amount from hardware
accelleration since it's spending most of it's time converting numbers
and checking syntax.  
  
I suppose a piece of hardware that does number conversions would offer
a speedup since the coco BASIC is constantly doing them but a better
software solution is available.

A "P Code" type interpreter with syntax and string to numeric
conversions taking place while the program isn't running would offer
faster speed than hardware support I'm afraid.  It would require
replacing the tokenizer/detokenizer routines and lots of conversion
related code within the interpreter but it would shrink the size of
the interpreter as well as make it much faster.

You could still BREAK the program, list it and edit lines because the
tokenizer/detokenizer routines are replaced.  If it's possible under
OS-9 the editing and interpreting code could lie in different banks of
memory so that more memory is available to BASIC.

I think replacing SOUND and PLAY with routines that use the Speech and
Sound Cart would be good.  Add a setting that allows to sound to take
place without stopping the program and add channel selection.  I
remember at least one company offered extensions to BASIC for SAY,
NOISE or whatever.  





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