[Coco] DECB or ECB Compiler

[Roger Merchberger]

On 09/29/2010 11:31 AM, Andrew wrote:
> Responses inline...

Mine as well...

>> There was a very advanced system - I'm pretty sure it was a compiler -
>> fpr the CoCo3; I believe it was called Window Basic 3 or WBasic3 --
>> memory cells are froggy right now... I remember drooling over it back
>> in the day because it was kinda like Basic09 for SECB on Steroids...
>
> The only one I remember (froggy here too) was Cer-Comp's Window Master,
> as already mentioned...and what I will speak to.

As others have found the aforementioned Cer-Comp webpage, it seems that 
I was kind of mixing up the two different products... Thanks to you to 
"straighten me out" and to the others that found the info to reacquaint 
my webbed-up memory cells with the real info. ;-)

However, I'm pretty sure there _was_ a product that advertised this:

>> 2) It had built-in MMU support - so a DIM statement of an array too
>> big to fit in 32K *worked* -- if you had 512K, you could DIMension
>> almost all of the ram (minus program/video/etc. memory) for huge (for
>> SECB) data support.

Keep in mind that my idea of 'pretty' and 'sure' aren't nearly what they 
were a couple decades previous... ;-)

> Window Master offered a full GUI suite of commands for trapping events,
> opening/closing windows, showing icons, building menus and dialogs, etc.
> It was actually fairly advanced for the day. It wasn't a compiler, though.

Did Window Master have a redistributable runtime? If not, it wouldn't be 
very good for commercial programming (as in - someone else who didn't 
purchase WM couldn't run what you wrote with the product)... Just random 
thoughts, o'course...

>> Anyway, if I get 'round to drumming up some time and finding my old
>> Rainbows, I'll see if I can find an ad for it.

I still want to do this but after yesterday's marathon (read: 5 hours) 
of hauling, cutting & stacking firewood for the fireplace, rummaging 
around in the attic today may not be on top of this old fat guy's 
priority list... ;-P

> One other note: As of several years back, Bill Vergona (owner of
> Cer-Comp) would, every now-and-then, sell a copy or two of CBASIC-3 on
> Ebay ... [ snippage ] ... [he]  told me he was (still?) a cantankerous
> man who would hear nothing of the sort, and only sold the few copies he
> did just to "keep up appearances" with the copyright office (his right,
> I suppose).

I wish he was "un-cantankerous" enough to at least throw a few more 
copies on eBay for copyright's sake... ;-) Unless he still wants the 
$149; I don't think I could allocate that much spare cash for a hobby.

Laterz!
Roger "Merch" Merchberger