[Coco] BASIC09 - How good is it?

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 3:28 AM, Nick Marentes <nickma at optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> BASIC09 "sounds" good.
>
> I'd like to have a bit of a play-around but I've never been able to immerse
> myself into OS-9 enough to get into it.
>
> I think the secret to using OS-9 is to have a harddisk setup. Floppy disk is
> too awkward and frustrating.
>
> I currently am setup with a 512K CoCo3 with HDB DOS, a 6309 and 2 floppy
> drives. I have downloaded the Nitros9 disk image for Drivewire and 6309
> support (the latest versions).
>
> So how do I now attach the BASIC09 DSK image?
>
> Do I have to transfer it to floppy to access it as D0 or can I access
> another drivewire drive to map the DSK image?
>
> Do I need to add another drivewire drive and if so, how do I do that?
>
> So much to learn before I can even get started.
>
> Nick

B09 is pretty interesting and a decent way to write software on OS9, imho.

All you need to do is to mount a disk containing the basic09
executables and either change your execution directory to point to it,
or copy them onto your regular /dd disk's CMDS directory.  There are
just 3, basic09 syscall and runb.

Rather than using the build in line based editor/debugger (basic09), I
usually write the code using a modern PC and just use basic09 to
compile/debug.  However you can do everything on the CoCo.

-Aaron