[Coco] Loading ASCII BASIC over serial?

[Gene Heskett]

On Wednesday 02 October 2013 13:30:53 Chris Osborn did opine:

> I tried naming it as .BAS but it loaded as garbage. It sort of looks
> like it's expecting it to be the tokenized form of a BASIC program.
> Also, I'm using HDB-DOS so that I could use Extended BASIC. Is there a
> way to tell BASIC to read in the text file as commands, sort of like
> the EXEC command on the Apple II?

Its been 25+ years since I willingly played with rsdos/rsbasic, but if my 
old wet ram can be trusted, an untokenized basic file was extended with 
.ASC wasn't it?  And of course the 8 character limit also applied, so the 
OP's original chosen filename wasn't legal to rsdos anyway.

Or do I not remember correctly.

But just to see if I do remember correctly, try renaming the file to 
XXXXXXXX.ASC and see if it will load, and be tokenized as it loads.

And if I remember correctly, a basic program can be saved in a listable and 
printable format if the extension when it is saved is .ASC, which IIRC 
causes the saved program to be saved in ascii, more or less exactly as it 
was typed in originally.

> It still seems to me you could examine the contents of the file and look
> at existing extension and the requested CoCo extension to make a pretty
> good guess on the file type. And even throw in a call to file and get
> it to return the mime-type.
> 
> On Oct 2, 2013, at 8:45 AM, Aaron Wolfe wrote:
> > I don't know of any way to get this right automatically.  I can add
> > arguments to the add command that lets you override the default
> > attributes or add a command to change attributes, but I think it will
> > have to be a manual process.
> > 
> > Another alternative would be to follow DECB file naming conventions
> > (BASIC programs would end in .BAS).  This would make things work with
> > the defaults.
> > 
> > On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 11:34 AM, Chris Osborn <fozztexx at fozztexx.com> 
wrote:
> >> Ok well I renamed the file from TRS80-CoCo.txt to CoCo.txt and it was
> >> able to put it on the disk. But not sure how to get it to load as a
> >> basic program.
> >> 
> >> On Oct 2, 2013, at 7:35 AM, Aaron Wolfe wrote:
> >>> That is reasonable and I will add the ability to specify an
> >>> alternate destination name in a future version.
> >>> 
> >>> In the meantime, I am concerned that you are doing things correctly
> >>> and it isn't working.  A bug report would be very helpful.
> >>> 
> >>> On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 10:07 AM, Chris Osborn <fozztexx at fozztexx.com> 
wrote:
> >>>> I really don't want to rename the original file, it's part of a git
> >>>> repo. There should be a way to let me specify the name that it
> >>>> will use on the disk.
> >>>> 
> >>>> On Oct 1, 2013, at 9:55 PM, Aaron Wolfe wrote:
> >>>>> DW just uses the file name of the source, so you can rename it
> >>>>> there but not as part of the add command.  So long as its a valid
> >>>>> DECB file name it should be OK.
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> Its been a long time since I worked on those routines, but I think
> >>>>> you are doing things correctly.
> >>>>> Could you send a bug report from the help menu after trying the
> >>>>> commands you are using? It would help me see what's happening.
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> On Oct 2, 2013 12:13 AM, "Chris Osborn" <fozztexx at fozztexx.com> 
wrote:
> >>>>>> Perhaps, but I can't seem to tell DW to name it that when it puts
> >>>>>> it on the disk.
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>>> On Oct 1, 2013, at 9:10 PM, Wayne Campbell wrote:
> >>>>>>> Is it possible that the filename needs to be prog.bas instead of
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>>> prog.txt?
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> Wayne
> >>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> On Oct 2, 2013 12:01 AM, "Chris Osborn" <fozztexx at fozztexx.com> 
wrote:
> >>>>>>>> On Oct 1, 2013, at 8:14 PM, Aaron Wolfe wrote:
> >>>>>>>>> A blank disk needs to be formatted.  Use dw disk dos format or
> >>>>>>>>> DSKINI on the CoCo before trying to add content.
> >>>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>>> Ok so I got it formatted, but now when I try to copy the file
> >>>>>>>> onto the disk it tells me Invalid filename. I try to add
> >>>>>>>> another argument after
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>>> the
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>>>>> file path to give it a name and I get Syntax error.
> >>>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>>> --
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> >>>>>>> 
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> >> 
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Cheers, Gene
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