[Coco] CoCo BASICS - clarification on the differences?

[Steve Strowbridge]

I think you got all the answers, but here's what I think I know/remember.

The first CoCo had two options, Color BASIC and Extended Color BASIC.
Color BASIC would run with as little as 4K, but Extended Color BASIC
required 16K of RAM because I think the ROM itself was 8K

I think the MC-10 had Micro Color Basic, a hybrid of the two CoCo versions
(Jim Gerrie could give you a better explanation)

And the CoCo 3 had a "Super" Extended Color BASIC that was enhanced by
Microware.
At this time, Microsoft had no interest in further developing for non
MS-DOS machines, and Tandy was not able to alter the ROM BASIC they already
had a license for.

Microware took the original Extended Color BASIC ROM, then loaded that into
RAM, and added all the extra commands to take advantage of the CoCo 3's
capabilities (pretty clever!)

I think there are a lot of compatibilities between "Standard" Color BASIC
and "Micro" Color BASIC (MC-10), however, the "tokens" or binary
translations of the commands are not the same, so the saved ".BAS" files
are not directly compatible, you'd need to save them in an ASCII format to
transport them, again this is something I think Jim Gerrie could give you
much better input on.  I think the command to save a BASIC program in ASCII
format is something like SAVE "PROGRAM.BAS" ,A

Hope that helps, it was interesting learning some of this stuff only
recently, between reading the CoCo underdog book, and listening to the CoCo
Crew Podcasts, this old dog was able to learn new information.



Steve Strowbridge, aka
The Original Gamer Stevie Strow
http://ogsteviestrow.com
ogsteviestrow at gmail.com


On Tue, Apr 4, 2017 at 8:54 AM, John Lochey via Coco <coco at maltedmedia.com>
wrote:

> Hi all,
> I'm a little confused about the Tandy Basic versions.
>
> What does the MC-10 use?  Color Basic I believe
>
> What does the CoCo2 use?  Extended Color Basic I believe (at least that is
> what I see in XROAR)
>
> What does the CoCo3 use?  Extended Color Basic/Disk Basic I believe
>
> I'm trying to determine how much the BASICS differed between the CoCo2 and
> CoCo3.
> I have searched the internet for the main differences between Color Basic
> and Extended Color Basic, but cannot quite find a definitive list.
> I would imagine it is just a few commands?
> It also appears that any CoCo could be upgraded to Extended Color Basic as
> well.
>
>
> Also dare I even ask what OS-9 and NitrOS-9 are?  ;)
>
> Thanks!
>
>
> John
>
>
> --
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> https://pairlist5.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>