One reason I
would think Atari BASIC would be a bit larger is
the fact that it included support for all the advanced features of
the Atari hardware, such as collision detection and player-missle
Jeff, keep in mind that Microsoft BASIC came from the same source tree no
matter what the target CPU. The interpreter was written in a kind of
macro language and run through a post processor for the target platform.
Because of this there was very little, if any space optimizing done unless
the OEM either got the generated source to work on, or they paid MS for
the task. A couple of years ago someone posted a bit of this macro like
code to alt.folklore.computers with a brief description of how it all
went together. A dejanews hunt might even find it.
This isn't really relevant to my comment though since Atari
BASIC is not MS BASIC. Atari BASIC was written specifically for the
Atari 400/800 with a good deal of attention paid to being able to
interact with the hardware capabilities of the machines. Commodore
didn't go to the same level of functionality with their BASIC. MS
BASIC was available seperately for the Atari and judging from your
comment, I'd say that it didn't allow the same level of hardware
interaction either.
Jeff
--
Collector of Classic Microcomputers and Video Game Systems:
Home of the TRS-80 Model 2000 FAQ File