22 May
2006
22 May
'06
5:26 p.m.
--- Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
I wasn't suggesting it didn't have any uses. I for
one always looked fondly upon rom based languages. I
was just curious if, besides an example like you
cited, was anything substantive ever done with them.
The Vesta OEM-188 board, aka the Radio Electronics RE
Robot brain/board thing, has not only BASIC, but FORTH
built in. My Canon Cat also has a FORTH interpreter.
Who used them? And for what? The BASICs were built
into IBM pc's until possibly 1990 or so. One might get
the impression that they were there for a reason.
Years ago, while they still had a production facility
on Long Island, I had heard that Symbol made use of
QBasic (probably because they were thrifty). No, no
longer a rom based implementation, but came with it
for nothing.
period). But
who the heck made any serious use of
ROM
based BASIC in the *pseudo* 16 bit era and
beyond?
Depends on what you mean by 'serious use', but I was
certainly glad of
ROM basic when my 5160 XT wouldn't boot. I used it
to write values to
output ports on the disk controller card while
probing signals with a
logic probe. Found a defective inverter chip very
quickly. Sure a machine code monitor would have been even
nicer, but...
Agreed. One of the dandiest features of puters like
the C64. But come to think of it maybe that was on a
separate cartridge. It's been a while...
-tony
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