On May 2, 2015, at 5:13 PM, Brent Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> wrote: Please add! It?s on Wikipedia so that other people can fill in details and make corrections. -- Follow me on twitter: @FozzTexx Check out my blog: http://insentricity.com

On May 2, 2015, at 5:47 PM, Brent Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> wrote: You don?t need to register an account to edit. But yah, editing tables is somewhat clunky. I started out making the table in a Google spreadsheet doc and it was definitely much easier to work on. -- Follow me on twitter: @FozzTexx Check out my blog: http://insentricity.com

The Wang machine was the 2200, first introduced in May of '73. It definitely had BASIC in ROM. There were a number of different versions, but they were all 2200-series machines. For more information, see Jim Battles' http://wang2200.org, a really great website with everything you want to know about the 2200 series, including an emulator that runs the original ROM code. Rick Bensene The Old Calculator Museum http://oldcalculatormuseum.com tokenisation

On 2015-05-03 16:56, Johnny Billquist wrote: Ah. Forgot: they also support bitwise ops (all of them). Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

The Exidy Sorceror had BASIC as a plug-in ROM cartridge I believe. If you are including that one, I think the Atari 400 and 800 belong on the list too. Brent has mentioned the HP9830. There is also the HP9831 (==HP9825 with BASIC not HPL in ROM) and the HP9845. I think the HP9835 has BASIC in ROM too, but I don't own one to check. Should you include the HP9000/200 machines (HP9816, HP9817, HP9826, HP9836, HP9920)? Although they normally boot from disk, there was a BASIC ROM board available. Dragon 32 and 64 (not quite TRS-80 CoCo clones). (and IIRC the enhancements to CoCo3 BASIC were written by Microware, not Microsoft). Camputers Lynx (which had floating point line numbers I believe!) Tektronix 4051, 4052, 4054 (and probably other Tektronix machines) Research Machines RML480Z. I think there was a BASIC ROM PCB for the 380Z too, but I've never seen it. Grundy Newbrain A, AD, M -tony

In that case the HP9000/200 machines don't belong either. However, with the Atari 400 and 800 and the Exidy sorceror, the BASIC ROM module was, IIRC, included with the machine in the standard configuration (i.e. if you bought an off-the-shelf boxed version of one of those, you got a BASIC module). Is that really any different from having the ROMs fitted to the main PCB? The HP9831 is another grey area. It came with BASIC in ROM. But the 'system ROM' module which contained the BASIC firmware could be unplugged from the side of the machine for upgrading. AFAIK HP never supported anything but BASIC on these machines. You could put the HPL firmware from an HP9825 in there, it would work, but HP never supported that, and a few keys would be labelled incorrectly. [It was more common, given the rarity of the HP9831 to put the HP9831's firmware into an HP9825 to be able to run BASIC on that machine, something that HP never supported of course] -tony -- Follow me on twitter: @FozzTexx Check out my blog: http://insentricity.com

I disagree that a plug-in ROM module is 'loaded' in the normal sense. The BASIC firmware is not copied from the module into RAM. The ROMs in the module are directly accessed by the processor to run BASIC, just as they are when the ROMs are on the main board of the machine. Does that mean you should remove machines where the BASIC ROMs were socketed, on the grounds they could be removed? Incidentally, are you including handheld computers: HP71B, HP75C, HP75D, Sharp PC1211, PC1500 (and more), Casio (dozens of models)? -tony

[BASIC on ROM modules, supplied as standard with the machine] That is _your_ definition, I believe. I would not class such a module as 'external software' since it was (a) included with the machine and (b) appears in the main memory map, it is not copied into RAM. I would be interested to hear whether you consider the HP9831 to have 'BASIC in ROM'. It is on a module, always supplied with the machine, the machine does nothing without it. and nothing else was ever supported in place of said module. In other words, to be an HP9831 that module has to be present. OK, so you are accepting those. -tony

Chris Osborn wrote: software to OK, so should the Tandy 600 be included on the list? This machine had a ROM socket accessible through a compartment on the bottom of the machine. The machine didn't come with BASIC in its standard configuration. A BASIC ROM could be purchased separately. The ROM was not a cartridge per-se, but a ROM chip with a little plastic carrier that would help guide the chip into the socket. When the BASIC ROM was installed, BASIC would appear as one of the apps that the menu system built-into the machine provided. As such, BASIC wasn't "running" when the machine was powered up, but BASIC was in ROM, and could easily be accessed by selecting BASIC from the menu. BASIC executed entirely out of ROM...it wasn't "loaded" into RAM and executed from there. It's my assertion that any machine that had a ROM that BASIC would execute out of (such as Atari 400/800), then it should be included in the list. However, if the list specifies that only machines that "powered up running BASIC out of *built-in* ROM", then machines like the Tandy 600, that had a ROM with BASIC in it, but required an additional "module", wouldn't be included. -Rick Bensene

On 03/05/2015 16:18, tony duell wrote: Yeah, I was about to say that. The Sorcerer was always sold with the BASIC ROM PAC fitted, and to my way of thinking, that's really no different from a ROM plugged into the board, as it was on a Commodore PET or an Acorn Atom. -- Pete Pete Turnbull

On 03/05/2015 16:45, Chris Osborn wrote: It wouldn't be removed in normal use, and there was plenty of software (not written in BASIC) that could be loaded without removing the ROM PAC. However, anything in another PAC would require the removal of the BASIC PAC, because there is only one slot. Three items I know of came as replacement ROM PACs: the DEV PAC (Exidy's assembler and editor - but there were others that just loaded from disk/cassette), the WP PAC (word processor, but again there were others) and firmware for one of the non-Exidy disk interfaces (most used only the S100 expansion bus but one also used a PAC for its bootstrap rather than putting that on the expansion bus). There was also an EPROM PAC from a third party, so users could create their own PACs. -- Pete Pete Turnbull

On 03/05/2015 17:10, Chris Osborn wrote: It can be very easily removed by a user, without any tools. As can the BASIC ROM in a UK101 :-) I don't think that's the point, though. -- Pete Pete Turnbull

Some have excluded some machines hecause they define them as "calculators", instead of as "computers". (Although I would think that THAT clearly puts it over the line into "computers") We already had arguments about whether having the ROM in a cartridge that could be unplugged counted. What if the ROM is on a card inside? Does it matter whether the ROM is soldered V socketed? Is a PROM a ROM? EPROM? EEPROM? Non-volatile RAM? What about BASIC in bubble memory? in COREs? On Sun, 3 May 2015, drlegendre . wrote: NOW, we need to clarify the definition of what constitutes BASIC? Is it really BASIC if Kurtz and Kemeny rail against the "enhancements" that have been made to it?