view README.txt @ 66:02080e77386f

Make negative integers parse correctly
author William Astle <lost@l-w.ca>
date Sun, 23 Apr 2023 10:12:14 -0600
parents fbb8f369ce76
children 663d8e77b579
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This is the LWBasic project. Its goal is to create a replacement Basic for
the TRS80 Color Computer. This Basic will not be binary compatible with the
stock ROM. In particular, any various peeks, pokes, executes, and the like
intended to mess with the interpreter internals are unlikely to work, and,
in fact, may be completely detrimental.

There are two versions of LWBasic. One is for the Coco 1 and 2. The other
is for the Coco 3. The primary differences between the two are in the
startup code and features that rely on the existence of Coco 3 hardware. The
main differences for the Coco 3 version are:

* 32/40/64/80 column text modes with attributes
* 256/320/512/640 column bitmap graphics with up to 16 colours (256/320)
  or 4 colours (512/640)
* palette register setting
* graphics and text screen located outside main program memory
* disk I/O buffers located outside main program memory
* separate heaps for strings, scalars, arrays, and program text not limited
  to the 64K address space of the CPU
* ROM/RAM copy at startup and initialization of Coco 3 specific hardware;
  defaulting to the 80 column text screen

Both versions can either be installed in ROM or loaded from disk or tape.
In the case of loading from disk or tape, the machine must have at least
64K of RAM. The loadable versions do not include certain initalization
routines that are only relevant to cold starting the hardware.

For the Coco 3 version, the ROM is a single 32K chunk intended to replace
the 32K internal ROM. For the Coco 1/2 version, there are three chunks: an
"Extended Color Basic" chunk (8K for the ECB socket), a "Color Basic" chunk
(8K for the CB socket), and "Disk Extended Color Basic", a 16K chunk
intended to be installed in a cartridge ROM, probably a disk controller. On
machines with a single 16K internal ROM, the "Extended Color Basic" and
"Color Basic" chunks should arranged with "Extended Color Basic" at the
lowest address and "Color Basic" immediately above.

An important note about the hardware interrupt vectors in the ROMs: the Coco
1/2 get the FFFx vectors from the top 16 bytes of the "Color Basic" chunk.
The Coco 3 gets the FFFx vectors from the top 16 bytes of the 32K internal
ROM.

Note that LWBasic does not look for the DK signature of a Disk Basic ROM
and, thus, will not autostart whatever Disk Basic you happen to have
installed. This is most relevant on a Coco 3 where the upper 16K of the
LWBasic ROM is internal instead of in a cartrige.