MITS 16K ROM BASIC Questions

[Tom Lake]

Is there a manual for MITS 16K ROM BASIC anywhere? Can it use disk drives or are you limited to using a cassette for storage? Since It was released in October 1975, I suspect it's cassette-based since MITS floppy drives weren't available yet.

On the Adwater & Stir website, it says 

"This version of BASIC was not loaded into RAM, leaving more memory available for programs." 

Is that really the case?  Since the top 16K is used by the ROM so you only have 48K left anyway. If you have a 64K RAM machine, and load a RAM-based BASIC, you have just about the same amount of RAM free. Plus, you have a full Disk Extended BASIC rather than a cassette BASIC.

[peterq...@gmail.com]

I don't have a definitive answer.

64K in 1975 would have cost a fortune. If I recall correctly, my Altair had 4k of RAM. If you typed in the Star Trek game, it would run out of memory before you finished. Or maybe you'd be able to type it in and it would run out of string space. I don't exactly recall. 

I still have a calculator from the early 80s that has 4K of RAM and runs a 16K Basic. 

I don't know if you could use the early 16K Basic with floppy disks. I only ever used cassette tapes. 

[Tom Lake]

Ah. I hadn't considered systems typical of the '70s with less than 64K. In that case, yes, you'd have more free RAM to run programs.
I did find a manual for the second version of the board for turnkey systems. That says that ROM BASIC was cassette-only. Little by little I find answers.

[udo....@freenet.de]

The Altair BASIC 4.1 ROM version is covered by the 1977 manual here:

https://www.autometer.de/unix4fun/z80pack/ftp/altair/AltairBasic_1977.pdf

It is extended BASIC, but not disk extended. It has CLOAD/CSAVE implemented to use cassette storage.

[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

I may have a slightly different version of the manual I scanned into my PC.  IF that 1977 version doesn't cover what you need I can zip up all the pages and post my version online.