ROMWBW - SC691 - BASIC Save / Load

[B T]

Hello,
I just finished making the SC691 computer.  It is working great and it's been awhile since I dabbled in CP/M.  I just emailed Steve this same question, then found this forum

I am just getting it up and running, but I did have one ROMWBW question that I just can't find an answer for.  If I missed it in the documentation / Post, don't hesitate to just point me in the right direction.

It is regarding the ROM Microsoft BASIC that is on the ROMWBW boot menu.  I will likely be using it as it seems to have the most available RAM for Programs.  I have some really large older programs I want to run.  What I can't figure out is if there are any options for dumping a resident BASIC Program in some fashion.  Hex, Paper tape, etc.  I am assuming there are no Disk functions since this isn't run under CP/M? Likely why there is so much available memory.  Using Text transfer, I suppose one option is to simply buffer catch/transmit the program listing in the terminal emulator.  But I was hoping for something a bit more elegant.

Thanks for any help

-BT

[Wayne Warthen]

Hi BT,

I'm afraid that the ROM BASIC in RomWBW does not have any built-in mechanism to save/restore programs.  It is included as a way to "play" with BASIC without an operating system.  In theory, you could use the BASIC LIST command and capture the program in your terminal emulator.  You could subsequently use your terminal emulator to re-enter the program.

To save/restore programs to disk, you will need to use MBASIC under CP/M.  Yes, it is larger, but that is partly due to it's ability to save/restore files.

Thanks, Wayne

[B T]

Thanks for the response.  That's what I figured with all that free RAM and no overhead.

I will probably give the screen capture a try when I get that far.  I did something similar when using my KIM-1 and I got it working ok

after I adjusted the line and character delays to work.  With the KIM-1, I also was able to figure out how to break out of BASIC, find the starting and stopping memory locations

for the BASIC program still in memory, then dump it using the PaperTape function..

-BT

[Bill Shen]

It is possible to save BASIC file, but you need to jump through a couple hoops.  The BASIC with its program exist in memory, so if you can save the memory contents and have a way to run BASIC without initialize its data contents, then you can save the image of BASIC with its large application program to your workstation.  Later you can reload the image from workstation and run BASIC with the application program already loaded.  SCM has the option to warm boot BASIC which does not initialize its memory, so now you need a way to save previous memory image and a way to reload said image and warm boot BASIC.  Using this method I’ve a version of BASIC with StarTrek loaded so I can run StarTrek in few seconds.  I’m using my own RC2014-compatible Z80 SBC, so the existing image won’t run on SC691, but the methodology is the same.

Bill