Background Part II – Plans Not Realized

While I was working on my BASIC Interpreter,  a local computer store that dealt in SS-50 bus computers along with a handful of investors (not me though) designed their own SS-50 bus – a computer that was similar to other small computers of the time (had a built-in keyboard, just plug it in an attached a monitor or TV). These other computers (e.g. TRS-80, Apple, Commodore PET, OSI, etc.) came with BASIC in ROM (read-only memory) so BASIC was there when the computer was turned on. Most SS-50 bus type computers required a terminal to communicate with through a serial interface. One of the member designed a complete terminal on a board that when put into the computer appeared as a serial device. This board was actually a computer itself with a  6809 CPU, CRTC (CRT controller), EPROM and keyboard interface. I was the one the actually wrote the control program for this board. They wanted a BASIC in ROM for the computer. So I converted my 8K BASIC to run in 8K of EPROM and it was simply called ROM-BASIC.

The next issue that caused my 8K BASIC to be slower than Microsoft's was the math. The 8K BASIC used a packed BCD (binary coded decimal) 6-byte format for floating point numbers. The Microsoft BASIC used a 4-byte binary floating point (probably IEEE format or something very similar). Binary floating point with only 4 bytes is much fasted than 6 byte packed BCD. I had a book that explained binary floating point and contained code for a math package (only the standard 4 math functions plus the necessary support functions), but was written in 6800. I converted this to 6809 with all the optimizations possible. I still had to deal with all the scientific functions. I never did get this plugged into my 8K BASIC. I was going to college at the time and that took my time. I was keeping a notebook at the time and the dates end around 1981. There were few more notes from the end of 1984/ begin of 1985 (a break at college) and a few more dated October 1986. The time for a 6809 BASIC had passed and I never picked it back up.

During the 1980's I worked part/full time for a local company developing their business software. Initially this was developed on a TRS-80 Model II in BASIC (another Microsoft variety). Around 1984, the software was converted to BasicA/GW-Basic to run on PCs, using BASCOM3 to compile the code for production. Sometime in the mid-1980's, Microsoft released their QuickBasic 4.5 an incremental compiler. I though it was such a great idea and had good promise, but upon using it, I decided that they could have taken it much further. Also, it ran programs much more slowly than BASCOM3, so development continued with GW-Basic using BASCOM3 for compiling.