My replacement for Microcolor BASIC has had a some mentions on the CoCo Crew Podcast in recent episodes. This nay answer a couple questions they had.
Why did I start this? The project arose for a couple reasons, and no it's not nostalgia, I did't own an MC-10 until a few years ago. I wanted to enter the retro challenge (why I started this blog), and I had claimed on a forum that the MC-10 is more powerful than people give it credit for CPU wise... or something like that. Someone mocked me for that. Challenge accepted! Plus this sort of thing is fun for me, I created a commented disassembly of the Amiga exec back in the 90s.
Why would you want it? If you want to run BASIC games on the MC-10, or you want to program the MC-10 in BASIC, programs will run faster. It also adds the ELSE statement which makes it easier to port programs from other machines including from CoCo Color BASIC. Since a lot of programs never appeared on the MC-10, you can be the first to port them.
Okay, so there's a new ROM, how can we use it?
1) The most obvious is that you can use it in an emulator. This is how I test the ROM. Just tell the emulator to load the ROM image instead of the original. This is also the best way to write BASIC programs for the MC-10. If you don't have to type them in on that little keyboard things become a lot easier.
2) The MC-10 hardware was designed so that external hardware can disable the internal CPU address decoding, including the ROM. You can put the new ROM onto an expansion board that includes a socket for one, or replace internal ROM with RAM where supported to load the ROM image into RAM.
3) You can replace the system ROM inside the machine. Most MC-10s have the ROM soldered to the motherboard, but there are a few (like mine) that have the ROM socketed. You can desolder the ROM and install a socket if it doesn't already have one, then plug in a new ROM.
You could have the ROM desoldered for you at CoCo Fest.
At the same time, you could also have the CPU socketed for a future 6303 upgrade. The 6303 upgrade requires a new ROM. Getting the shielding removed to access the ROM and CPU also makes it easier to upgrade the internal RAM to take advantage of the highest resolution 6847 graphics modes.
FWIW, the optimizations I've made are mostly machine or Motorola specific. You can't speed up the 6502 or Z80 versions of Microsoft BASIC the same way. Microcolor BASIC on the MC-10, and Color BASIC on the CoCo weren't optimized much over the 6800 version they seem to be derived from.
Why the MC-10 ROM and not the CoCo ROM? There's less software to break, and the MC-10 needs some love.
Why did I start this? The project arose for a couple reasons, and no it's not nostalgia, I did't own an MC-10 until a few years ago. I wanted to enter the retro challenge (why I started this blog), and I had claimed on a forum that the MC-10 is more powerful than people give it credit for CPU wise... or something like that. Someone mocked me for that. Challenge accepted! Plus this sort of thing is fun for me, I created a commented disassembly of the Amiga exec back in the 90s.
Why would you want it? If you want to run BASIC games on the MC-10, or you want to program the MC-10 in BASIC, programs will run faster. It also adds the ELSE statement which makes it easier to port programs from other machines including from CoCo Color BASIC. Since a lot of programs never appeared on the MC-10, you can be the first to port them.
Okay, so there's a new ROM, how can we use it?
1) The most obvious is that you can use it in an emulator. This is how I test the ROM. Just tell the emulator to load the ROM image instead of the original. This is also the best way to write BASIC programs for the MC-10. If you don't have to type them in on that little keyboard things become a lot easier.
2) The MC-10 hardware was designed so that external hardware can disable the internal CPU address decoding, including the ROM. You can put the new ROM onto an expansion board that includes a socket for one, or replace internal ROM with RAM where supported to load the ROM image into RAM.
3) You can replace the system ROM inside the machine. Most MC-10s have the ROM soldered to the motherboard, but there are a few (like mine) that have the ROM socketed. You can desolder the ROM and install a socket if it doesn't already have one, then plug in a new ROM.
You could have the ROM desoldered for you at CoCo Fest.
At the same time, you could also have the CPU socketed for a future 6303 upgrade. The 6303 upgrade requires a new ROM. Getting the shielding removed to access the ROM and CPU also makes it easier to upgrade the internal RAM to take advantage of the highest resolution 6847 graphics modes.
FWIW, the optimizations I've made are mostly machine or Motorola specific. You can't speed up the 6502 or Z80 versions of Microsoft BASIC the same way. Microcolor BASIC on the MC-10, and Color BASIC on the CoCo weren't optimized much over the 6800 version they seem to be derived from.
Why the MC-10 ROM and not the CoCo ROM? There's less software to break, and the MC-10 needs some love.
Even if you are porting code to standard Microcolor BASIC, having a version of BASIC with ELSE support still makes the job easier if the original program depends on it. You can concentrate on getting the code running first, creating system specific screens, etc... and then remove ELSE statements one at a time once the code is running.
ReplyDeleteFWIW, if you replace the Z80 with a Hitachi HD64180 or Zilog Z180, you can use their multiply instruction to speed up the floating point library in the same manner, and can also use the invert and multiply trick I mention in a later post.
ReplyDeleteThey also have an instruction prefetch and larger ALU making them significantly faster than a Z80. A 6 MHz 64180 is supposedly as fast as an 8 MHz Z80 running the same code.
They are not pin compatible with the Z80 though, so some sort of adapter board is required.