Re: Booting problem (Prodos)

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

In article <37hokd$8sr@er3.rutgers.edu>, Kid <neiderma@er3.rutgers.edu> wrote:
> 
> Yipes is right.  I was under the impression that when ShrinkIt tried
> to create a new directory, it had to call ProDOS for the instruction
> sequence to do that.

Well, yes - it does.  The same function is also used to create normal
files (probably with some different code internally) so you'd hardly
be able to save much code by removing directory creation, unless you
didn't want to create any files (including ones you were trying to
unshrink!)

Anyway, this sort of code will be scattered throughout the PRODOS file
in small pieces, and you would have to disassemble _all_ of PRODOS to
be able to squeeze out odds and sods like this.  I ask again: why go
to all that trouble?

> What book do you recommend I check out to see how programs like
> ProTERM, ShrinkIt, AppleWorks, etc use ProDOS BASIC?

It is very simple: any SYS file (including all of the above) does not
require BASIC.SYSTEM (ProDOS BASIC).  You only need BASIC.SYSTEM if
you want to run BAS (Applesoft BASIC) files, and some BIN (Binary)
files that need to work under BASIC.

In any case, you don't have to put BASIC.SYSTEM on your boot disk -
you could keep all your BASIC programs on another disk, along with
BASIC.SYSTEM.  You could then boot that disk directly (it would also
need PRODOS in that case), or boot from another disk, switch disks,
and launch BASIC.SYSTEM from a program selector.

If you have a program selector that only displays directories and SYS
files (such as Birds Better Bye, or the selector built into ProDOS-8
1.9 and later), then any file listed there will NOT require
BASIC.SYSTEM to be present on the disk.
-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand