Re: Old Apple code (was: Re: MessyDos and Bill Gates)

[jpenne@ee.ualberta.ca (Jerry Penner)]

gt2011a@prism.gatech.EDU (gt2011a SIMMS,WILLIAM SHELDON) writes:

>In article <C2nFpo.8Bo@world.std.com> jeffb@world.std.com (Jeffrey T Berntsen) writes:
>>WULF@cip.physik.uni-stuttgart.de () writes:
>>No, Woz said he could have rewritten part of Integer BASIC in SWEET 16 to cut
>>the size of the code at the cost of slower speed.  Integer BASIC is written
>>entirely in machine code.  I have a complete disassembly of Integer BASIC that
>>I am in the process of labeling and commenting and someday hope to make run
>>under ProDOS.  Anyone out there have information on Integer BASIC internals?

>Well Jeff, you have the disassembled code, but here's a quote from that
>article by Woz:

>[... deleted most of quote ...]
>What I really needed was a 6502/RCA 1800 hybrid - an abundance of 16-bit
>registers and excellent pointer capability.  My solution was to implement a
>non-existant (meta) 16-bit processor in software, interpreter style, which I
>call SWEET 16." - From "SWEET 16: The 6502 Dream Machine". BYTE Nov. 1977
>                    by Steve Wozniak

>So, it sounds like Woz did use Sweet 16 for integer basic.

That might be what it sounds like, but it's actually not.  I
disassembled integer basic a number of years back (1983 or 84) and it
was all 6502 assembly code (besides the data tables and such).

What you might be interested to know is that the Big Mac
assembler/editor was partially written in Sweet-16, and was its
offspring, Merlin.  The Sweet-16 code was only in the editor part, as
far as I can remember, but there were little bits of it all over the
place, seeing as how it was quite simple to enter and exit Sweet-16
code from 6502 code.
-- 
Jerry Penner   jpenne@ee.ualberta.ca   or   jjp@myrias.ab.ca