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Re: Cloning BASIC.SYSTEM and porting INTBASIC to ProDOS

On Fri, 21 Oct 2005, Scott Alfter wrote:


If you're doing this with the goal of adding capabilities not currently in
ProDOS (such as increasing the maximum filesystem size beyond 32 MB), this
could be interesting.  I'm not sure copyright is that big an issue, given
that Apple has never seen fit to charge for it.
Anything is possible. :) It is just one step further than what I am already trying to implement in VDOS and what is implemented in prodosemu. 


2. I mentioned several months ago that I wanted to run INTBASIC programs
on ProDOS, and it seems that it would take a disassembly and reassembly of
Integer BASIC in order to do this.  I have a version of Integer BASIC that
will load on DOS 3.x in only 48K RAM but it doesn't work right in ProDOS,
if possible maybe this could be hacked, and made to work correctly.  Maybe
even with ideas and code from that BASIC.SYSTEM clone idea I mentioned
above, so that it can be a .SYSTEM file and run on its own.


The problem you'd run into here is that ProDOS and Integer BASIC want to
occupy the same chunk of RAM.  It might be possible to persuade Integer
BASIC into running in the bank-switched area of auxiliary memory.  It
wouldn't need to be relocated or reassembled, but it'd drive your minimum
hardware config up to a 128K IIe (not that that's such a big hurdle
anymore).
ProDOS wants to occupy the language card? No big deal. This INTBASIC I am referring to loads at the bottom of BASIC memory ($0800), not onto the language card.
There is the issue of ProDOS and Integer BASIC wanting to use the same areas of the zero page, plus the means of providing disk access. That's why I said re-assembly is kind-of a must. 

-uso.