[comp.sys.acorn] BBC B programs.

quan@sol.surv.utas.edu.au (Stephen Quan) (12/18/90)

I just sat down and thought, what is my BBC B really worth, anything?
or is it just another toy? Would anyone buy 6502 programs developed on
a limited capacity '1985 bought' BBC?  I program with lots of memory
limitations.

eg.  &0000-&0E00 System Memory.
     &0E00-&1900 Memory allocated for my DFS chip.  (800K disk drive).
     &1900-&3000 My workable RAM.
     &3000-&8000 Taken up by graphics - (I program in MODE 1).

So that leaves me with &3000-&1900 = &1100 ram. (=4.25 Kbytes).
Pretty pathetic.

Stephen Quan,
University of Tasmania.

vac122g@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au (Daniel Bowen) (12/18/90)

In article <quan.661516021@sol>, quan@sol.surv.utas.edu.au (Stephen Quan) writes:
> I just sat down and thought, what is my BBC B really worth, anything?
> or is it just another toy? Would anyone buy 6502 programs developed on
> a limited capacity '1985 bought' BBC?  I program with lots of memory
> limitations.
> 
> eg.  &0000-&0E00 System Memory.
>      &0E00-&1900 Memory allocated for my DFS chip.  (800K disk drive).
>      &1900-&3000 My workable RAM.
>      &3000-&8000 Taken up by graphics - (I program in MODE 1).
> 
> So that leaves me with &3000-&1900 = &1100 ram. (=4.25 Kbytes).
> Pretty pathetic.

The disk is the key here. If you're careful, you can make
use of that 800 extra K.
I myself am busy (occasionally) programming a role-playing game
a la Ultima (in mode 4). Of course, there's no way it would fit into
12.25 K, but by overlaying programs in memory from disk, so far
I've used about 50K of program...  and lots of data.

Oh, BTW... if it's Acorn DFS you're using, it's often safe to use
memory from &1100 onwards, as long as you don't use files
(not LOAD or SAVE, but OPENIN, OPENOUT and OPENUP... ie data files).

Daniel Bowen

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MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA |vac122g@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au | those who don't. [AYSII]