From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu From: Ralph Corderoy Message-ID: <1259.3ed88bff.c6f5@blake.inputplus.co.uk> References: <3ED61D7E.1060108@proweb.co.uk>, <74ded0f5bd544f58fffc3c7e0f23884a@vitanuova.com> Subject: Re: [9fans] memory stick Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2003 09:01:58 +0000 Topicbox-Message-UUID: c1aa1604-eacb-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 Hi, > i never did anything but the most redimentary programming on the 380Z > though: BBC B's were the thing. it still amazes me how fast BBC basic > was, especially when i recall it used 32-bits (floating point by > default!) for all its arithmetic. IIRC, an unadorned variable, e.g. `foo' was a float stored in a non-IEEE five-byte format. `foo%' was a 32-bit integer. `foo$' was a string with maximum length of 255 bytes. It was fast, and the best BASIC around at the time. Largely due to the skill of its creator, Sophie Wilson. http://www.sophie.org.uk/ She later went on to design the ARM chip's instruction set, ARM originally standing for Acorn RISC Machine. BBC BASIC written in assembly for the ARM by Sophie has traditionally been a very good torture test for ARM instruction set emulators because of its author's in-depth knowledge. Another reason it was the best BASIC was it had 16K of ROM space all to itself thanks to the BBC's `sideway ROM' feature which allowed 16K for the OS, another 16K for the BASIC interpreter, 16K for the floppy disc filing system, etc. Each being paged in at the same address in memory as required. Most other home computers had, say, 16K for the OS+BASIC+everything else. Cheers, -- Ralph Corderoy. http://inputplus.co.uk/ralph/ http://troff.org/