| Re .0:
> I've got a friend who is considering buying an Amiga 500. The thing is
> he has done a fair amount of BASIC programming on his old Com. 128 and
> would like to transfer that over to the Amiga. Is there and easy way
> to do this?
There are several ways of skinning this cat. Before I dealve into
them, keep in mind that MOST of them will require him to convert his
BASIC 7.0 source files from their "tokenized" format to ASCII (or at
least "PETSCI") listing files. In descending order of throughput,
I see three obvious approches, each of which has its own hardware and
software requirements.
1. Using Amiga 5�" drive and "Disk-to-Disk" from Central Coast
Software (the same folks who bring you Quarterback), copy the
listing files from the C=1571 diskette to an Amiga disk.
2. Using a C=64 emulator (and its special Amiga Parallel port to
C=64/128 serial port interface) connect the C=1571 to the Amiga
and copy files to the Amiga's drives. These emulators usually
come with utility programs that can convert C=64/128 files stored
on Amiga diskettes to ASCII for use in the AmigaDOS environment.
3. Using either a null modem cable or an actual telephone connection
between the Amiga and C=128 (and appropriate communications
programs in each) transfer the files directly. BobsTerm Pro 128
knows how to de-tokenize files for XMODEM transfer to other
systems. This is the least work, but you'll be limited by line
speed (as if disk I/O on the C=128 isn't also a limitation). A
variation on this scheme is to upload the files from the C=128 to
a third system, from which the Amiga can later download them.
|
| Also, AmigaBASIC seems to have been dropped from AmigaDOS 2.0 and
replaced with AREXX. Personnally, AREXX is about 1000% better than
basic, but it's not available on many other platforms. I think a
number of A500/A1000/A2000 owners are going to be peeved when they
find out AmigaBASIC isn't supported under 2.0 but I've heard surprisingly
few complaints so far...
-steve
|
| I've heard rumors that AmigaBASIC broke because it used the high order byte
of addresses to hold real information, which is why it's not on 2.0.
From a smaller number of places, I hear rumors that a new version is going
to appear which will be shipped with 2.0.
<mike
|
| Re: .3
>I've heard rumors that AmigaBASIC broke because it used the high order byte
>of addresses to hold real information, which is why it's not on 2.0.
I heard the same rumors when the 68020 accelerator cards first came out.
For those of you wondering, the problem is that 68000 only use 24 bits
of address information when making memory references. So, it is possible
on a 68000 to use the top byte of a pointer to store unrelated information
and store an address in the lower three bytes.
The 68020 and 68030 use all 32 bits of an address. The only thing you
can store in your pointer is the address. If you attempt to
use the high byte for an unrelated purpose, your addresses will
refer to completely different memory locations.
However, shortly after the 68020 accelerators appeared, a small patch
appeared to make Amiga BASIC work on 68020 cards.
So, it appears that if this was the bug in Amiga BASIC, it was
confined to a small section of code.
When the Mac II came out, this high byte kludge in some programs was
a real problem. You still occasionally hear Mac folks talk about
"32 bit clean programs."
|