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SWTPC Co-Res and 8K BASIC v2.3 tape data available

bzotto

bzotto

Experienced Member
Joined
Jan 25, 2022
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112
Location
San Francisco, USA
A while back I came by a couple original cassette tapes from SWTPC including the Co-Resident Editor/Assembler and the 2.3 version of 8K BASIC. I archived the data and you can find them both in folders on @deramp5113 's software site here. These program versions seem to have been not easily found previously, so hopefully this is useful for folks out there now or in future.
 
I don’t know if anyone was! 😂 I just noticed that I didn’t find archived copies those ones easily available so I thought I’d contribute.

I think there is probably a lot of cassette software in particular from the late 70s that is sitting in collections/barns/closets that has not been “archived” as such yet. The 8080 and 6800 machine communities and companies were just orders of magnitude smaller than what came after and many tapes have been lost forever because heirs and others likely assumed they were just audio tapes and trashed or goodwilled them.

Anyway I have a well calibrated Nakamichi deck and functioning workflow for the Kansas City tape standard if anyone out there has OEM SWTPC, Sphere, or other KC tapes and needs a hand with preservation.
 
jlang said:
I have both tapes and manuals. I bought them in the 70's from SWTPC. I had no idea anybody was looking for them.
Click to expand...
If you have a copy of the v2.3 swtpc 8K basic manual, any chance you could scan and post pages 19 and 20? These are missing from all the online v2.3 pdfs I’ve seen including on mike’s deramp site with the binaries.

I believe page 19 was the ascii table, same as in the v2.0 manual, but page 20 contained the 2.3 memory map w/comments which would be useful to make the v2.3 manual complete.

I only have low res snaps (blurry but just legible) of the missing pages 19 and 20.

4F183423-D8A6-4B9C-B566-70A22F433938.jpeg51CBED65-A9A2-4098-B0AB-11125F149109.jpeg

Thanks!

Stan
 
Thank you both for your efforts. I've uploaded the complete version of the manual to the SWTPC section on the deramp website.

Mike
 
This was the version I used in school! Question, though. Has anyone tried to run this on a real system? I tried to run this on a system where v2.2 works fine, but this version only produces output one character at a time, each time I enter a character. My monitor had the usual e1ac, e1d1 etc. So, it only prints READY when I repeatedly hit the space bar, for example.

Simon
 
Basic depends on a routine to detect input character ready. It's internal and has to match the control port type. MPS/MPC.
If it incorrectly thinks an input character is waiting it will try to get it. Pausing till you type something.
 
jlang said:
Basic depends on a routine to detect input character ready. It's internal and has to match the control port type. MPS/MPC.
If it incorrectly thinks an input character is waiting it will try to get it. Pausing till you type something.
Click to expand...
Yep, I figured it out and patched out the FNDTYP routine/TYPE logic, and now it all works!
 
swynn97 said:
Yep, I figured it out and patched out the FNDTYP routine/TYPE logic, and now it all works!
Click to expand...
And replying to myself, the reality is that if I try to use slot 0 (8000H), the logic to select ports, etc., appears broken. Use slot 1 (8004H), and everything works out of the box.
 
swynn97 said:
And replying to myself, the reality is that if I try to use slot 0 (8000H), the logic to select ports, etc., appears broken. Use slot 1 (8004H), and everything works out of the box.
Click to expand...
The port select routine is broken. Invalid port numbers are supposed to trap to an error reporting routine (that usually crashes BASIC)
It's too complex for it's own good.
 
jlang said:
The port select routine is broken. Invalid port numbers are supposed to trap to an error reporting routine (that usually crashes BASIC)
It's too complex for it's own good.
Click to expand...
Yep - that's exactly what I saw - if I had the source, this would be easier :)
 
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