.BA file should probably be a tokenized BASIC file

[hackerb9]

There is a file named M100LE.BA, the BA extension implies that it is a tokenized BASIC file, but it appears to just be a plain ASCII BASIC file, which the Model 100 usually would call a .DO file. It would be beneficial to people if there was a genuine .BA file distributed as it will be much smaller and won't require the user to do the weird "LOAD" then "SAVE" step that is currently required by M100LEl.DO. (Of course, the original M100LE.DO should continue to be distributed as it can be transferred using programs like TELCOM which cannot handle 8-bit files).

I believe the tokenized BASIC for the Model 100 and the Tandy 200 are identical. I do not know about the NEC PC-8201.

[bgri]

Good observation. I'll add that to the list :) The 8201 BASIC is somewhat different than the m100. Drawing characters to x,y doesn't exist in the same way. There's a few other things... so a direct 1:1 conversion isn't possible. The 8201 is my first love for these units, so I have to get a version running on it :)

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On Sun, Jul 24, 2022 at 7:00 AM hackerb9 ***@***.***> wrote: There is a file named M100LE.BA, the BA extension implies that it is a tokenized BASIC file, but it appears to just be a plain ASCII BASIC file, which the Model 100 usually would call a .DO file. It would be beneficial to people if there was a genuine .BA file distributed as it will be much smaller and won't require the user to do the weird "LOAD" then "SAVE" step that is currently required by M100LEl.DO. (Of course, the original M100LE.DO should continue to be distributed as it can be transferred using programs like TELCOM which cannot handle 8-bit files). I believe the tokenized BASIC for the Model 100 and the Tandy 200 are identical. I do not know about the NEC PC-8201. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#9>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ADLJII66FVVNC74ZQTC6JD3VVU46NANCNFSM54PUF4SQ> . You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

-- -- Brad Grier ----------

[bgri]

Just catching up on these... yes, we'll tokenize the .BA once we lock down the next version, 'M100LEm'.

[hackerb9]

The 8201 BASIC is somewhat different than the m100. Drawing characters to x,y doesn't exist in the same way. There's a few other things... so a direct 1:1 conversion isn't possible. The 8201 is my first love for these units, so I have to get a version running on it :)

I have a solution for the X,Y problem in issue #11. You already are setting variables to store the coordinate. I was thinking the variables could simply be the VT52 strings for cursor placement. That should work on any of the Kyocera sisters. I am eager to get it working, once we know that random access reads can work properly on the 8201.

[bgri]

Nice idea! I've been reluctant to dig into that one as I used PRINT @ statements everywhere :).

[hackerb9]

Now that I think the program should work on the NEC portables, I'm looking into how to tokenize to a M100LE.BA.NEC file. I already have tokenizing working well enough for the Model 100 and Tandy 102/200 at https://github.com/hackerb9/tokenize .

One problem I'm running into is that VIrtual T sometimes garbles .BA files when saving from the NEC 8201A emulation, so I don't have a baseline of what the output should look like.

[bgri]

Hmm, interesting. What would it take to get a baseline?

[hackerb9]

Would you be willing to load the M100 code into your NEC 8201A and then post the .BA file in this thread? I believe the tokenization is the same for all the NEC portables, but we should probably check that.

[bgri]

Yep, for sure! I've got a bit more bandwidth to look back at this stuff (for a little while anyway :)). I'll try and have it up in the next few days.

[bgri]

Ok, that's cool! The code runs!!!

Though it's not reading the .CO properly...

Amazing progress!

[hackerb9]

FLJFP.... Wasn't that the "word" when the wordlist wasn't properly initialized by CMPRSS and so it was just looking at a copy of the NEC ROM?

Please try downloading the .CO file directly. If that works, please send me the output of running CMPRSS so we can debug it. If the .CO file doesn't work, then I'm curious if the program even works with the old .DO format. (It should if there is no .CO file).

It's not possible you have an old copy of CMPRSS.DO, right?

[bgri]

Would you be willing to load the M100 code into your NEC 8201A and then post the .BA file in this thread? I believe the tokenization is the same for all the NEC portables, but we should probably check that.

Bah, I must be bad at reading. Just to confirm what I've done (hopefully it's what you were looking for :) ):

• Download M100LE.DO
• copy to 8201a
• load the .DO into basic
• save the .BA to RAM
• attach the .BA here. Attached as .txt and .zip incase something muddled it as Github received.

M100LE_BA.txt
M100LE.BA.zip

On to the next part...

[bgri]

Ok - TLDR -- It works :)

• downloaded the current text version of CMPRSS.DO
• loaded it into basic and saved it out as CMPRSS.BA
• ran CMPRSS.BA on the current version of WL2022.DO
• which created WL2022.CO
• ran the current version of M100LE.BA
• stopped execution to get the value of TW$ (today's word), which resulted in DANDY
• also, something seemed to be going on as when I entered "PRINT TW$" in addition to printing the word, it seemed to start executing basic code and generated an error message. It also did this the first time I attempted to clear the screen with CLS. - the second CLS attempt worked, and then was able to cleanly print the value of TW$ without issue.

Running CMPRSS.BA to generate WL2022.CO

Jobs Done.

Program running

Complete

The error

After a couple of CLS

Also -- I had previous issues attempting to delete WL2022.CO -- the 8201a would freeze and a hard reset was needed. That doesn't happen now.