6 ms·
And yet the C64 (and VIC) far outsold the BBC Micro and the Spectrum. And yes, BBC Basic was a very nice language, but it wasn't very fast for real-world tasks
by zabzonk 7y ago
And yet the C64 (and VIC) far outsold the BBC Micro and the Spectrum.
And yes, BBC Basic was a very nice language, but it wasn't very fast for real-world tasks. Way back then I implemented the KERMIT file transfer protocol (and a VT100 terminal emulator) in BBC Basic and it was very slow. I re-wrote it in 6502 assembler to make it really usable. So for anything serious you needed to do on the BBC Micro, you needed to write it in assembler.
And don't get me started on that "reset" key that could be hit by accident at any time. Or the crap DFS disk file system.
- jacquesm 7y agoAh, but the assembler was built in, for other computers that was extra, and the 'reset' key (aka the 'break' key) was annoying but the BASIC interpreter had the 'old' command which would usually - but not always... - restore your code. Still, to make that key a keyboard key right next to a function key wasn't the best UI decision, to put it mildly. As for speed, it wasn't very fast in absolute terms, but it was very fast compared to other BASIC implementations, and pretty much bug free (only one bug was ever found in the code, which I think is absolutely amazing for a ROM that size).
- zabzonk 7y agoThe built-in assembler was really not suitable for anything other than writing some small snippets to be called from Basic - the KERMIT/VT100 implementation I wrote, which was quite full-feature, was written using a 3rd party disk-based assembler, which was much easier to work with.
- jacquesm 7y agoI wrote my own, didn't have money for 3rd party stuff, already did a 6809 version together with a friend so it was relatively easy. Even so, the built in assembler was a bonus item and it worked pretty good to bootstrap new stuff including ROM images and proper assemblers.