I'm not sure that the ROM BASIC was a huge commercial factor much after 1983 or so. It might have given IBM more leverage to say "not fully compatible" or inst

I'm not sure that the ROM BASIC was a huge commercial factor much after 1983 or so. It might have given IBM more leverage to say "not fully compatible" or instigate IP lawsuits, but most clones seemed to be okay with a boot error of "NO ROM BASIC - SYSTEM HALTED" instead of the IBM BASIC ROM. They stopped updating the ROM version virtually immediately, and it never supported discs. No PCs after the PCjr supported cassette tape natively. So all it could be was a penalty box when the boot failed. BASICA and GWBASIC seemed to be treated equivalently from the perspective of mid-late 80s magazines with type-in listings of near commerical-grade for the time software.