TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Bell Divestiture

Re: Bell Divestiture

David Wilson (david@uow.edu.au)
24 Jun 2005 17:06:43 +1000

TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to a writer:

> And Apple licensed Microsoft Basic for its machines, but gave it a
> new name 'Applesoft DOS' instead.

Applesoft BASIC = Microsoft 6502 cassette BASIC + Apple graphic
commands It took 10KB (5x 2KB ROMs) and used 5 byte floating point
numbers.

The OSI Superboard had an 8KB Microsoft 6502 cassette BASIC and used 4
byte floating point numbers -- same range (up to 10**38 if I recall)
but less accuracy. The funky 2 character error codes were due to an
oversight -- the high bit of the second character was not cleared
resulting in a graphic symbol instead of the appropriate letter (it
should have been "NF" for NEXT without FOR and "/0" for division by
zero etc).

Apple DOS was written in house at Apple and added disk commands (in a
rather unique kluge due to the cassette BASIC not having any DOS hooks
built into it).

David Wilson School of IT & CS, Uni of Wollongong, Australia

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