BASIC ROM User Guide [Remastered PDF]

[dv8]

Attached is an OCRed and re-typeset copy of the BASIC ROM User Guide by Mark Plumbley.

The SSD disc image contains all the listings in the book.

BASIC_ROM_User_Guide.pdf

Second revision, March 2023

(1.08 MiB) Downloaded 252 times

BASIC_ROM_User_Guide.ssd

(82.5 KiB) Downloaded 83 times

Other remastered books you may be interested in:

Advanced BASIC ROM User Guide
BBC Micro User Guide (Model B and B+ editions)

[cmorley]

Cool. I've been looking out for a print copy of this book for a year now.

[flaxcottage]

[DutchAcorn]

Excellently done, again..

Is "The Advanced Basic Rom User Guide" by Colin Pharo also in the pipeline?

Edit: I just saw you already did it.

[jms2]

You've done a beautiful job with these two BASIC rom books, I'm very impressed!

EDIT: The cover illustration is just incredible!

[jgharston]

Attached is an OCRed and re-typeset copy of the BASIC ROM User Guide by Mark Plumbley.
The zip file also includes an SSD containing all the listings in the book.
BASIC_ROM_User_Guide.zip

There's a mistake! It's doesn't have SARAH ROE COMPUTING CENTRE stamped in the inside cover

[sweh]

Oh yes! The other BASIC book. I'm actually sad I threw these away when I moved to America in 2001. This book was a primary reason that I was able to write my own BASIC Extension ROM.

And, again, an excellent PDF.

[Kevin Edwards]

Awesome work!

Thank you. Nice to have a digital version to go with my original.

Cheers,
Kevin.

[dv8]

An updated PDF of this book has been added to the opening post.

Changes since revision 1 (October 2017):

• p40 (42) 2.3.2 Figure 2.6 Line number tokenising : LSB and MSB were the wrong way round
• p61 (63) 3.3 Workspace &27 : changed description to 'Variable type of current expression'
• p61 (63) 3.3 Workspace &29-2B : added descriptions for &2A=operand-lo, &2B=operand-hi
• p165 (167) 10 Summary : added hyperlinks for all entries
• p165 (167) 10.3 Statement handling : 'skipin' should be 'skplin'
• p166 (168) 10.5 Variable/FN/PROC management : 'fndvar' should be 'fndvrb'
• p166 (168) 10.5 Variable/FN/PROC management : 'linkvar' should be 'lnkvar'
• p167 (169) 10.9 Integer routines : added entries for addi, subi, muli

[tom_seddon]

I noticed an error (which is also in the PDF of scans that I've previously used)

p 190, getifb entry points for BASIC 1 and BASIC 2 are swapped. They are the right way round in the table on p 328.

--Tom

[james]

Hi. I think there could be an error on p25. Should the comments in brackets be for the Y register, not X?

Zero page,X (‘,Y’ for LDXY)
Absolute,X (‘,Y’ for LDXY)

Zero page,X (‘,Y’ for STXY)

A tiny formatting issue on p42 where the “C” flags for BASIC 2’s PI, POS & RND have one too many preceding dashes

Code: Select all

 OPENOUT --------  BF7C
 PI      --------C ABCB
 POINT(  --------  AB41
 POS     --------C AB6D
 RAD     --------  ABB1
 RND     --------C AF49
 SGN     --------  AB88

[dv8]

Hi. I think there could be an error on p25. Should the comments in brackets be for the Y register, not X?

Those comments are correct, referring to addressing modes LDY addr,X and LDX addr,Y

A tiny formatting issue on p42 where the “C” flags for BASIC 2’s PI, POS & RND have one too many preceding dashes

Yes, that's wrong. I'll add it to the list of corrections.
Thanks.

[sweh]

Hi. I think there could be an error on p25. Should the comments in brackets be for the Y register, not X?

Zero page,X (‘,Y’ for LDXY)
Absolute,X (‘,Y’ for LDXY)

Zero page,X (‘,Y’ for STXY)

I don't think so. What it's saying in the brackets is that the LDX command can do zp,Y and abs,Y. It's not well written (looks like someone tried to shorten the section and so added confusion) but it looks correct;
LDY zp,X; LDY abs,X; LDX zp,Y; LDX abs,Y.

[james]

Ah - got it (and I need to do more revising!) - thanks both!

[Coeus]

Ah - got it (and I need to do more revising!) - thanks both!

Yes, it is part of the way the 6502 is a bit quirky. For an addressing mode that normally uses X as the index register, if it is implemented for loading X (LDX) then it swaps to using Y as the index register. The assumption is that the programmer does not want to lose the value in the index register. Likewise for a mode that usually uses Y, if implemented for LDY, it will use X instead.

[tomhelm]

Fantastic book, thanks for the beautiful conversion dv8!

One minor spelling issue to consider for the next revision: On page 115: "loose track" should be "lose track"

[james]

A miniscule formatting inconsistency on p102:

&FD ,&FE points to the error number (4)

Should have no space before the comma (eg as per p53, p129, etc)