Date   : Thu, 18 Aug 2011 12:04:38 +0100
From   : robert@... (Rob)
Subject: Tube ROM

On 18 August 2011 11:55, Andrew Benham <adsb@...> wrote:
> On 17/08/11 18:07, Rick Murray wrote:
>
>> A question I have is if HiBASIC is present as a BBC Micro EPROM, but it
>> won't work unless it is copied onto the co-processor, why is it not part
>> of the co-processor firmware, and just copied into RAM at startup? It's
>> a bit dumb for the co-pro user guide to suggest it is "best" to start
>> with both BASIC and HiBASIC installed, as well as the Beeb MOS, plus a
>> DNFS for the Tube interface code. That only leaves one ROM slot on a
>> standard Beeb...
>
> My recollection, which may be wrong, was that HiBASIC wasn't supplied on
> a ROM but just as a image on disk.

It was definitely available as a (mask) ROM - I have at least one!  I
use to use HiEdit a lot in the past, too, although I generally did run
that directly off disc/net.

To answer Rick's question, though, one of the whole points of the BBC
Micro architecture was the ability to have different language ROMs
available in the machine - I've come across references to kit that
didn't have BASIC in them at all!  Putting HiBASIC into the
co-processor rather flies against that "total flexibility" argument.
The ROM in the co-processor was, as others have said, was very simple
- just enough to boot up the processor, initialise the tube, and
provide the necessary OS API entry points to pass the system calls
over to the host processor.

(Interesting though just occurred to me - was there anything other
than BBC Micros that acted as a tube /host/ ? )

Rob