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From: bmw@aesat.UUCP (Bruce Walker)
Newsgroups: net.arch
Subject: Interpreters (Was: Re: Addressing modes)
Message-ID: <578@aesat.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 10-Mar-86 10:21:30 EST
Article-I.D.: aesat.578
Posted: Mon Mar 10 10:21:30 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 10-Mar-86 11:04:36 EST
References: <946@garfield.UUCP> <1417@sdcsvax.UUCP> <6777@boring.UUCP> <1989@peora.UUCP> <27@gilbbs.UUCP> <2002@peora.UUCP>
Reply-To: bmw@aesat.UUCP (Bruce Walker)
Organization: AES Data Inc., Mississauga Ont., Canada
Lines: 24

In article <2002@peora.UUCP> jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos) writes:
> ... the particular microprocessor I'm thinking of (I forget the part
> number; it is some Zilog single-chip microcomputer which Steve Ciarcia
> writes a lot of his projects for) does indeed directly execute BASIC.  It
> is true that there is a BASIC interpreter in ROM, but when you start up
> the computer, it executes this interpreter.
>  [...]
> Of course, the Zilog machine has another instruction set in which the
> BASIC interpreter is written.  So there's another level of interpretation
> involved.

The part is called a "Z8671" which is a 2K ROM Z8 with Tom Pittman's
port of Tiny Basic (called "Basic/Debug") permanently burned into it.

You may be interested to know that the Basic interpreter itself is written
in a pseudo-code and is ITSELF INTERPRETED by a little run-time routine
that the Z8 executes upon power-up.  This interpreter is all that Mr.
Pittman has to change in order to get his Basic up on most any micro.


Bruce Walker     {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!aesat!bmw

"I'd feel a lot worse if I wasn't so heavily sedated." -- Spinal Tap