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From: jhs@MITRE-BEDFORD.ARPA
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.8bit
Subject: Re: SpartaDOS and FROST BASIC (800 Turbo BASIC).
Message-ID: <8707310032.AA20443@mitre-bedford.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 30-Jul-87 20:32:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: mitre-be.8707310032.AA20443
Posted: Thu Jul 30 20:32:55 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Aug-87 11:29:28 EDT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
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Re:Owen Alexander's question, I haven't the faintest idea ("Keine Ahnung!",
as the Germans say) whether or not FROST BASIC would be compatible with
SpartaDOS.  It of course does NOT use the RAM under the ROM since there is
no such RAM on an 800.  Also, it DOES boot up and appear to run, although
I certainly haven't exercised all the features, with the standard 800XL
O/S.  You might possibly run afoul of some non standard O/S calls, but
at least a lot of things will work.

If you do run into such problems, using the OMNIVIEW O/S is a possible way
to get compatibility (acts like the Translator Disk).  However, at least
one thing DOES NOT work right with OMNIVIEW, either with FROST BASIC or
with Turbo BASIC XL:  Fractional exponents like 2^.5 crash with "ERROR 11,
OVERFLOW" as the error message.  This does not happen with the Atari O/S.
I never got around to fixing this bug but it should be possible, just a
matter of finding where Turbo BASIC is calling the FP routines illegally
and patching it.

I'd say you have a fighting chance that it will run with SpartaDOS on an
unmodified XL/XE.

-John S.