Background: The naked unextended Microsoft code base was around 9K, not 11K, on the 6502, cf. Commodore BASIC. See Discussion page.
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| The machines that would become the [[Atari 8-bit family]] had originally been developed as a second-generation [[games console]] intended to replace the [[Atari 2600]]. Ray Kassar, the then-new president of Atari, decided to challenge [[Apple Computer]] by building a home computer instead. This meant Atari needed the [[BASIC]] programming language, then the standard language for most home computers. | The machines that would become the [[Atari 8-bit family]] had originally been developed as a second-generation [[games console]] intended to replace the [[Atari 2600]]. Ray Kassar, the then-new president of Atari, decided to challenge [[Apple Computer]] by building a home computer instead. This meant Atari needed the [[BASIC]] programming language, then the standard language for most home computers. | ||
| - | Atari did what many of the other home computer companies did: they purchased the [[source code]] to the [[MOS 6502]] version of [[Microsoft BASIC|Microsoft 8K BASIC]] intending to [[Porting|port]] it to run on their new machines. But the name was something of a misnomer, as the 8K referred to its original size on the [[Intel 8080]]'s [[instruction set]]. On the 6502's inherently less dense instruction set the language was somewhat larger, over 11K. Atari had designed their ROM layout in 8 kB blocks, and paring down the code from 11 to 8 kB turned out to be a significant problem. Adding to the problem was the fact that the 6502 code supplied by Microsoft was undocumented. | + | Atari did what many of the other home computer companies did: they purchased the [[source code]] to the [[MOS 6502]] version of [[Microsoft BASIC|Microsoft 8K BASIC]] intending to [[Porting|port]] it to run on their new machines. But the name was something of a misnomer, as the 8K referred to its original size on the [[Intel 8080]]'s [[instruction set]]. On the 6502's inherently less dense instruction set the language was somewhat larger, around 9K. Additionally, Atari felt that they needed to expand the language somewhat to add better support for the specific hardware features of their computers, similar to what Apple had done with their [[Applesoft BASIC]]. This increased the size again, to around 11K. Atari had designed their ROM layout in 8 kB blocks, and paring down the code from 11 to 8 kB turned out to be a significant problem. Adding to the problem was the fact that the 6502 code supplied by Microsoft was undocumented. |
| Six months later, they were almost ready. But Atari had a deadline with the [[Consumer Electronics Show]] (CES) approaching and decided to ask for help. | Six months later, they were almost ready. But Atari had a deadline with the [[Consumer Electronics Show]] (CES) approaching and decided to ask for help. |