BBC Micro BASIC ROM User Guide
The BASIC ROM User Guide for the BBC microcomputer and Acorn Electron is a book by Mark D. Plumbley, published by Adder Publishing, PO Box 148, Cambridge, in August 1984 (ISBN 0 947929 04 5). The hosted PDF is the remastered edition by dv8 (2017), second revision, March 2023: a retypeset text with a text layer, not a scan. Its numbered pages keep the original numbering and run to p. 360.
It is not an Acorn publication. It covers BBC BASIC on both the BBC Microcomputer and the Acorn Electron. The introduction notes that all Electrons and later BBC Micros have BASIC 2 and earlier BBC Micros BASIC 1; typing REPORT after a BREAK prints the copyright date, 1981 for BASIC 1 and 1982 for BASIC 2 (p. 6). The 6502 diagrams are reproduced from Rockwell's R650X data sheet with Rockwell's permission.
Contents
[edit | edit source]| Part | Chapters (page) |
|---|---|
| The operation of BASIC | Introduction (5); 1 The 6502 microprocessor (7); 2 The BASIC system (28), including tokenising (37) and program storage (44); 3 Memory use (47); 4 Expression evaluation (63); 5 Program control mechanisms (68); 6 Assembling and disassembling (83) |
| Enhancing BASIC | 7 Adding new commands (98); 8 Overlaying procedures (128); 9 Trapping other errors (143); 10 ROM routines (162), with routine entry points by area to 10.11 Function entry points (262); 11 Errors and error recovery (264) |
| Appendices | A Syntax definition (319); B BASIC ROM summary (327); C 6502 instruction set summary (334); D Keyword summary (336); E Operating system calls and vectors (338); F OSBYTE/*FX call summary (339); G Variable locations (344) |
| End matter | Bibliography (345); Glossary (346); Index (351) |
What it settles
[edit | edit source]The book describes BBC BASIC as a program: the tokenised program format, where variables and the stack are kept, how expressions are evaluated, how each control structure works, and where the ROM's own routines start. Chapter 6 includes a disassembler, and chapter 9 includes a bad-program salvage routine (9.2, p. 147).
What this book does not contain
[edit | edit source]- Any hardware content: no circuit diagram, parts list or fault-finding.
- Operating system detail beyond what BASIC uses. For OS calls, vectors, the VIAs, the video ULA and the interfaces, see BBC Micro Advanced User Guide.
- For calling BASIC's arithmetic and floating-point routines from machine code, see BBC Micro Advanced BASIC ROM User Guide.
Download: BBC_Micro_BASIC_ROM_User_Guide.pdf