ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED MARCH 1988 IN LIMA NEWSLETTER AN EASY WAY TO MAKE LARGE TI BASIC PROGRAMS WORK ^^^^^^PROPERLY WHEN LOADED AS DISK FILES ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^by Charles Good Some large TI-BASIC programs originally written for cassette are very hard to get to work properly as disk PROGRAM files. This is because the disk system takes up some VDP memory (the 16K RAM memory in the console), and these very large TI-BASIC programs need nearly all the VDP (console) memory when they load from tape. TI-BASIC cannot access the 32K memory expansion. If CALL FILES(1) doesn't work, you are usually out of luck. The large TI-BASIC program either refuses to load from tape when the disk system is turned on, or the program loads from tape, can be saved to disk as a PROGRAM file, but won't work when loaded and RUN from disk because the program runs out of memory as it executes. Examples of such large TI BASIC programs include NAME THAT BONE published by C Regina in 99er Magazine a few years ago (53 sectors), TYPING SYMBOLS a 1981 99er magazine program originally written for the 99/4 (56 sectors), and the DOW-4 GAZELLE flight simulator marketed by James Dow (47 sectors). A few years ago SMART PROGRAMMER published a rather complicated way of using the Mini Memory and its EXPMEM2 file to get such large TI-BASIC programs to work from disk. If you have a Horizon Ramdisk, there is a much easier way. According to an article by Chris Schram in the Dec.^87 issue of Micropendium, Horizon Ramdisks use up only 11 bytes of VDP memory and will work exactly as disk drives even if the console is turned on BEFORE the PE box is turned on. This procedure deactivates the floppy drives and prevents the disk controller from eating up lots of VDP memory. To make large TI-BASIC programs work properly from Horizon Ramdisks, do the following. 1. If you don't already have the large BASIC program saved to disk, hook up your tape recorder, turn on the console FIRST and THEN turn on the PE box. Load your program from tape into TI BASIC (it may be necessary to unplug any modules, since modules eat up VDP memory even if you go to TI BASIC instead of the module) and SAVE it to the Horizon Ramdisk with SAVE DSK3.PROGRAM. 2. Check that your saved PROGRAM works by typing NEW. Then type OLD DSK3.PROGRAM and when the cursor appears type RUN. 3. Power down your system, then power it up in the normal way with the PE box on first and then the console. Use any disk manager to save your PROGRAM to disk for archival storage. 4. Now, every time you want to run the program, put it on your Horizon ramdisk (if it isn't already there) and OLD and RUN it the normal way. Just remember to turn on your console FIRST when you want to run one of these large TI-BASIC programs off the Horizon Ramndisk. This technique is SO EASY compared to loading from tape or using the Smart Programmer's Mini Memory method, and the technique works for large XBASIC programs as well if they list as a PROGRAM in a disk directory. .PL 1