I admit I get sidetracked pretty easily. I was really trying to work on a nice, open-source monitor program for the hd6309. I was chugging away, making a bit of progress. Then, as I was casting about on the intarwebs, I was finally able to access the 6809 homebrew computer pages of Grant Searle. (note: I still have very spotty access to his pages - unreliable server?) Grant has done a wonderful job of taking the Microsoft's CoCo Extended BASIC interpreter and thrifting it down to a console version. Bravo! In a matter of a few hours, I was able to work with Grant's source file, adapt it to assemble with lwtools assembler, and do the relatively minor adaptations for my HD6309 SBC. Fire up the EPROM programmer...

It works great! It brings back a lot of fond memories of working with a relatively naked ROM BASIC machine. In no time at all I had loaded in Hammurabi from the Ahl book (101 BASIC computer games) and my 8-year old son Ryan and I were (mis)managing the mythical city and starving villagers left and right. Fun stuff! That's one goal accomplished, then - a working BASIC interpreter. Again, all the credit goes to Grant Searle - check out his pages, especially his MultiComp reconfigurable computer project. Good stuff!

OK, now, back to a monitor, that can now cohabitate with a fully functioning floating point BASIC interpreter.