Coleco ADAM SmartBASIC tokenized file

From Just Solve the File Format Problem
Jump to: navigation, search
File Format
Name Coleco ADAM SmartBASIC tokenized file
Ontology
Released 1983

The Coleco ADAM was a home computer system of the mid-1980s. It was released when its manufacturer, Coleco (whose name stands for Connecticut Leather Company) had recently made a lot of money selling Cabbage Patch Kids dolls, which were a big craze for a while in the early '80s. Now they were looking to dominate the video game and home computer fields, with the Colecovision game console and a computer that was based on it. The ADAM could be purchased as a standalone computer, or as an expansion unit for an existing Colecovision console to turn it into a computer.

While it acquired a number of fans (some of whom kept supporting the Adam long after its demise; in fact, there are still ADAM conventions even now), its mass market never took off, in part due to some reliability issues in early machines. By 1985, the computer was discontinued and its manufacturer was heading for bankruptcy.

Some quirky aspects of the ADAM included the fact that its printer was an integral part of the computer, required for its operation (the power supply for the computer was contained in the printer), and the storage medium was a slightly-modified cassette which was treated similarly to a disk (using Coleco's EOS file system). (Disk drives were also available, using either the EOS file system or the CP/M file system.)

Reportedly, every time you saved a Coleco BASIC program, the size of each line containing a REM or DATA statement grew by one byte as an extra space was added after the keyword. To keep the program from growing uncontrollably and eventually exceeding memory space, the programmer had to keep manually deleting the extra spaces.

The Adam's BASIC was claimed to be compatible with Applesoft BASIC, which was a bit of an exaggeration; it was an imitation of Applesoft in many ways, but was not 100% compatible with it, especially programs using system-level PEEKs, POKEs, and CALLS (which are commonplace in both Applesoft and Adam BASIC), which were entirely different due to the different system architecture of the Adam vs. the Apple. The token storage also appears to be different.

Tokens

These token values were listed in a user group newsletter from 1986. It is not entirely clear exactly how these were used in the storage of a program.

Hex Dec Token meaning
02 2 GOSUB
03 3 GOTO
04 4 INPUT
05 5 LET
06 6 NEXT
07 7 PRINT
08 8 READ
09 9 REM
0A 10 FOR
0B 11 IF
0C 12 DATA
0D 13 DIM
0E 14 ON
0F 15 ONERR
10 16 STOP
11 17 RETURN
12 18 END
13 19 DEF
14 20 CLEAR
15 21 RESUME
16 22 NEW
17 23 POP
18 24 RUN
19 25 LIST
1A 26 TRACE
1B 27 NOTRACE
1C 28 DEL
1D 29 CALL
1E 30 CONT
1F 31 CLRERR
20 32 GET
21 33 POKE
22 34 RESTORE
23 35 HOME
24 36 DRAW
25 37 XDRAW
26 38 FLASH
27 39 INVERSE
28 40 NORMAL
29 41 TEXT
2A 42 GR
2B 43 HGR
2C 44 HGR2
2D 45 HLIN
2E 46 VLIN
2F 47 HPLOT
30 48 PLOT
31 49 HTAB
32 50 VTAB
33 51 SHLOAD
34 52 RECALL
35 53 STORE
36 54 WAIT
37 55 SPEED
38 56 ROT
39 57 SCALE
3A 58 COLOR
3B 59 HCOLOR
3C 60 IN
3D 61 PR
3E 62 HIMEM
3F 63 LOMEM
40 64 BREAK
41 65 NOBREAK
42 66 &

Links and references

Personal tools
Namespaces

Variants
Actions
Navigation
Toolbox