CHROMA BASIC

written by Matthew Reed

CHROMA BASIC advertisement

CHROMAtrs (with CHROMA BASIC) advertisement from the February 1984 issue of 80 Micro

The CHROMAtrs was a TRS-80 Model I and III add-on that could display color text and graphics on a separate monitor or television. The CHROMAtrs had advanced graphics and sound features, but using those features required low-level programming that was beyond the abilities of many people. That all changed with the introduction of CHROMA BASIC.

CHROMA BASIC was written by Robert French, who was 14 years old at the time. It added over 68 commands to BASIC to manipulate the graphics, sound, and joystick features of the CHROMAtrs. Although originally priced at $30.00, CHROMA BASIC was soon bundled with the CHROMAtrs package and prominently featured in the advertisements.

CHROMA BASIC was offered in both tape and disk versions. The Model I disk version worked with most popular operating systems including TRSDOS, NEWDOS/80, and LDOS. The Model III disk version worked with TRSDOS, NEWDOS/80, LDOS, and DOSPLUS. There were also special versions for 32K disk systems and 16K cassette systems, although the limited memory meant that some of the commands were not available.

The CHROMA BASIC commands fit into several categories:

Graphics commands:

INIT, COLOR, SCREEN, CLR, PLOT, UNPLOT, PAINT, POSITION, TEXT, WRITE, SREAD, DASH, POLYGON, CIRCLE, PIE, STORE, RETRIEVE, DRAW, BLANK, NOBLANK, DUMP, WINDOW

3D commands:

DISPLAY, ROTATE, STRETCH

Sound commands:

SOUND, DUTY, EFFECT, HARMONY, STATIC, SIRENUP, SIRENDOWN, STEREO

Sprite handling commands:

SMALL, LARGE, ZOOM, NOZOOM, CREATE, DEFPAT, UNPAT, ASSIGN, SCOLOR, MOVE, MREL, PLACE, ERASE, VELOC, CLRVELOC, PAUSE, NOPAUSE, LEFT, NORMAL, EXIT, SPRSAVE, SPRLOAD

Miscellaneous functions:

&POINT, &JOYSTK, &PDL, &STRIG, &PTRIG, &SPRX, &SPRY, &SPRC, &SPRP, &UNCREATE, &COINCE, &FIFTH, &XVELOC, &YVELOC

Example

This sample program was listed at the end of the CHROMA BASIC manual. Using only a handful of CHROMA BASIC commands, it displays a pie chart based on values entered.

10 INIT 1: COLOR 15: DIM A(50)
20 CLS: PRINT"PIE CHART": PRINT
30 PRINT"ENTER THE NUMBER OF ITEMS IN EACH GROUP, –1 TERMINATES."
40 PRINT: X=1
50 INPUT A(X): IF A(X) = -1 THEN X= X-1: GOTO 80
60 S = S + A(X)
70 X = X + 1: GOTO 50
80 G = 360/S
90 P = 0
100 FOR Y=1 TO X
120 IF Y = X THEN L = 360 ELSE L = A(Y) * G + P
130 PIE 0,128,96,95,95,P,L: P = L
140 NEXT Y
Categories: Graphics, Software

Comments

stu says:

My friend had one of these and the Basic was great. I remember the UFO game and Logo demo. I thought IBM PC Basic graphics was a big step down.