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BSAVE andBLOAD are commands in many varieties of theBASIC programming language. BSAVE copiesRAM to abinary file, and BLOAD copies the contents of the file to RAM.[1] The term "BSAVE image" could mean any of variousraw image formats ofvideo display controllers, or more generally any file containing the raw contents of a section of memory.
Some platforms provided aBRUN command that, after loading the file into memory, would immediately attempt toexecute it asmachine code.
There is no file compression, and therefore these files load very quickly and without much programming when displayed in native mode.
BSAVE files were in general use as a file format when theIBM PC was introduced. It was also in general use on theApple II in the same time period. Although the commands were available on theCommodore PET line, they were removed from the later (and more popular) Commodore 64 and VIC-20 computers. In 1985 theCommodore 128 was released withCommodore BASIC version 6.9 which restored the BSAVE and BLOAD commands.
Some versions of BASIC for home computers in the late 1970s and early 1980s include the commandBSAVE (for "Binary Save") and the complementaryBLOAD ("Binary Load"). Using the BSAVE command, a block of memory at a given address with a specified length can be written to disk as a file.[1] This file can then be reloaded into memory via BLOAD.[2]
Microsoft produced the BASIC interpreters that were bundled with theApple II (1977),Commodore PET (1977), andIBM PC (1981) which included BSAVE and BLOAD.
A BSAVE command is also part ofASCII'sMSX-DOS2 Tools forMSX-DOS version 2.[3]
On theColor Computer's ColorBASIC, those were namedSAVEM andLOADM instead, with the M referring to machine code, showing that the primary intent was to load programs rather than data; the use of the B prefix to refer to binary indicates a broader view of the possible uses of the command. ColorBASIC uses a different format than GWBASIC. LOADM supports multipart content to be loaded in different places in RAM, which some programs do use, even though SAVEM supports only saving one part. The cassette equivalents were calledCLOADM andCSAVEM. In ColorBASIC, theBRUN command is calledEXEC instead.
The BSAVED format is a device-dependentraster image format; the file header sometimes stores information about the display hardware address, and the size of the graphics data. The graphics data follows the header directly and is stored as raw data in the format of the native adapter's addressable memory. No additional information, such as screen resolution,color depth and palette information, bit planes and so on, is stored.
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| Metadata |
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