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Retrocomputing

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    I think most machines didn’t translate BASIC to assembly; they just interpreted it. Commented Mar 29, 2022 at 22:54
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    The premise is false. BASIC on most micros was not compiled, and therefore there is no 'machine code' (nor 'assembly code') to save. Turning an intepretive system into a compiler system is not a 'small modification;'. Commented Mar 30, 2022 at 2:36
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    If it was possible to intercept and send the machine-code being sent to the CPU, -- Why do that? The "machine code being sent to the CPU" is the code of the BASIC interrpreter, which you already have in the ROM. Commented Mar 30, 2022 at 2:39
  • No, on several levels. It would require that the home computer would in addition to Basic interpreter, also to have a Basic compiler. Commented Mar 30, 2022 at 11:12
  • The line between interpretation and compilation is blurry. For Basic on an 8-bit micro, the native arithmetic (8-bit integer) doesn't match the language's arithmetic (floating point), so machine code would be either impossibly complicated or a series of library function calls with few other instructions. ECD Basic compiled to "threaded code", which was essentially just addresses of operators. A tiny "interpreter" picked these up and branched to them in sequence (more efficient than subroutine linkage). The threaded code was effectively the machine language of a virtual machine. Commented Mar 30, 2022 at 16:37