BASIC A+ was developed by Optimized Systems Software of Cupertino, California, USA, to provide the Atari 8-bit family with an extended BASIC compatible with, but faster than, the simpler ROM-based Atari BASIC.While Atari BASIC came on an 8 KB ROM cartridge, BASIC A+ was delivered on floppy disk and took 15 KB of the computer's RAM, leaving 23 KB available for user programs in a 48 KB Atari 800.