This manual assumes that the reader has already mastered Level I BASIC as presented in tutorial fashion in the Level I Manual. The Level II Manual is a reference-only manual, not a tutorial. For a tutorial on Level II BASIC, see Programming Techniques for Level II BASIC (1981) by William Barden Jr.

Level II is a far more powerful version of BASIC than Level I. It prepared me well for making the transition to the version of Microsoft BASIC that ran on the IBM XT and after that for the transition to QuickBASIC on IBM PC compatibles.

When the Level II Manual came out, the TRS-80 still loaded its programs from, and saved them to, a tape cassette. By adding an Expansion Interface to the Model I TRS-80, owners could add an additional cassette deck, a TRS-80 line printer, up to four floppy disk drives, and up to 48KB of RAM memory, all of which could be addressed by Level II BASIC and its successor, Disk BASIC on TRSDOS for floppy disks. ( )