[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Steve Lewis via cctalk]

Just for fun, I keyed in and ran the "Ahl Benchmark" on a few
"boots-to-BASIC" systems that I still have setup:

Exploring Project Ahl in 2024 — voidstar


https://voidstar.blog/exploring-project-ahl-in-2024/





On Wed, May 1, 2024 at 5:58 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk 
wrote:

> I remember that one of the changes that "street" BASICs made was to make
> the keyword "LET" be optional.
> Thus, instead of writing
> LET X = 3
> you could write
> X = 3
>
> unfortunately, that further confused the issue of ASSIGNMENT versus
> EQUALITY,
> and many beginners tried to write
> 3 = X
> while they certainly would not have tried to write
> LET 3 = X
>
>
> Sorry, but off the top of my head, I can't recall the many other
> differences.
>
> --
> Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com
>

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Sellam Abraham via cctalk]

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 12:48 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk 
wrote:

> >> Where would you fit the Tandy Model 100 in here? Ultimately it
> >> supported a disk drive, ran basic and also sported an expansion box
> >> that included video support and a floppy.
>
> On Fri, 3 May 2024, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
> > Ultimately, so did the TRS-80.  At least Model I, III and 4.
> > and ethernet, too.  Come to think of it, so does the Color
> > Computer.  Not sure where we are going with this.  :-)
>
> The "Coco" ("Color Computer") was similar to Microsoft Standalone BASIC,
> particularly in its disk format.
>
> The TRS80 models 1, 3, and 4 had file commands in their BASICs.
> They ran under TRS-DOS.
>
>
> The Saga Of TRSDOS:   (long (TLDR?))
> ...

--
> Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com


Great write-up, Fred.

Sellam

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Paul Koning via cctalk]

> On May 3, 2024, at 6:22 PM, Sytse van Slooten via cctalk 
>  wrote:
> 
> And since nobody else seems to, allow me to recall:
> 
> - MINC BASIC, with all its extensions for I/O and real time events.
> 
> - MUBAS, the multi-user basic for RT-11.
> 
> And playing around with BASIC is just so much easier and more fun than 
> anything else you can do with old hardware or emulations thereof. Run a C 
> program? Sure, marvel in how much slower it is than on your desktop, phone, 
> or the MCU in your microwave. None of those will have BASIC though, and 
> certainly not the MINC extensions with the blinkenlights. And isn't that what 
> all the joy is about?

That's one reason I like FORTH: it's just as compact, perhaps more so, fast, 
and much more flexible and extensible than BASIC.

I didn't know MINC BASIC, should compare it with the "LABBASIC" I created in 
college.  The one line description is identical; mine ran on an 11/20 with 
AD01, AD11, KW11-P and DR11-A.  The programmable clock enabled stuff like take 
a vector of samples spaced at a tightly controlled time interval, or run bits 
of BASIC code from timer (or DR11) interrupts. 

paul

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Chuck Guzis via cctalk]

On 5/3/24 17:48, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:

I seem to recall that MCBA's business applications were originally coded
in DG BASIC.

--Chuck

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 7:49 PM Paul Koning via cctalk
 wrote:

> BASIC-PLUS (part of RSTS) had a weird floating point history.  The original 
> version, through RSTS V3, used 3-word floating point: two words mantissa, one 
> word exponent.  Then, presumably to match the 11/45 FPU, in version 4A they 
> switched to your choice of 2 or 4 word float, what later in the VAX era came 
> to be called "F" and "D" float.

Interesting. The original (pre-Series II) HP 3000 systems in the mid
1970s also started with a three (16-bit) word floating point format
and later switched to supporting both 2 and 4 word formats. One of the
only ways you would see this is in the header line that displays when
you run BASIC::

:BASIC

HP32101B.00.26(4WD)  BASIC  (C)HEWLETT-PACKARD CO 1979
>

The "4WD" (as opposed to "3WD") tells you you're on a machine that
uses the four word long floating point.

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Paul Koning via cctalk]

> On May 3, 2024, at 5:31 PM, Sean Conner via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> It was thus said that the Great Steve Lewis via cctalk once stated:
>> Great discussions about BASIC.   I talked about the IBM 5110 flavor of
>> BASIC last year (such as its FORM keyboard for quickly making structured
>> input forms), and recently "re-learned" that it defaults to running with
>> double-precision.  But if you use "RUNS" instead of "RUN" then the same
>> code is run using single-precision (but I haven't verified yet if that
>> translates into an actual runtime speed difference).  I think most of the
>> "street BASICs" used single precision (if they supported floats at all).
>> But speaking of Microsoft BASIC, I think Monte Davidoff is still around
>> and deserves a lot of credit for doing the floating point library in the
>> initial Microsoft BASIC (but it's a bit sad that history has lost the names
>> of individual contributors
> 
>  I think most of the "street BASICs" were written before IEEE-754 (floating
> point standard) was ratified (1985 if I recall).  Microsoft's floating point
> [1] was five bytes long---four bytes for the mantissa, and one byte for the
> exponent, biased by 129.  I did some tests a month ago whereby I tested the
> speed of the Microsoft floating point math on the 6809 (using Color Computer
> BASIC) vs. the Motorola 6839 (floating point ROM implementing IEEE-754), and
> the Microsoft version was faster [2].

BASIC-PLUS (part of RSTS) had a weird floating point history.  The original 
version, through RSTS V3, used 3-word floating point: two words mantissa, one 
word exponent.  Then, presumably to match the 11/45 FPU, in version 4A they 
switched to your choice of 2 or 4 word float, what later in the VAX era came to 
be called "F" and "D" float.

One curious thing about floating point formats of earlier computers is that 
they came with wrinkles not seen either in IEEE nor in DEC float.  As I recall, 
the 360 is really hex float, not binary, with an exponent that gives a power of 
16.  CDC 6600 series mainframes used a floating point format where the mantissa 
is an integer, not a fraction, and negation is done by complementing the entire 
word.

The Electrologica X8 is yet another variation, which apparently came from an 
academic paper of the era: it treats the mantissa as an integer too, like the 
CDC 6600, but with a different normalizationn rule.  THe 6600 does it like most 
others: shift left until all leading zeroes have been eliminated.  (It doesn't 
have a "hidden bit" as DEC did.)  But in the EL-X8, the normalization rule is 
to make the exponent as close to zero as possible without losing bits.  So an 
integer value is normalized to the actual integer with exponent zero.  And 
since there is no "excess n" bias on the exponent, the encoding of an integer 
and of the identical normalized floating point value are in fact the same.

paul

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Sytse van Slooten via cctalk]

And since nobody else seems to, allow me to recall:

- MINC BASIC, with all its extensions for I/O and real time events.

- MUBAS, the multi-user basic for RT-11.

And playing around with BASIC is just so much easier and more fun than anything 
else you can do with old hardware or emulations thereof. Run a C program? Sure, 
marvel in how much slower it is than on your desktop, phone, or the MCU in your 
microwave. None of those will have BASIC though, and certainly not the MINC 
extensions with the blinkenlights. And isn't that what all the joy is about?

Cheers,
Sytse

> On 2 May 2024, at 00:03, Murray McCullough via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> Nostalgia keeps pressing ahead: It was 60 yrs. ago that BASIC came into
> existence. I remember very well writing in Apple Basic and GW Basic later
> on. As a non-compiled OS, an interpreted OS, it was just the right tool for
> a microcomputer with  limited memory. I recall fondly taking code from
> popular magazines and getting them to run. It was thrilling indeed!
> 
> Happy computing,
> 
> Murray 🙂

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Sean Conner via cctalk]

It was thus said that the Great Steve Lewis via cctalk once stated:
> Great discussions about BASIC.   I talked about the IBM 5110 flavor of
> BASIC last year (such as its FORM keyboard for quickly making structured
> input forms), and recently "re-learned" that it defaults to running with
> double-precision.  But if you use "RUNS" instead of "RUN" then the same
> code is run using single-precision (but I haven't verified yet if that
> translates into an actual runtime speed difference).  I think most of the
> "street BASICs" used single precision (if they supported floats at all).
>  But speaking of Microsoft BASIC, I think Monte Davidoff is still around
> and deserves a lot of credit for doing the floating point library in the
> initial Microsoft BASIC (but it's a bit sad that history has lost the names
> of individual contributors

  I think most of the "street BASICs" were written before IEEE-754 (floating
point standard) was ratified (1985 if I recall).  Microsoft's floating point
[1] was five bytes long---four bytes for the mantissa, and one byte for the
exponent, biased by 129.  I did some tests a month ago whereby I tested the
speed of the Microsoft floating point math on the 6809 (using Color Computer
BASIC) vs. the Motorola 6839 (floating point ROM implementing IEEE-754), and
the Microsoft version was faster [2].

  -spc

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Binary_Format

[2] https://boston.conman.org/2024/03/01.1

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Liam Proven via cctalk]

On Fri, 3 May 2024 at 10:58, Gordon Henderson via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> The original Acorn Archimedes (First ARM CPU system) had an OS initially
> called "Arthur" which was written in BBC Basic and assembler. It supported
> a graphical user interface - later re-written in assembler and called
> RISC-OS.

How odd. This is the second time _this evening_ that this false
information has come up.

No, it was not written in BASIC.

Arthur *the OS* was hand-coded in Arm assembly language, including the
BBC BASIC V interpreter.

The GUI, in Arthur called DESKTOP, was written in BASIC. Just the
desktop, nothing else.

Later called the WIMP, and still around today and open source. I wrote
about it: version 5.30 just came out, runs on bare metal on 7
different Arm boards, and on the Raspberry Pi this version supports
Wifi for the first time.

https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/02/rool_530_is_here/


-- 
Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com
Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven
IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884
Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Just Kant via cctalk]

Quick Basic and I seem to recall all or most of M$ Quick compilers were 
released at 99$ US. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. As I think on it maybe QB 
i itially was 150$.

Those were the cheap compilers I was referring to. By 1987/88 the cost was less 
then 1/2 a week's take home earnings no matter what you did. I found QB 3 at a 
computer show in 1990 and it wasn't much at all, maybe 25$.




Sent with Proton Mail secure email.

On Friday, May 3rd, 2024 at 9:40 AM, Peter Corlett via cctalk 
 wrote:

> On Fri, May 03, 2024 at 02:51:06AM +, Just Kant via cctalk wrote:
> 
> > BASICs available at bootup were nice, but really were only useful with 8
> > bit micros. IBM ROM BASIC was hobbled until you ran BASICA from disk. And
> > if you had a floppy it only made sense to buy a cheap compiler (Quick
> > Basic, Turbo Basic, etc.). Whatever you were missing by not dropping
> > 4-500$ for a full product probably wasn't worth the expense.
> 
> 
> A bit of perspective: the equivalent of $400-500 (~£200-250) was a couple of
> weeks salary in the UK at the time. Unless it could be written-off as a
> business expense, the purchase of that "cheap" compiler just wasn't
> happening.

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

Where would you fit the Tandy Model 100 in here?


On Fri, 3 May 2024, Gavin Scott via cctalk wrote:

The Model 100 had a great keyboard, a text editor, and a built-in
modem, and was apparently very popular among journalists who used it
to write and submit stories from the field.
So maybe it saw less use of the built-in BASIC than other machines of the day.


Many people used the BASIC and loved it.

But, there were other built-in "apps", and it was possible to use it 
without using the BASIC.
So, some users used the BASIC, and some did not; those two groups 
apparently didn't associate much with each other :-)


All of the Kyocera based machines (Model 100, NEC8201, and Olivetti M10) 
had text editor, and telcom.

http://oldcomputers.net/kc.html

The Model 100 and the Olivetti M10 also had Address and scheduler
The model 100 had an optional Multiplan spreadsheet ROM, or you could 
write yor own ROMS.


--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Chris Zach via cctalk]

Hardly. The Model 100 basic had a ton of features including modem 
support, date/time, and so forth. Lots of programs and utilities were 
written in the BASIC, and games such as Heartbreaker worked perfectly.


There was also a really amazing compiler that could compile basic 
programs to make them smaller/even faster. I've got it on one of my 
Model 100 floppy disks (which still works, note the belt will turn to 
gunk but it's an easy thing to replace.)


C

On 5/3/2024 3:35 PM, Gavin Scott via cctalk wrote:

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 9:14 AM KenUnix via cctalk  wrote:


Where would you fit the Tandy Model 100 in here?


The Model 100 had a great keyboard, a text editor, and a built-in
modem, and was apparently very popular among journalists who used it
to write and submit stories from the field.

So maybe it saw less use of the built-in BASIC than other machines of the day.

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

Where would you fit the Tandy Model 100 in here? Ultimately it 
supported a disk drive, ran basic and also sported an expansion box 
that included video support and a floppy.


On Fri, 3 May 2024, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:

Ultimately, so did the TRS-80.  At least Model I, III and 4.
and ethernet, too.  Come to think of it, so does the Color
Computer.  Not sure where we are going with this.  :-)


The "Coco" ("Color Computer") was similar to Microsoft Standalone BASIC, 
particularly in its disk format.


The TRS80 models 1, 3, and 4 had file commands in their BASICs.
They ran under TRS-DOS.


The Saga Of TRSDOS:   (long (TLDR?))

TRSDOS was created by Randy Cook as a work for hire.
Although it was marketed as TRSDOS 2.0, Randy Cook never finished it, and 
documentation was inadequately sparse.
When Radio Shack came out with their "expansion interface" and disk 
drives, they gave out TRSDOS 2.0, which barely worked.  Randy Cook 
hurriedly came out with 2.1 , and then left Radio Shack.  Radio 
Shack worked on 2.2


Clifford Ide, under pseudonym "Sam Jones" created an enormous collection 
of patches to TRSDOS, and called it APRDOS.

Apparat marketed it, and changed the name to NEWDOS
 https://computeradsfromthepast.substack.com/p/apparat-newdos80

But, it was a patched version of TRSDOS.
Both Randy Cook and Radio Shack were not amused.
Apparat initially said that everybody who used it also had to buy TRSDOS.
That didn't hold up well.
So, they said that it was changed so much that there was no trace of 
TRSDOS in it. 
That didn't hold up well.
Randy Cook's lawyer (who was also a programmer, and marketed a serial 
communications program) gathered witnesses, and typed BOOT.SYS/RV36 , 
running BOOT.SYS as if it were an executable, using one of the master 
passwords. The screen cleared, and displayed a full screen copyright 
message including "Copyright Randy Cook".


Apparat settled and agreed to rewrite from scratch to create a 
non-infringing version (called "NEWDOS80").  That was actually very 
advantageous, as it made it possible to create a substantially improved 
product.


Meanwhile, Radio Shack was frantically patching TRSDOS 2.2, and came out 
with TRSDOS 2.3

They changed the hidden copyright message from
"Copyright Randy Cook" to 
"Copyright Tandy Corp"


In addition to NEWDOS80, there were several other independents, including 
DOSPLUS.  Most of which added support for double sided drives, and 80 
tracks, and numerous other features not present in TRSDOS.
In fact, when Micropolis started selling disk drives to TRS80 users, they 
included their own completely unrelated OS!


Meanwhile, Randy Cook, no longer affiliated with Radio Shack, started his 
own company (ACS), and worked on further expansion of TRSDOS.  He worked 
on adding in incredible features unheard of in microcomputer operating 
systems.  He called it TRS80-DOS-3.0, but that wouldn't hold up for 
trademark reasons, so he renamed it VTOS 3.0

http://www.trs-80.org/vtos/
Although it was marketed, Randy Cook never finished it, and documentation 
was inadequately sparse (mostly just a list of features)


Scott Adams, (of Adventure Internationsl, NOT Scott Adams of "Dilbert")
cut a deal with Randy Cook to expand it and finish it. That was VTOS 4.0
Although it was marketed, Randy Cook never finished it, and documentation 
was inadequately sparse (mostly just a list of features)


Lobo drives was in the lucrative market of marketing disk drives.  They 
could buy drive, including the Shugart SA400 used by Radio Shack and 
re-sell tham at a substantial profit, and still be WAY cheaper than Radio 
Shack's prices for the same drive mechanism (~$250 Vs $500, although Radio 
Shacks case and power supply had a card extender that made them more 
convenient to install).


Lobo decided to develop and market an expansion interface compatible with 
TRS80 model 1, with double density, and 8 inch drive support!

But, there was a glitch.
Model 1 TRSDOS, using a Western Digital 1771 chip used some strange 
address marks, including different ones for directory sectors than for 
data sectors.  It is rumored that that was unintentional, and due to 
misreading, or misprinting of the 1771 data sheets.


Lobo's expansion interface used a WD 1791 FDC, which could do MFM (double 
density).  BUT, it COULD NOT write some of the address marks used by 
model-1 TRSDOS!


Lobo set up another company, ("LSI" "Logical Systems, Inc"), to create a 
new operating system for it.  They purchased rights to VTOS 4.0, and hired 
all of the best TRS80 assembly language programmers that they could find, 
such as Roy Soltoff, Bill Schroeder, and Tim Mann. Without Randy Cook.
Their all-star team actually FINISHED it!  And wrote a large binder of 
documentation.  LSI called their new operating system LDOS 5.0

https://vtda.org/docs/computing/LSI/LSI_LDOS_51_Model_I_III.pdf

Meanwhile, Radio Shack was coming out with their model 3, which had double 
density.  Their "TRSDOS [for model

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 9:14 AM KenUnix via cctalk  wrote:

> Where would you fit the Tandy Model 100 in here?

The Model 100 had a great keyboard, a text editor, and a built-in
modem, and was apparently very popular among journalists who used it
to write and submit stories from the field.

So maybe it saw less use of the built-in BASIC than other machines of the day.

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

Yes, Microsoft certainly did not invent linked list allocation.

But, the Microsoft implementation of the existing idea happened to be what 
inspired Tim Paterson to do it.




On 5/3/24 11:05, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:


"Remembering his conversation at NCC with Marc McDonald about File Allocation Tables 
in his unfinished, large, and never-released 8-bit MIDAS operating system, Paterson 
decided that the FAT scheme was a better way to handle disk information than the way CP/M 
did it."



On Fri, 3 May 2024, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:

Link-list file allocation was hardly new back then.  CDC had been doing
that since the mid-1960s (cf. SCOPE RBR, RBT, FNT FST, etc.). I suspect
other mainframe operating systems using that scheme may even pre-date that.

One thing that I liked about the CDC approach is that you could use
certain pre-defined file names (INPUT OUTPUT, PUNCH) and they would be
disposed of appropriately at end-of job.   Any other "permanent" files
had to be explicitly attached to the job, giving permissions, passwords,
cycles, etc.

Any temporary files were created just by reference and were deleted at
the end-of-job unless explicitly saved as "permanent" files.

None of this IBM "DD" stuff.

--Chuck

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Chuck Guzis via cctalk]

On 5/3/24 11:05, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:

> "Remembering his conversation at NCC with Marc McDonald about File Allocation 
> Tables in his unfinished, large, and never-released 8-bit MIDAS operating 
> system, Paterson decided that the FAT scheme was a better way to handle disk 
> information than the way CP/M did it." 

Link-list file allocation was hardly new back then.  CDC had been doing
that since the mid-1960s (cf. SCOPE RBR, RBT, FNT FST, etc.). I suspect
other mainframe operating systems using that scheme may even pre-date that.

One thing that I liked about the CDC approach is that you could use
certain pre-defined file names (INPUT OUTPUT, PUNCH) and they would be
disposed of appropriately at end-of job.   Any other "permanent" files
had to be explicitly attached to the job, giving permissions, passwords,
cycles, etc.

Any temporary files were created just by reference and were deleted at
the end-of-job unless explicitly saved as "permanent" files.

None of this IBM "DD" stuff.

--Chuck

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Fri, 3 May 2024, KenUnix via cctalk wrote:

Steve,
Where would you fit the Tandy Model 100 in here? Ultimately it supported 
a disk drive, ran basic and also sported an expansion box that included 
video support and a floppy.

-Ken


The Model 100 BASIC (puportedly the last product that billg had active 
coding participation in) was, indeed, closely tied to the Microsoft 
Standalone BASIC.


The external 3.5" "Tandy Portable Disk Drive" was a unique system, that 
used ordinary 2DD 3.5" floppies, but had a bizarre format, unlike anything 
else. It is even WAY more different than the 600RPM full-height Sony 
drives.  Although it would be possible, with a system supporting 
FM/single-density to write code to read those disks, with their half-track 
FM sectors, you would be far better off to connect that drive to a serial 
port and use its internal circuitry (there have existed short programs to 
talk to it).


But, the video and floppy external expansion box for the Model 100 uses 
Microsoft Standalone BASIC MFM format and directory structure on 5.25" 
floppies.


--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Fri, 3 May 2024, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote:

Microsoft BASIC appears on the 1979 NEC PC-8001, which includes disk drive
support (similar to the later additions to Commodore BASIC also around
1980).  But in the NEC PC-8001 manual about BASIC, it refers to a "FAT"
format used on disks.  So I suspect Microsoft's early work in adding disk
drive support into BASIC did help them in maintaining that format when
packaging up QDOS later.


Marc McDonald, Microsoft's first SALARIED employee, designed and 
implemented 8-bit FAT for the NCR 8200 and Micorsoft Standalone Disk 
BASIC-80 in 1977.


Numerous "authoritative" sources, including Microsoft's "MS-DOS 
Encyclopedia" (ISBN 1-55615-049-0), as well as Manes' "Gates : How 
Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry and Made Himself the Richest Man 
in America" (ISBN 0-385-42075-7) explicitly state that it was the 
idea/inspiration for Tim Paterson's (author of QDOS, MS-DOS, ...) use of 
FAT, while sharing a booth with Microsoft at NCC (trade show) Chicago 
1977.


"Remembering his conversation at NCC with Marc McDonald about File 
Allocation Tables in his unfinished, large, and never-released 8-bit MIDAS 
operating system, Paterson decided that the FAT scheme was a better way to 
handle disk information than the way CP/M did it."


The MS-DOS Encyclopedia says that it was an implementation on NCR.
I've never seen the NCR implementation, but the NEC PC8001[A] and 
PC8801 were quite common.  20 years ago, Sellam and I helped Don Maslin 
decipher such a disk from an NEC9801 8" disk.  And Lee brought me an 
Okidata standalone BASIC disk from Russia.



The Coco uses the same basic disk directory structure, with a few minor 
differences (including calling it a "GAT" ("Granule Allocation Table") 
instead of a FAT.


The external 5.25" disk drive for the Radio Shack Model 100 also uses the 
same directory structure.



In the various instances of the Standalone BASIC, there are variations in 
the details of the size and exact form of the directory entries and the 
size and number of FAT entries.  They put the directory, both FAT and file 
name based entries, on a track near the seek center of the disk.


--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Steve Lewis via cctalk]

>  ROM BASICs outlived their usefulness very quickly.
> Certainly a very subjective statement.

I was thinking the other day, that I wish the startup BIOS of modern
systems had BASIC - such as in a modern i7 based laptop.   At the very
least, with all the trig functions, it's as useful as any graphing
calculator, or time features make it useful as a clock or stopwatch.

In the variants that had PEEK/POKE, then BASIC essentially becomes as
useful as an assembler (since you can place the opcodes into DATA
statements and POKE and SYS them anywhere into memory).  It took me awhile
to realize why original variants of BASIC didn't have PEEK/POKE:  they were
probably timeshare systems, and so arbitrary access to write to system
memory would be taboo in those environments.  But in a single-user micros,
that address space is all yours.

Even if your main storage components are kaput, boot up BASIC still allows
the system to be useful.   Most variants will have keywords or features to
make use of serial IO, so you could pipe in a larger program through that
(or do a simple terminal program).  For sure BASIC has its limitations, but
I appreciate how it can function with extremely limited resources (and as a
somewhat intuitive interface to programmatically access other system calls).


-Steve



On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 8:59 AM Sellam Abraham via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:

> On Thu, May 2, 2024, 7:58 PM Just Kant via cctalk 
> wrote:
>
> >
> >  ROM BASICs outlived their usefulness very quickly.
>
>
> Certainly a very subjective statement.
>
> Sellam
>

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Bill Gunshannon via cctalk]

On 5/3/2024 10:13 AM, KenUnix via cctalk wrote:

Steve,

Where would you fit the Tandy Model 100 in here? Ultimately it supported a
disk drive,
ran basic and also sported an expansion box that included video support and
a floppy.



Ultimately, so did the TRS-80.  At least Model I, III and 4.
and ethernet, too.  Come to think of it, so does the Color
Computer.  Not sure where we are going with this.  :-)

bill

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[KenUnix via cctalk]

Steve,

Where would you fit the Tandy Model 100 in here? Ultimately it supported a
disk drive,
ran basic and also sported an expansion box that included video support and
a floppy.

-Ken

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 4:18 AM Steve Lewis via cctalk 
wrote:

> Great discussions about BASIC.   I talked about the IBM 5110 flavor of
> BASIC last year (such as its FORM keyboard for quickly making structured
> input forms), and recently "re-learned" that it defaults to running with
> double-precision.  But if you use "RUNS" instead of "RUN" then the same
> code is run using single-precision (but I haven't verified yet if that
> translates into an actual runtime speed difference).  I think most of the
> "street BASICs" used single precision (if they supported floats at all).
>  But speaking of Microsoft BASIC, I think Monte Davidoff is still around
> and deserves a lot of credit for doing the floating point library in the
> initial Microsoft BASIC (but it's a bit sad that history has lost the names
> of individual contributors
>
> But what I mostly wanted to mention is that on the Commander X16 project,
> one special thing we now have in its System ROM is a program called
> BASLOAD.  Unfortunately we couldn't come up with a cooler name -- it's not
> a native compiler, like Blitz.  I'm not sure what you'd categorize BASLOAD
> as, a pre-parser of sorts?  By license, we were stuck with the Commodore V2
> BASIC (that was derived from Microsoft BASIC, with the story being that
> Gates wasn't so interested in a 6502 port of Microsoft BASIC, and just sold
> BASIC source code to Commodore for a flat one time fee rather than a
> license).   One of the main limitations of that V2 BASIC is the two-letter
> variable names.
>
> BASLOAD gives you a feel of being similar to QuickBASIC - in that you can
> do regular "BASIC things" without using line numbers.  You can have long
> variable names (like THE.SOLUTION) and you can use symbol labels in
> GOTO/GOSUB (GOTO PROCESS.MORE.DATA, where "." is used since standard
> PETSCII doesn't have an underscore).  All BASLOAD does is "convert" your
> BASIC-source text file into a tokenized Commodore V2 BASIC input file.
> Your long variables get "auto assigned" into available two-letter BASIC
> variables, and it just keeps track of the line number targets of your
> symbolic labels.  Stefan Jakonson did the actual development of BASLOAD,
> including making it "ROM-able" so that it is always available.
>
> Anyhow, BASLOAD has been a "game changer" to me - in that it would have
> been great to have something like it back in the 80's.  Not being
> constrained by the two-letter variable, and using symbolic label
> difference, while not dealing with line numbers at all (plus things like
> similar to a #include to import other BASLOAD source files).
>
>
> Couple more BASIC related comments:
>
> (1)
> There was talk regarding BASIC as an operating system.  While not fancy, I
> actually do think in a way it counts as an operating system.  Fundamentally
> as a parser, BASIC is "just" stream in an input, and some output is
> produced when you RUN.  But to get that point, you need a kind of
> "operating environment" wrapper around BASIC.   In the very early days,
> that was the line printer.  But then CRTs started to become affordable
> around 1970.  Adapting that capability with a text-generator and a console
> - you have things like the blinking cursor (between each blink, things like
> time/clock interrupts, joystick polling), and the text-screen itself is
> your editor (as a gateway to manipulate your program, one screen at a time
> with no scrollback buffer).   And similar to the line-printer days, when
> you press CR (carriage return) the content on the current line is tokenized
> and stored in memory  (sort of - again on the IBM 5100 it will parse-check
> upfront and won't let you ENTER/CR a syntactically invalid BASIC line; it
> shows this arrow on what column the error is which has to be corrected
> before the line can be committed into memory -- most "street BASIC" seem
> more forgiving about that, probably just to conserve ROM space and fit in
> under 8KB).  And the BASIC manages access to hardware like printer, serial
> port, and some file handles.
>
>
> (2)
> Microsoft BASIC appears on the 1979 NEC PC-8001, which includes disk drive
> support (similar to the later additions to Commodore BASIC also around
> 1980).  But in the NEC PC-8001 manual about BASIC, it refers to a "FAT"
> format used on disks.  So I suspect Microsoft's early work in adding disk
> drive support into BASIC did help them in maintaining that format when
> packaging up QDOS later.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, May 2, 2024 at 10:38 PM CAREY SCHUG via cctalk <
> cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> > compiled basics too longer to run and debug because of the compile time.
> >
> > Anything I did was limited to floppy disk, or later even hard disk speed,
> > the greater speed from compiling could not be noticed.
> >
> > --Carey
> >

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Sellam Abraham via cctalk]

On Thu, May 2, 2024, 7:58 PM Just Kant via cctalk 
wrote:

>
>  ROM BASICs outlived their usefulness very quickly.


Certainly a very subjective statement.

Sellam

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Sellam Abraham via cctalk]

On Thu, May 2, 2024, 1:33 PM Gordon Henderson via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:

>
> I'm still fond of BASIC (or Basic, whatever).


Since it's an acronym it should be written as BASIC (or I guess B.A.S.I.C.).

Sellam

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Peter Corlett via cctalk]

On Fri, May 03, 2024 at 02:51:06AM +, Just Kant via cctalk wrote:
> BASICs available at bootup were nice, but really were only useful with 8
> bit micros. IBM ROM BASIC was hobbled until you ran BASICA from disk. And
> if you had a floppy it only made sense to buy a cheap compiler (Quick
> Basic, Turbo Basic, etc.). Whatever you were missing by not dropping
> 4-500$ for a full product probably wasn't worth the expense.

A bit of perspective: the equivalent of $400-500 (~£200-250) was a couple of
weeks salary in the UK at the time. Unless it could be written-off as a
business expense, the purchase of that "cheap" compiler just wasn't
happening.

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Gordon Henderson via cctalk]

On Fri, 3 May 2024, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote:


There was talk regarding BASIC as an operating system.


Basic as an Operating System vs. An Operating system written in Basic?

The original Acorn Archimedes (First ARM CPU system) had an OS initially 
called "Arthur" which was written in BBC Basic and assembler. It supported 
a graphical user interface - later re-written in assembler and called 
RISC-OS.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_RISC_OS#Arthur

-Gordon

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Bill Duncan via cctalk]

I still have Microsoft's first product somewhere, in my garage I think.
4K and 8K BASIC on Paper tape.

Alas, no paper tape reader anymore..

On Thu, May 02, 2024 at 01:30:33PM -0500, Mike Katz via cctalk wrote:
> Microsoft loves to take languages developed by others and transmogrify them
> into the "Microsoft Universe".
> 
> Quick Basic, Visual Java, Visual Basic, Visual C# (barely resembles C) and
> the worst offender of all Visual C++ .NET.
> 
> Your post reminded me that Postscript is an actual programming language as
> well.
> 
> 
> 
> On 5/2/2024 11:24 AM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
> > I'll add a postscript with my reaction upon seeing my first Microsoft
> > Visual BASIC program code:
> > 
> > "What the hell is this?  It's not BASIC!"
> > 
> > --Chuck
> > 
> 

-- 
Bill Duncan, | http://billduncan.org/
bdun...@beachnet.org | - linux/unix/network/cloud
+1 416 697-9315  | - performance engineering, SRE

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Steve Lewis via cctalk]

Great discussions about BASIC.   I talked about the IBM 5110 flavor of
BASIC last year (such as its FORM keyboard for quickly making structured
input forms), and recently "re-learned" that it defaults to running with
double-precision.  But if you use "RUNS" instead of "RUN" then the same
code is run using single-precision (but I haven't verified yet if that
translates into an actual runtime speed difference).  I think most of the
"street BASICs" used single precision (if they supported floats at all).
 But speaking of Microsoft BASIC, I think Monte Davidoff is still around
and deserves a lot of credit for doing the floating point library in the
initial Microsoft BASIC (but it's a bit sad that history has lost the names
of individual contributors

But what I mostly wanted to mention is that on the Commander X16 project,
one special thing we now have in its System ROM is a program called
BASLOAD.  Unfortunately we couldn't come up with a cooler name -- it's not
a native compiler, like Blitz.  I'm not sure what you'd categorize BASLOAD
as, a pre-parser of sorts?  By license, we were stuck with the Commodore V2
BASIC (that was derived from Microsoft BASIC, with the story being that
Gates wasn't so interested in a 6502 port of Microsoft BASIC, and just sold
BASIC source code to Commodore for a flat one time fee rather than a
license).   One of the main limitations of that V2 BASIC is the two-letter
variable names.

BASLOAD gives you a feel of being similar to QuickBASIC - in that you can
do regular "BASIC things" without using line numbers.  You can have long
variable names (like THE.SOLUTION) and you can use symbol labels in
GOTO/GOSUB (GOTO PROCESS.MORE.DATA, where "." is used since standard
PETSCII doesn't have an underscore).  All BASLOAD does is "convert" your
BASIC-source text file into a tokenized Commodore V2 BASIC input file.
Your long variables get "auto assigned" into available two-letter BASIC
variables, and it just keeps track of the line number targets of your
symbolic labels.  Stefan Jakonson did the actual development of BASLOAD,
including making it "ROM-able" so that it is always available.

Anyhow, BASLOAD has been a "game changer" to me - in that it would have
been great to have something like it back in the 80's.  Not being
constrained by the two-letter variable, and using symbolic label
difference, while not dealing with line numbers at all (plus things like
similar to a #include to import other BASLOAD source files).


Couple more BASIC related comments:

(1)
There was talk regarding BASIC as an operating system.  While not fancy, I
actually do think in a way it counts as an operating system.  Fundamentally
as a parser, BASIC is "just" stream in an input, and some output is
produced when you RUN.  But to get that point, you need a kind of
"operating environment" wrapper around BASIC.   In the very early days,
that was the line printer.  But then CRTs started to become affordable
around 1970.  Adapting that capability with a text-generator and a console
- you have things like the blinking cursor (between each blink, things like
time/clock interrupts, joystick polling), and the text-screen itself is
your editor (as a gateway to manipulate your program, one screen at a time
with no scrollback buffer).   And similar to the line-printer days, when
you press CR (carriage return) the content on the current line is tokenized
and stored in memory  (sort of - again on the IBM 5100 it will parse-check
upfront and won't let you ENTER/CR a syntactically invalid BASIC line; it
shows this arrow on what column the error is which has to be corrected
before the line can be committed into memory -- most "street BASIC" seem
more forgiving about that, probably just to conserve ROM space and fit in
under 8KB).  And the BASIC manages access to hardware like printer, serial
port, and some file handles.


(2)
Microsoft BASIC appears on the 1979 NEC PC-8001, which includes disk drive
support (similar to the later additions to Commodore BASIC also around
1980).  But in the NEC PC-8001 manual about BASIC, it refers to a "FAT"
format used on disks.  So I suspect Microsoft's early work in adding disk
drive support into BASIC did help them in maintaining that format when
packaging up QDOS later.










On Thu, May 2, 2024 at 10:38 PM CAREY SCHUG via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:

> compiled basics too longer to run and debug because of the compile time.
>
> Anything I did was limited to floppy disk, or later even hard disk speed,
> the greater speed from compiling could not be noticed.
>
> --Carey
>
> > On 05/02/2024 9:51 PM CDT Just Kant via cctalk 
> wrote:
> >
> >
> > BASICs available at bootup were nice, but really were only useful with 8
> bit micros. IBM ROM BASIC was hobbled until you ran BASICA from disk. And
> if you had a floppy it only made sense to buy a cheap compiler (Quick
> Basic, Turbo Basic, etc.). Whatever you were missing by not dropping 4-500$
> for a full product probably wasn't worth t

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[CAREY SCHUG via cctalk]

compiled basics too longer to run and debug because of the compile time.

Anything I did was limited to floppy disk, or later even hard disk speed, the 
greater speed from compiling could not be noticed.

--Carey

> On 05/02/2024 9:51 PM CDT Just Kant via cctalk  wrote:
> 
>  
> BASICs available at bootup were nice, but really were only useful with 8 bit 
> micros. IBM ROM BASIC was hobbled until you ran BASICA from disk. And if you 
> had a floppy it only made sense to buy a cheap compiler (Quick Basic, Turbo 
> Basic, etc.). Whatever you were missing by not dropping 4-500$ for a full 
> product probably wasn't worth the expense.
> 
>  ROM BASICs outlived their usefulness very quickly. Compiled Basic was an 
> entrance into real world development. It wasn't a tool you could do 
> everything with. But how many programmers sitting at home were creating apps 
> that were even 64k in size. Compiled Basic was the schnitzel. There are also 
> several 32/64 bit versions available for free. Carry on.

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Just Kant via cctalk]

BASICs available at bootup were nice, but really were only useful with 8 bit 
micros. IBM ROM BASIC was hobbled until you ran BASICA from disk. And if you 
had a floppy it only made sense to buy a cheap compiler (Quick Basic, Turbo 
Basic, etc.). Whatever you were missing by not dropping 4-500$ for a full 
product probably wasn't worth the expense.

 ROM BASICs outlived their usefulness very quickly. Compiled Basic was an 
entrance into real world development. It wasn't a tool you could do everything 
with. But how many programmers sitting at home were creating apps that were 
even 64k in size. Compiled Basic was the schnitzel. There are also several 
32/64 bit versions available for free. Carry on.

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Chuck Guzis via cctalk]

On 5/2/24 13:59, Gavin Scott via cctalk wrote:
> There's also Geoff Graham's BASIC for the Pi Pico.
> 
> https://geoffg.net/picomite.html

Then there's the 8042 MCU-embedded BASIC, the BASIC stamp, etc.

I have a little MicroPy board here that's fun to play with.

--Chuck

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Chuck Guzis via cctalk]

Thinking back over the last couple of months, I realize that most of my
recent programming has been in Linux Bash scripts.

--Chuck

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

There's also Geoff Graham's BASIC for the Pi Pico.

https://geoffg.net/picomite.html

On Thu, May 2, 2024 at 3:32 PM Paul Koning via cctalk
 wrote:
>
>
>
> > On May 2, 2024, at 4:23 PM, Gordon Henderson via cctalk 
> >  wrote:
> >
> > ...
> > I'm told Lua is the new Basic or Python is the new Basic, but the best 
> > thing for me about Basic on the old micros was being able to turn the 
> > computer on and type Basic into it immediately And to that end, I 
> > decided to re-target my C Basic it to a bare metal framework for the 
> > Raspberry Pi I'd been working on - boots to Basic in... well, it's not as 
> > quick as an Apple II or BBC Micro, but under 2 seconds. It's a bit faster 
> > on a Pi Zero as there's no USB to initialise...
>
> That's why I've been playing with FORTH on my Raspberry Pico microcontrollers 
> (Travis Bemann's "Zeptoforth" dialect, to be precise).  It's nice and 
> compact, and it boots in milliseconds.  Multicore, multitasking, lots of 
> library modules... nice.
>
> paul
>
>

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Paul Koning via cctalk]

> On May 2, 2024, at 4:23 PM, Gordon Henderson via cctalk 
>  wrote:
> 
> ...
> I'm told Lua is the new Basic or Python is the new Basic, but the best thing 
> for me about Basic on the old micros was being able to turn the computer on 
> and type Basic into it immediately And to that end, I decided to 
> re-target my C Basic it to a bare metal framework for the Raspberry Pi I'd 
> been working on - boots to Basic in... well, it's not as quick as an Apple II 
> or BBC Micro, but under 2 seconds. It's a bit faster on a Pi Zero as there's 
> no USB to initialise... 

That's why I've been playing with FORTH on my Raspberry Pico microcontrollers 
(Travis Bemann's "Zeptoforth" dialect, to be precise).  It's nice and compact, 
and it boots in milliseconds.  Multicore, multitasking, lots of library 
modules... nice.

paul

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Gordon Henderson via cctalk]

On Wed, 1 May 2024, Mike Katz via cctalk wrote:


Let's hear your earliest introduction to BASIC.


The first computer I used ran BASIC - HP9830A. I was at school in 
Edinburgh in '77/'78. I was 15/16 at the time.


The "stupid computer" beat me at "NIM" then the teacher showed me the 
listing - "Oh, that looks easy" followed by "How hard can it be" ...


Ah well. Seems a long time ago now.

Dial-up + TTY-33 to the local computing center after that then very soon 
Apple II.


I'm still fond of BASIC (or Basic, whatever). Some 15 years back now I 
decided I'd write my own "ideal" Basic - line numbers optional, named 
procedures and functions with local variables - sort of in-line with the 
last "micro" Basic I used on the BBC Micro (c1981) but with full graphics 
commands, turtle graphics and more. That's all in C (Under Linux) and I 
even did some real work with it for some geolocation analysis and even 
sold a license to it to a company who were developing a Basic computer for 
educational use. (didn't quite make me a "Bill Gates" though!)


And just last year I wrote a fairly traditional "Tiny" Basic that lives in 
under 4KB of ROM on the 6502... Because why not.


I'm told Lua is the new Basic or Python is the new Basic, but the best 
thing for me about Basic on the old micros was being able to turn the 
computer on and type Basic into it immediately And to that end, I 
decided to re-target my C Basic it to a bare metal framework for the 
Raspberry Pi I'd been working on - boots to Basic in... well, it's not as 
quick as an Apple II or BBC Micro, but under 2 seconds. It's a bit faster 
on a Pi Zero as there's no USB to initialise... Still better than booting 
Linux (or MS Win, whatever), logging in, launching the "IDE", 


Cheers,

-Gordon

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Paul Koning via cctalk]

> On May 2, 2024, at 2:30 PM, Mike Katz via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> Microsoft loves to take languages developed by others and transmogrify them 
> into the "Microsoft Universe".
> 
> Quick Basic, Visual Java, Visual Basic, Visual C# (barely resembles C) and 
> the worst offender of all Visual C++ .NET.
> 
> Your post reminded me that Postscript is an actual programming language as 
> well.

It sure is.  My favorite fractal curve, the "Tree of Pythagoras" has been my 
sample graphics exercise for any number of systems with graphics I/O.  The 
PostScript version I have is only a few dozen lines long, a simple recursive 
program.  A trickier version is my original one, in FORTRAN II (no recursion).

paul

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Mike Katz via cctalk]

Microsoft loves to take languages developed by others and transmogrify 
them into the "Microsoft Universe".


Quick Basic, Visual Java, Visual Basic, Visual C# (barely resembles C) 
and the worst offender of all Visual C++ .NET.


Your post reminded me that Postscript is an actual programming language 
as well.




On 5/2/2024 11:24 AM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:

I'll add a postscript with my reaction upon seeing my first Microsoft
Visual BASIC program code:

"What the hell is this?  It's not BASIC!"

--Chuck

[cctalk] Re: BASIC and other languraes

[r.stricklin via cctalk]

> On May 1, 2024, at 11:03 PM, CAREY SCHUG via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> I very much miss CMS PIPELINES which was ported to MVS, but afaik never 
> beyond IBM mainframes.
> 

CMS PIPELINES was a mainframe implementation of a “standard" UNIX facility 
(with some small extensions, e.g. multiplexed pipelines). They are about 85% 
congruent.

ok
bear.

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Chuck Guzis via cctalk]

I'll add a postscript with my reaction upon seeing my first Microsoft
Visual BASIC program code:

"What the hell is this?  It's not BASIC!"

--Chuck

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Jon Elson via cctalk]

On 5/1/24 18:43, Norman Jaffe via cctalk wrote:

APL is very much alive - it was invented in the '60s.
Lisp is slightly older and it, as well, is still in active use - and it's older 
than FORTRAN, which was the inspiration for BASIC.


Lisp is VERY VERY much alive, but rarely seen.  The emacs 
editor on unix-related systems, (and several other editors 
on Linux hide emacs from you, but it is the editing engine 
down underneath.)  AI geeks use Lisp for a variety of things.


Jon

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Carlos E Murillo-Sanchez via cctalk]

Gavin Scott via cctalk wrote:

BASIC was always a popular language in the Hewlett-Packard world. From
the HP 2000 timesharing BASIC that was popular in educational settings
similar to the original DTSS, To BASIC/3000 on the HP 3000 which was a
first-class language with both interpreter and compiler (producing
very fast code), to the HP 250/260 which used BASIC as their primary
development language, Rocky Mountain BASIC in the technical world, the
Series 80 microcomputers, HP Business Basic again on the 3000 which
was probably largest and most complex language system ever created for
the Classic 16-bit 3000 systems and which was intended to be both a
migration path for 250/260 applications to MPE and to be a new
standard Basic across multiple HP platforms.


I first got acquainted with computers in 1978-79 while in 8th grade, 
precisely on an HP3000 with BASIC. I was hooked.


Carlos.

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Chuck Guzis via cctalk]

On 5/1/24 23:00, CAREY SCHUG via cctalk wrote:
> I recall IITRAN for the IBM 7044, and am i correct that there was an IITRAN 
> for the Univac 1108, which was significantly different?

I believe that IITRAN was moved from the 7040 to a 360/40 for a few
years, then to an Univac 1108.  All architectures very different from
one another.  I believe that the S/360 ran DOS/360 with the IITRAN
running in a foreground partition.  Ron Hochsprung, if he's still
around, may recall more accurately.

--Chuck

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Paul Koning via cctalk]

> On May 1, 2024, at 6:44 PM, Wayne S via cctalk  wrote:
> 
> IMHO, “C” nomenclature really screwed up the equality vs assignment 
> statements.  The == made it difficult to understand especially if you came 
> from a language that didn’t have it. Basically all languages before “C”.

Well, sort of.  Some languages confused the two by using the same token -- 
BASIC is a notorious example.  ALGOL, FORTRAN, C, APL, POP-2 all solve the 
problem by using two different tokens; the only question is which of the two 
functions is marked by the "=" token.  In ALGOL , APL, and I think POP-2 it's 
equality,  in FORTRAN and C it's assignment.  Either works but you have to 
remember which it is; if you use languages of each kind then you may get 
confused at times.  :-(

paul

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Paul Koning via cctalk]

> On May 1, 2024, at 6:26 PM, Mike Katz via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> The Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC)
> 
> Developed by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College in 1963. 
>  This ran on the Dartmouth Time Sharing System (DTSS) which was an early time 
> sharing system running on Honeywell and GE Main Frames with Datanet systems 
> running the terminal interfaces.
> 
> This system was intended to be an online code/run/debug cycle system rather 
> than a batch processing system like most Cobol and Fortran compilers were.
> 
> BASIC was actually their third language attempt to simplify the syntax of 
> languages like Fortran and Algol.
> 
> There are literally 100's of dialects of BASIC, both as compilers (as was the 
> original) and interpreters and even pseudo compilers.
> 
> Like many of us older members of this thread, some form of BASIC was our 
> "computer milk language" (our first computer language).
> 
> Some early microcomputers even wrote their operating systems in some form of 
> BASIC.
> 
> I learned basic in September of 1972 on a 4K PDP-8/L running EduSystem 10 
> Basic with time also spent at the Kiewit Computation Center at Dartmouth (as 
> a 12 year old) running Dartmouth Basic.
> 
> Let's hear your earliest introduction to BASIC.

BASIC was my fourth language, after ALGOL-60, FORTRAN-II, and Philips PR8000 
assembler.  The first version I met was BASIC-PLUS, on RSTS-11.  That's a 
compiler (to threaded code, like P-code, not to machine code).  Soon after that 
I worked on RT-11 BASIC, which is an interpreter, and modified it to be a lab 
machine control system with interrupts and analog and digital I/O.

Someone commented on "what if the first PCs had run APL".  Shortly after 
reading the famous "Tablet" paper (Stephen Wolfram and his students at U of 
Illinois) I played a bit with that notion: a tablet computer supporting APL so 
you could program quickly because it requires so few characters per unit of 
work.  The crucial miss in that concept is that PCs are not sold (primarily) to 
programmers but to application users, and for that an APL-focused machine is no 
advantage.

paul

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Adrian Godwin via cctalk]

I learnt to program at uni on prompt-48, an 8048 development system.
Hand-coded assembly, entered in hex and saved to EPROM. Later I moved to
z80 with an assembler hosted on a pdp 11/34. Later still I had to do a
customer project specified to be written in BASIC on an apple II (no square
brackets on this phone keyboard!). I learned much respect for people who
had to code in that crummy inflexible language :). Briefly learned some
pascal then with much relief discovered C. Not really found anything better
for the things I like to work on.

On Thu, 2 May 2024, 07:08 CAREY SCHUG via cctalk, 
wrote:

> I recall IITRAN for the IBM 7044, and am i correct that there was an
> IITRAN for the Univac 1108, which was significantly different?
>
> --Carey
>
> > On 05/01/2024 6:37 PM CDT Sellam Abraham via cctalk <
> cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Wed, May 1, 2024 at 4:36 PM Chuck Guzis via cctalk <
> cctalk@classiccmp.org>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > To be sure, BASIC was hardly unique in terms of the 1960s interactive
> > > programming languages.  We had JOSS, PILOT, IITRAN and a host of
> others,
> > > based on FORTRAN-ish syntax. not to forget APL, which was a thing
> apart.
> > >
> > > --Chuck
> > >
> >
> > And where are all those other languages today?
> >
> > I rest my case.
> >
> > ;)
> >
> > Sellam
>

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Harald Arnesen via cctalk]

Gavin Scott via cctalk [02/05/2024 05.44]:


BASIC was always a popular language in the Hewlett-Packard world. From
the HP 2000 timesharing BASIC that was popular in educational settings
similar to the original DTSS, To BASIC/3000 on the HP 3000 which was a
first-class language with both interpreter and compiler (producing
very fast code), to the HP 250/260 which used BASIC as their primary
development language, Rocky Mountain BASIC in the technical world, the
Series 80 microcomputers, HP Business Basic again on the 3000 which
was probably largest and most complex language system ever created for
the Classic 16-bit 3000 systems and which was intended to be both a
migration path for 250/260 applications to MPE and to be a new
standard Basic across multiple HP platforms.


I learned programming in BASIC/3000 in the early 80s. The biggest 
problem with that language was that you could only have short variable 
names (1 letter + one digit, if I remember right).


I and two other students wrote kind of an inventory management system 
for a Norwegian company as a project in class. Oh, the fun of 
remembering what the variable names were in a program of some thousand 
lines...


I actually preferred the BASIC on my Commodore 64, especially when I got 
the Simons' BASIC cartridge.

--
Hilsen Harald

[cctalk] Re: BASIC and other languraes

[CAREY SCHUG via cctalk]

I very much miss CMS PIPELINES which was ported to MVS, but afaik never beyond 
IBM mainframes.

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[CAREY SCHUG via cctalk]

I recall IITRAN for the IBM 7044, and am i correct that there was an IITRAN for 
the Univac 1108, which was significantly different?

--Carey

> On 05/01/2024 6:37 PM CDT Sellam Abraham via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
>  
> On Wed, May 1, 2024 at 4:36 PM Chuck Guzis via cctalk 
> wrote:
> 
> > To be sure, BASIC was hardly unique in terms of the 1960s interactive
> > programming languages.  We had JOSS, PILOT, IITRAN and a host of others,
> > based on FORTRAN-ish syntax. not to forget APL, which was a thing apart.
> >
> > --Chuck
> >
> 
> And where are all those other languages today?
> 
> I rest my case.
> 
> ;)
> 
> Sellam

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[ED SHARPE via cctalk]

Then there  was Phantasm for basic  Gavin wrote!

Sent from AOL on Android 
 
  On Wed, May 1, 2024 at 8:44 PM, Gavin Scott via cctalk 
wrote:   BASIC was always a popular language in the Hewlett-Packard world. From
the HP 2000 timesharing BASIC that was popular in educational settings
similar to the original DTSS, To BASIC/3000 on the HP 3000 which was a
first-class language with both interpreter and compiler (producing
very fast code), to the HP 250/260 which used BASIC as their primary
development language, Rocky Mountain BASIC in the technical world, the
Series 80 microcomputers, HP Business Basic again on the 3000 which
was probably largest and most complex language system ever created for
the Classic 16-bit 3000 systems and which was intended to be both a
migration path for 250/260 applications to MPE and to be a new
standard Basic across multiple HP platforms.

From 1980-1986 or so I worked for an HP OEM / ISV whose "ERP" (we
didn't call them that yet) package was written in BASIC on the HP
3000. It was limited to Letter-digit variable names but was quite
performant and had its own API into the IMAGE DBMS etc.

BASIC got used for lots of "serious" development.
  

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Chuck Guzis via cctalk]

Am I the only one on this list who designed and implemented a business
BASIC?  (I did have two programmers to work with me.  Did it in about 4
months).

Multiuser on an 8085; later versions were re-hosted on Xenix.

https://archive.org/details/durango-star-basic-dx-85-m-reference-manual-5th-edition

--Chuck

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Gavin Scott via cctalk]

BASIC was always a popular language in the Hewlett-Packard world. From
the HP 2000 timesharing BASIC that was popular in educational settings
similar to the original DTSS, To BASIC/3000 on the HP 3000 which was a
first-class language with both interpreter and compiler (producing
very fast code), to the HP 250/260 which used BASIC as their primary
development language, Rocky Mountain BASIC in the technical world, the
Series 80 microcomputers, HP Business Basic again on the 3000 which
was probably largest and most complex language system ever created for
the Classic 16-bit 3000 systems and which was intended to be both a
migration path for 250/260 applications to MPE and to be a new
standard Basic across multiple HP platforms.

>From 1980-1986 or so I worked for an HP OEM / ISV whose "ERP" (we
didn't call them that yet) package was written in BASIC on the HP
3000. It was limited to Letter-digit variable names but was quite
performant and had its own API into the IMAGE DBMS etc.

BASIC got used for lots of "serious" development.

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Just Kant via cctalk]

My first experience with programming (BASIC) and even computers was on an Atari 
400 in 9th grade. I hated those damned things, I guess mainly on account of the 
membrane keyboard. Elfin tight wads. In 10th I again decided to enroll in 
computer courses, FARTRAN and then COBOL. Mostly on teletype terminals that 
were arguably more unpleasant experience then BASIC on the 400. We had at least 
1 Commodore Pet im the "lab". It would have been nice to use that which had an 
actual keyboard and screen.

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Mike Katz via cctalk]

Fred,

It's not a big deal.  I was exposed to the DTSS as a 7th grader because 
I was going to a boarding school near by in 1972.


The school I was at had a PDP-8/L and I became an early adopter computer 
geek.🙂


On 5/1/2024 6:05 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:

On Wed, 1 May 2024, Mike Katz wrote:
I'm sorry but the original BASIC as run on the Dartmouth Time Sharing 
System was compiled.


I wasn't around Dartmouth, and my first experiences with BASIC were 
all interpreted.


I had run a trivial program in it on a Silent 700 connected through a 
phone line, long before I got my first personal computer (TRS80).



Thank you for the details of the history.


When Microsoft introduced "BASCOM" (their BASIC compiler), my first 
uses of it were primarily to make my source code less easily 
accessible to would-be infringers. :-)



--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Wed, 1 May 2024, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:

Yet FORTRAN, the granddaddy of them all, continues on...  It should be
noted that FORTRAN celebrates its 70th anniversary this year:


I didn't start until May 29, 1965.
I had previously been doing some keypunching, and 084 counting sorter.
IBM did the data processing for the CBS "National Drivers Test"; they 
actually succeeded in using port-a-punch cards sent through the US postal 
system!
My father did the analysis.  You can see him behind Walter Cronkite, 
frantically manually adding numbers where IBM's flawed results didn't add 
up close enough to 100%.


He decided that contracting out programming was too risky.
On May 29, he placed a copy of Mc Cracken and Decima Anderson's books on 
the dining room table.  And, we started to learn the basics of 
programming.


--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Michael Mulhern via cctalk]

In ‘81 FORTRAN77 was the first language I learnt, but it was BASIC that
started my IT career. I was writing programs at Griffith University for
various lecturers and research staff. This was before the uni even had a
dedicated Computer Science Degree.

If it wasn’t for BASIC, I’d probably be a High School teacher. What a
career change.

//m


On Thu, 2 May 2024 at 9:34 AM, KenUnix via cctalk 
wrote:

> Anyone interested in a flavor of BASIC try my version of BWaterBasic  for
> Linux, Windows and DOS
> athttps://yeolpishack.net/repos/KenUnix/BwBasic
>
> It's pretty fast. Full source and DOCs are also there.
>
> Ken
>
> On Wed, May 1, 2024 at 7:05 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk <
> cctalk@classiccmp.org>
> wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 1 May 2024, Mike Katz wrote:
> > > I'm sorry but the original BASIC as run on the Dartmouth Time Sharing
> > System
> > > was compiled.
> >
> > I wasn't around Dartmouth, and my first experiences with BASIC were all
> > interpreted.
> >
> > I had run a trivial program in it on a Silent 700 connected through a
> > phone line, long before I got my first personal computer (TRS80).
> >
> >
> > Thank you for the details of the history.
> >
> >
> > When Microsoft introduced "BASCOM" (their BASIC compiler), my first uses
> > of it were primarily to make my source code less easily accessible to
> > would-be infringers. :-)
> >
> >
> > --
> > Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com
> >
>
>
> --
> End of line
> JOB TERMINATED
>

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Chuck Guzis via cctalk]

On 5/1/24 16:37, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote:
> On Wed, May 1, 2024 at 4:36 PM Chuck Guzis via cctalk 
> wrote:
> 
>> To be sure, BASIC was hardly unique in terms of the 1960s interactive
>> programming languages.  We had JOSS, PILOT, IITRAN and a host of others,
>> based on FORTRAN-ish syntax. not to forget APL, which was a thing apart.
>>
>> --Chuck
>>
> 
> And where are all those other languages today?

How much of the original BASIC language endures?  You know,
single-character or character-followed-by-number variable names,
floating point only, etc.?

Yet FORTRAN, the granddaddy of them all, continues on...  It should be
noted that FORTRAN celebrates its 70th anniversary this year:

https://www.edn.com/1st-fortran-program-runs-september-20-1954/

To the best of my knowledge no supercomputer application code has ever
been written in BASIC, but I"m willing to be disabused of that notion.

--Chuck

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Norman Jaffe via cctalk]

APL is very much alive - it was invented in the '60s. 
Lisp is slightly older and it, as well, is still in active use - and it's older 
than FORTRAN, which was the inspiration for BASIC. 

From: "Sellam Abraham via cctalk"  
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"  
Cc: "Sellam Abraham"  
Sent: Wednesday, May 1, 2024 4:37:46 PM 
Subject: [cctalk] Re: BASIC 

On Wed, May 1, 2024 at 4:36 PM Chuck Guzis via cctalk  
wrote: 

> To be sure, BASIC was hardly unique in terms of the 1960s interactive 
> programming languages. We had JOSS, PILOT, IITRAN and a host of others, 
> based on FORTRAN-ish syntax. not to forget APL, which was a thing apart. 
> 
> --Chuck 
> 

And where are all those other languages today? 

I rest my case. 

;) 

Sellam 

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Sellam Abraham via cctalk]

On Wed, May 1, 2024 at 4:36 PM Chuck Guzis via cctalk 
wrote:

> To be sure, BASIC was hardly unique in terms of the 1960s interactive
> programming languages.  We had JOSS, PILOT, IITRAN and a host of others,
> based on FORTRAN-ish syntax. not to forget APL, which was a thing apart.
>
> --Chuck
>

And where are all those other languages today?

I rest my case.

;)

Sellam

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Chuck Guzis via cctalk]

To be sure, BASIC was hardly unique in terms of the 1960s interactive
programming languages.  We had JOSS, PILOT, IITRAN and a host of others,
based on FORTRAN-ish syntax. not to forget APL, which was a thing apart.

--Chuck

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[KenUnix via cctalk]

Anyone interested in a flavor of BASIC try my version of BWaterBasic  for
Linux, Windows and DOS
athttps://yeolpishack.net/repos/KenUnix/BwBasic

It's pretty fast. Full source and DOCs are also there.

Ken

On Wed, May 1, 2024 at 7:05 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk 
wrote:

> On Wed, 1 May 2024, Mike Katz wrote:
> > I'm sorry but the original BASIC as run on the Dartmouth Time Sharing
> System
> > was compiled.
>
> I wasn't around Dartmouth, and my first experiences with BASIC were all
> interpreted.
>
> I had run a trivial program in it on a Silent 700 connected through a
> phone line, long before I got my first personal computer (TRS80).
>
>
> Thank you for the details of the history.
>
>
> When Microsoft introduced "BASCOM" (their BASIC compiler), my first uses
> of it were primarily to make my source code less easily accessible to
> would-be infringers. :-)
>
>
> --
> Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com
>


-- 
End of line
JOB TERMINATED

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Sellam Abraham via cctalk]

Considering the time that it was introduced to the world, and what it was
intended to do, and what it did do, and how it went on to become something
much, much greater than what Kemeny and Kurtz ever envisioned (even though
they didn't like much of it), BASIC does not get nearly as much credit as
it deserves.

Sellam

On Wed, May 1, 2024 at 4:05 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk 
wrote:

> On Wed, 1 May 2024, Mike Katz wrote:
> > I'm sorry but the original BASIC as run on the Dartmouth Time Sharing
> System
> > was compiled.
>
> I wasn't around Dartmouth, and my first experiences with BASIC were all
> interpreted.
>
> I had run a trivial program in it on a Silent 700 connected through a
> phone line, long before I got my first personal computer (TRS80).
>
>
> Thank you for the details of the history.
>
>
> When Microsoft introduced "BASCOM" (their BASIC compiler), my first uses
> of it were primarily to make my source code less easily accessible to
> would-be infringers. :-)
>
>
> --
> Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com
>

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Wed, 1 May 2024, Mike Katz wrote:
I'm sorry but the original BASIC as run on the Dartmouth Time Sharing System 
was compiled.


I wasn't around Dartmouth, and my first experiences with BASIC were all 
interpreted.


I had run a trivial program in it on a Silent 700 connected through a 
phone line, long before I got my first personal computer (TRS80).



Thank you for the details of the history.


When Microsoft introduced "BASCOM" (their BASIC compiler), my first uses 
of it were primarily to make my source code less easily accessible to 
would-be infringers. :-)



--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Mike Katz via cctalk]

I'm sorry but the original BASIC as run on the Dartmouth Time Sharing 
System was compiled.


On 5/1/2024 5:26 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:

On Wed, 1 May 2024, Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:

Nostalgia keeps pressing ahead: It was 60 yrs. ago that BASIC came into
existence. I remember very well writing in Apple Basic and GW Basic 
later
on. As a non-compiled OS, an interpreted OS, it was just the right 
tool for

a microcomputer with  limited memory. I recall fondly taking code from
popular magazines and getting them to run. It was thrilling indeed!
Happy computing,
Murray 🙂


BTW, BASIC ("Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code") was 
developed at Dartmouth college by Kurtz and Kemeny.  More than 30 
years later was the first time (or so they claimed) that they EVER got 
around to trying ANY of the BASICs based on their original language.

They were APALLED!
They came out with "TRUE BASIC", to counter the various "street BASICs.


picky details, . . . BASIC was a non-compiled interpreted LANGUAGE, 
not an OS ("Operating System"), at least in the examples you mention.  
(also TRS80 and some models of Commodore)



However, to be fair, there did exist something called "Microsoft 
Stand-Alone BASIC", used in the Coco, some models of NEC 8801 (and 9801?)
That was a Microsoft BASIC that had rudimentary disk operations built 
in, to serve the needed functions of an OS.
The disk directory structure of Microsoft Stand-Alone BASIC, with 
directory entris pointing into a linked list allocation table,was the 
inspiration for Tim Paterson to use as the directory structure for 
PC-DOS/MS-DOS/86-DOS/QDOS ("Quick and Dirty Operating System" (a 
placeholder to use during hardware development while waiting for the 
overdue CP/M-86)) .



More details to research, . . .
GWBASIC was a version of BASICA of the 5150/PC, but run from MS-DOS, 
and not requiring the ROMS.  That was so that OEMs of MS-DOS could 
supply BASIC closely matching that of the PC.  Some even renamed 
GWBASIC into "BASICA", topreserve compatability for batch files that 
called BASIC.


Q: What did "GWBASIC" stand for?
at the time, some Microsoft people said that it stood for "Gee Whiz 
BASIC".  But more recently, Microsoft denies any memory of what it 
was, and billg speculated that it stood for "Greg Whitten BASIC".


--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Wayne S via cctalk]

IMHO, “C” nomenclature really screwed up the equality vs assignment statements. 
 The == made it difficult to understand especially if you came from a language 
that didn’t have it. Basically all languages before “C”.


Sent from my iPhone

> On May 1, 2024, at 15:39, Fred Cisin via cctalk  wrote:
> 
> I remember that one of the changes that "street" BASICs made was to make the 
> keyword "LET" be optional.
> Thus, instead of writing
> LET X = 3
> you could write
> X = 3
> 
> unfortunately, that further confused the issue of ASSIGNMENT versus EQUALITY, 
> and many beginners tried to write
> 3 = X
> while they certainly would not have tried to write
> LET 3 = X
> 
> 
> Sorry, but off the top of my head, I can't recall the many other differences.
> 
> --
> Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

I remember that one of the changes that "street" BASICs made was to make 
the keyword "LET" be optional.

Thus, instead of writing
LET X = 3
you could write
X = 3

unfortunately, that further confused the issue of ASSIGNMENT versus EQUALITY, 
and many beginners tried to write

3 = X
while they certainly would not have tried to write
LET 3 = X


Sorry, but off the top of my head, I can't recall the many other 
differences.


--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Wed, 1 May 2024, Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:

Nostalgia keeps pressing ahead: It was 60 yrs. ago that BASIC came into
existence. I remember very well writing in Apple Basic and GW Basic later
on. As a non-compiled OS, an interpreted OS, it was just the right tool for
a microcomputer with  limited memory. I recall fondly taking code from
popular magazines and getting them to run. It was thrilling indeed!
Happy computing,
Murray 🙂


BTW, BASIC ("Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code") was 
developed at Dartmouth college by Kurtz and Kemeny.  More than 30 years 
later was the first time (or so they claimed) that they EVER got around to 
trying ANY of the BASICs based on their original language.

They were APALLED!
They came out with "TRUE BASIC", to counter the various "street BASICs.


picky details, . . . 
BASIC was a non-compiled interpreted LANGUAGE, not an OS ("Operating 
System"), at least in the examples you mention.  (also TRS80 and some 
models of Commodore)



However, to be fair, there did exist something called "Microsoft 
Stand-Alone BASIC", used in the Coco, some models of NEC 8801 (and 9801?)
That was a Microsoft BASIC that had rudimentary disk operations built in, 
to serve the needed functions of an OS.
The disk directory structure of Microsoft Stand-Alone BASIC, with 
directory entris pointing into a linked list allocation table,was the 
inspiration for Tim Paterson to use as the directory structure for 
PC-DOS/MS-DOS/86-DOS/QDOS ("Quick and Dirty Operating System" (a 
placeholder to use during hardware development while waiting for the 
overdue CP/M-86)) .



More details to research, . . .
GWBASIC was a version of BASICA of the 5150/PC, but run from MS-DOS, and 
not requiring the ROMS.  That was so that OEMs of MS-DOS could supply 
BASIC closely matching that of the PC.  Some even renamed GWBASIC into 
"BASICA", topreserve compatability for batch files that called BASIC.


Q: What did "GWBASIC" stand for?
at the time, some Microsoft people said that it stood for "Gee Whiz 
BASIC".  But more recently, Microsoft denies any memory of what it was, 
and billg speculated that it stood for "Greg Whitten BASIC".


--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

[cctalk] Re: BASIC

[Mike Katz via cctalk]

The Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC)

Developed by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College in 
1963.  This ran on the Dartmouth Time Sharing System (DTSS) which was an 
early time sharing system running on Honeywell and GE Main Frames with 
Datanet systems running the terminal interfaces.


This system was intended to be an online code/run/debug cycle system 
rather than a batch processing system like most Cobol and Fortran 
compilers were.


BASIC was actually their third language attempt to simplify the syntax 
of languages like Fortran and Algol.


There are literally 100's of dialects of BASIC, both as compilers (as 
was the original) and interpreters and even pseudo compilers.


Like many of us older members of this thread, some form of BASIC was our 
"computer milk language" (our first computer language).


Some early microcomputers even wrote their operating systems in some 
form of BASIC.


I learned basic in September of 1972 on a 4K PDP-8/L running EduSystem 
10 Basic with time also spent at the Kiewit Computation Center at 
Dartmouth (as a 12 year old) running Dartmouth Basic.


Let's hear your earliest introduction to BASIC.





On 5/1/2024 5:03 PM, Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:

Nostalgia keeps pressing ahead: It was 60 yrs. ago that BASIC came into
existence. I remember very well writing in Apple Basic and GW Basic later
on. As a non-compiled OS, an interpreted OS, it was just the right tool for
a microcomputer with  limited memory. I recall fondly taking code from
popular magazines and getting them to run. It was thrilling indeed!

Happy computing,

Murray 🙂