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"I agree BBC BASIC is excellent, particularly in having structured programming support." Found this in the article comments. What happened to the BBC BASIC lan

"I agree BBC BASIC is excellent, particularly in having structured programming support." Found this in the article comments. What happened to the BBC BASIC language? Is it still available, in source?

bootload 10y ago
Now I see why BBC BASIC is liked. It was created by Sophie Wilson FRS FREng, while at Cambridge as a student over a summer break on a 6502 micro processor. Wilson also designed the Acorn System 1. [0],[1] Also a portable C version of BBC BASIC is available. [2] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Wilson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Wilson [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_System_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_System_1 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_BASIC#cite_note-11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_BASIC#cite_note-11 and http://mdfs.net/Software/BBCBasic/ http://mdfs.net/Software/BBCBasic/
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Fr0styMatt88 10y ago
The port of RISC OS for Raspberry Pi contains a BBC BASIC interpreter: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/risc-os-for-raspberry-pi/ https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/risc-os-for-raspberry-pi/ I think you hit F12 and then type 'basic' (no quotes) at the prompt to get to it.
- bootload 10y ago
  thx @Fr0sty I'm mighty impressed with the RISCOS effort. You can even purchase dev manuals in print. Must fire this one up on a Pi at home. This would be a good start.
david-given 10y ago
Well... the original BBC Basic was originally hand-written in 6502 assembly for the BBC Micro; it's a 16kB application ROM. Later versions were rewritten for the 65C102. The extra opcodes available freed up some space and they added a few more features, and made it even faster (and BBC Basic was already one of the fastest 8-bit Basics around). I don't believe that any of the 6502-era Acorn sources were ever released, which is a shame, as Acorn's MOS was one of the best 8-bit operating systems around. Basic V was a complete rewrite for the ARM. In hand-tooled ARM machine code, also by Sophie Wilson. The source for this is available from the CVS archive here: https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/cvs-access https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/cvs-access But trust me, it won't help. I've debugged my way through it. It's very... hand written. Oh, yes: there are also ports of BBC Basic IVish to the 8086 and the Z80 by R.T. Russell: http://www.bbcbasic.co.uk/bbcbasic/bbcbasic.html http://www.bbcbasic.co.uk/bbcbasic/bbcbasic.html He wasn't associated with Acorn, as far as I know. The 8086 version (for Windows and DOS) is commercial, but the Z80 version (for a variety of CP/M machines) is a free download. Not open source, unfortunately. His version even includes 80186 or Z80 inline assemblers, depending on the version. His Z80 port was licensed for a variety of machines --- Amstrad made a range of Z80 notebooks with his Basic in ROM. I've used all his versions, and they're superb.
- bootload 10y ago
  "The source for this is available from the CVS archive here: ... But trust me, it won't help. I've debugged my way through it. It's very... hand written." First computer ZX80, so I missed the BBCM. Thx @David, the reason I asked was I was interested to see ^how^ it was written, but probably more to the point, what made it good? Sounds like speed was a loved feature. Was there ever a API or documentation made public? Reason: want to hack a language together a BASIC-like language (are of use) for graphics.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    > want to hack a language together a BASIC-like language (are of use) for graphics. One of the coolest ones was AMOS for the Amiga.
  - david-given 10y ago
    Well, there's an annotated disassembly here: http://acorn.huininga.nl/pub/docs/sourcecode/Acorn/BASIC%202/BASIC2.asm http://acorn.huininga.nl/pub/docs/sourcecode/Acorn/BASIC%202... AFAIK there wasn't anything particular magical about it --- it was just written well, with great care. Programs were stored in tokenised form, where each keyword was reduced to a byte, and line numbers in things like GOTO statements were stored preparsed, but execution happened directly from the tokenised form. Named procedures were faster than GOTOs because the interpreter would cache the address of the line where they were defined, while GOTOs would have to search for the line; variables were stored in a hash table; there were two stacks, one for GOSUBs and one for PROCs (the GOSUB stack was much smaller!); there was a superb 5-byte floating point library... It's also worth mentioning that Acorn's MOS was in a different ROM, so it didn't have to share space with Basic. The two communicated via a system call interface. I've seen people run BBC Basic on entirely different 6502 machines by reimplementing the system call interface. I would not recommend writing this style of Basic if you want a simple language these days. Basics are a nightmare of ad-hoc parsing with too many edge cases. Better to write a modern byte-compiled language with a byte interpreter --- you'll end up with something much cleaner and easier to understand. We're not all Sophie Wilson.
    - 10y ago
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
It's part of RISCOS, so yes.

"I agree BBC BASIC is excellent, particularly in having structured programming support." Found this in the article comments. What happened to the BBC BASIC language? Is it still available, in source?

bootload 10y ago

Now I see why BBC BASIC is liked. It was created by Sophie Wilson FRS FREng, while at Cambridge as a student over a summer break on a 6502 micro processor. Wilson also designed the Acorn System 1. [0],[1] Also a portable C version of BBC BASIC is available. [2] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Wilson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Wilson [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_System_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_System_1 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_BASIC#cite_note-11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_BASIC#cite_note-11 and http://mdfs.net/Software/BBCBasic/ http://mdfs.net/Software/BBCBasic/

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Fr0styMatt88 10y ago

The port of RISC OS for Raspberry Pi contains a BBC BASIC interpreter: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/risc-os-for-raspberry-pi/ https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/risc-os-for-raspberry-pi/ I think you hit F12 and then type 'basic' (no quotes) at the prompt to get to it.

bootload 10y ago
thx @Fr0sty I'm mighty impressed with the RISCOS effort. You can even purchase dev manuals in print. Must fire this one up on a Pi at home. This would be a good start.

david-given 10y ago

Well... the original BBC Basic was originally hand-written in 6502 assembly for the BBC Micro; it's a 16kB application ROM. Later versions were rewritten for the 65C102. The extra opcodes available freed up some space and they added a few more features, and made it even faster (and BBC Basic was already one of the fastest 8-bit Basics around). I don't believe that any of the 6502-era Acorn sources were ever released, which is a shame, as Acorn's MOS was one of the best 8-bit operating systems around. Basic V was a complete rewrite for the ARM. In hand-tooled ARM machine code, also by Sophie Wilson. The source for this is available from the CVS archive here: https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/cvs-access https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/cvs-access But trust me, it won't help. I've debugged my way through it. It's very... hand written. Oh, yes: there are also ports of BBC Basic IVish to the 8086 and the Z80 by R.T. Russell: http://www.bbcbasic.co.uk/bbcbasic/bbcbasic.html http://www.bbcbasic.co.uk/bbcbasic/bbcbasic.html He wasn't associated with Acorn, as far as I know. The 8086 version (for Windows and DOS) is commercial, but the Z80 version (for a variety of CP/M machines) is a free download. Not open source, unfortunately. His version even includes 80186 or Z80 inline assemblers, depending on the version. His Z80 port was licensed for a variety of machines --- Amstrad made a range of Z80 notebooks with his Basic in ROM. I've used all his versions, and they're superb.

bootload 10y ago
"The source for this is available from the CVS archive here: ... But trust me, it won't help. I've debugged my way through it. It's very... hand written." First computer ZX80, so I missed the BBCM. Thx @David, the reason I asked was I was interested to see ^how^ it was written, but probably more to the point, what made it good? Sounds like speed was a loved feature. Was there ever a API or documentation made public? Reason: want to hack a language together a BASIC-like language (are of use) for graphics.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  > want to hack a language together a BASIC-like language (are of use) for graphics. One of the coolest ones was AMOS for the Amiga.
- david-given 10y ago
  Well, there's an annotated disassembly here: http://acorn.huininga.nl/pub/docs/sourcecode/Acorn/BASIC%202/BASIC2.asm http://acorn.huininga.nl/pub/docs/sourcecode/Acorn/BASIC%202... AFAIK there wasn't anything particular magical about it --- it was just written well, with great care. Programs were stored in tokenised form, where each keyword was reduced to a byte, and line numbers in things like GOTO statements were stored preparsed, but execution happened directly from the tokenised form. Named procedures were faster than GOTOs because the interpreter would cache the address of the line where they were defined, while GOTOs would have to search for the line; variables were stored in a hash table; there were two stacks, one for GOSUBs and one for PROCs (the GOSUB stack was much smaller!); there was a superb 5-byte floating point library... It's also worth mentioning that Acorn's MOS was in a different ROM, so it didn't have to share space with Basic. The two communicated via a system call interface. I've seen people run BBC Basic on entirely different 6502 machines by reimplementing the system call interface. I would not recommend writing this style of Basic if you want a simple language these days. Basics are a nightmare of ad-hoc parsing with too many edge cases. Better to write a modern byte-compiled language with a byte interpreter --- you'll end up with something much cleaner and easier to understand. We're not all Sophie Wilson.
  - 10y ago

qwertyuiop924 10y ago

It's part of RISCOS, so yes.