5 ms·
Oh, interesting. I wonder what implications this will have for the MS Basic disassembly project: https://github.com/mist64/msbasic https://github.com/mist64/ms
by duskwuff 6y ago
Oh, interesting. I wonder what implications this will have for the MS Basic disassembly project:
https://github.com/mist64/msbasic https://github.com/mist64/msbasic
- ksaj 6y agoWhile it might initially feel like a downer, it would still be quite educational on its own to go through the code comparing what they came up with in the disassembly in light of the real deal being now published. There would probably be a few "Ah Hah!" moments for code that stumped them, and lessons to be learned on any particular errors they made.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- skissane 6y agoThey are different. That project is disassembling Microsoft BASIC for 6502. What Microsoft has just open sourced is their BASIC for 8086. Two separate codebases, although they have some commonalities. (As the MS blog post mentions, they kept master source in some kind of abstract assembly which could then be automatically translated into specific machine's assembly language, but then I believe there were manual additions to the assembly code after translation.)
- andrewf 6y agoI wonder if the master source was that abstract, the original Microsoft BASIC was for the 8080, and there were several 8080 -> 8086 source translators. TRANS.COM shipped with 86-DOS before it became Microsoft MS-DOS. https://tech-insider.org/personal-computers/research/acrobat/8206-b.pdf https://tech-insider.org/personal-computers/research/acrobat...
- CamperBob2 6y agoHuh. There's a very well-commented disassembly of Applesoft BASIC in existence already that shipped with the MERLIN assembler. I assume those guys already have that one.
- ksaj 6y agoThat does explain the top line comment in each source file. Thanks. I was wondering what they meant.
- pmiller2 6y agoRoughly none, I would guess. I can't imagine there are any patents expressed in the actual MS code, and the MIT and 2 clause BSD licenses are virtually identical.
- duskwuff 6y agoOh, I didn't mean from a legal perspective! I meant in terms of what historical insights the newly available GW-BASIC source can provide.