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I remember Atari basic was quite superior, so probably that's why there was no port. Awesome work!
by intricatedetail 5y ago
I remember Atari basic was quite superior, so probably that's why there was no port.
Awesome work!
- tenebrisalietum 5y agoDidn't it do something weird with strings where you had to periodically LIST and reload your program to prevent crashes?
- jhallenworld 5y agoYeah, famous bugs. Atari BASIC source is fully documented in this book: https://archive.org/details/ataribooks-the-atari-basic-source-book https://archive.org/details/ataribooks-the-atari-basic-sourc... See appendix B, memmove() was broken.
- PostThisTooFast 5y agoInteresting, never heard of that. I have this book, and my whole 800 setup today. The capacitors in my Commodore 1702 monitor need to be replaced, however...
- timbit42 5y agoHas anyone ever fixed this? It would be cool if they managed to speed it up some as well. Of course there is TurboBASIC XL but it isn't ROM-able.
- buescher 5y agoI think rev c as shipped on the XE models fixed it. But yeah, Turbo BASIC XL was the bomb.
- unwiredben 5y agoAtari shipped a final Rev C basic both in the ROMs for the XE computers and on cartridges for people that requested it. There were several derivations. The original authors of Atari Basic produced BASIC XL and BASIC XE on cartridge, each with additional language features. There's also the really cool Altirra BASIC (see https://virtualdub.org/downloads/Altirra%20BASIC%20Reference%20Manual.pdf https://virtualdub.org/downloads/Altirra%20BASIC%20Reference...) which ships with the Altirra emulator as a tokenized-code compatible, but faster and more featureful, implementation. A version of that was included in the ROM for the new 576NUC+ all-in-one Atari-compatible.
- ataylor284_ 5y agoIt's unfortunate that Commodore shipped BASIC 2.0 on the 64. They already had shipped PETs with the much superior BASIC 4.0 years earlier. It was likely a cost saving measure: they had a more favorable licensing deal with MS on BASIC 2.0 and it fit on fewer ROM chips. Too late the C128 came with BASIC 7.0 which was actually quite good (for an 8-bit BASIC anyway).
- timbit42 5y agoIt is quite good but it is also quite slow compared to BBC BASIC on the 2 MHz 6502-based BBC Micro.
- rasz 5y agoJack Tramiel was the OG of cutthroat business practices. He bought Basic for a flat fee from Gates in 1977, that included rights to modify and ship on any hardware platform he wanted. >Doing business with Gates was decent, Tramiel said. "He came to see me, tried to sell me Basic, and he told me that I don't have to give him any money, all I had to give him was $3 per unit. I told him I was already married," Tramiel said. >Tramiel instead told Gates he'd pay a flat fee of $25,000, rejecting the idea of paying $3 for each Commodore 64 sold. "In about six weeks [Gates] came and took that $25,000. Since then he did not speak to me," Tramiel said. https://www.computerworld.com/article/2813900/innovators-reminisce-about-the-pc-wonder-years.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2813900/innovators-rem...
- vardump 5y ago> It's unfortunate that Commodore shipped BASIC 2.0 on the 64. It might also have contributed to the success of C64 by "encouraging" early use of machine language. BASIC is great, but to truly make C64 shine you do need assembly language. Notably, it was also pretty trivial to expand BASIC capabilities. A lot of utilities did just that, like adding graphics commands and sprite extensions. Simons' BASIC is probably the most comprehensive example, and it also came as a cartridge.
- classichasclass 5y agoReally, BASIC v2 is at its best as a scripting language to load and call machine language subroutines ...