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Interestingly enough, the article notes that this program was written for Microsoft’s AppleSoft BASIC, but Woz famously wrote an Integer BASIC that shipped on t
by dcrazy 2y ago
Interestingly enough, the article notes that this program was written for Microsoft’s AppleSoft BASIC, but Woz famously wrote an Integer BASIC that shipped on the Apple II’s ROM.
- skissane 2y agoWoz planned to add floating point support to his Integer BASIC. In fact, he included a library of floating point ROM routines in the Apple II ROMs, but he didn't get around to modifying Integer BASIC to use them. He ended up working on the floppy disk controller instead. When he finally got around to doing it, he discovered two issues – Integer BASIC was very difficult to modify, because there was never any source code. He didn't write it in assembly, because at the time he wrote it he didn't yet have an assembler, so he hand assembled it into machine code as he worked on it. Meanwhile, Jobs had talked to Gates (without telling him) and signed a deal to license Microsoft Basic. Microsoft Basic already had the desired floating point support, and whatever Integer BASIC features it lacked (primarily graphics) were much easier to add given it had assembly code source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_BASIC#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_BASIC#History I was thinking about this the other day, I wonder if anyone has ever tried finishing off what Woz never did, and adding the floating point support to Integer BASIC? The whole "lacking source" thing shouldn't be an issue any more, because you can find disassemblies of it with extensive comments added, and I assume they reassemble back to the same code.
- scarface_74 2y agoThe Apple //e ROMs had AppleSoft BASIC. Integer basic could be loaded from the original DOS disks
- dcrazy 2y agoAccording to Wikipedia, the original Apple II ROM had Integer BASIC. Apple licensed AppleSoft in response to customer demand for a floating point BASIC, and it became the in-ROM BASIC for the Apple IIc and IIe.
- scarface_74 2y agoIsn’t that what I just said?
- dcrazy 2y agoYou phrased your comment as a contradiction of mine. I elaborated on my comment, focusing on the distinction between Apple II and Apple IIe, including the IIc which came between, and citing my source.