Spectrum BASIC.

[Top Cap]

It was many years ago but I seem to remember that the Spectrum had the irritating habit of clearing the screen and re-displaying the lines of code, somewhat slowly, after each Return. When you had reached something like 100 lines it became too much of a tedious wait to continue, perhaps I am getting mixed up with the ZX81? I remember going to a radio rally where a guy was selling a morse program for the BBC. When it sent a letter C (_._.) it actually sent two N's (-. space -.). When I told him this he scolded me telling me that was not correct and I was the second person who had said this. With his permission I checked his coding which went to well over a 1000 lines and using GOTO's etc. I replaced these with a PROC (procedure) command, after which the machine sent a correct Morse letter C. I mus confess to loving BBC Basic and so much better than the HP Basic on those infernal 'Bus Ticket' machines, remember them?

[TonyDuell]

I feel the nicest 8-bit microcomputer BASIC was Microware's BASIC-09 running under OS9 on a 6809 CPU. It was available on the TRS-80 color computer, and I guess the Dragon 64. BBC BASIC was a close second. I still run both.

Later HP BASICs on 68000-series processors (HP9000 machines) were also excellent. All the above had named procedures with formal parameters, etc. GOTOs were very much optional (and frowned upon).

I am wondering what the HP 'bus ticket' BASIC machine was (and I have a fair experience of classic HP computers). This sounds like a strip printer. But the HP9830 (first HP BASIC machine) had a full-width thermal printer (HP9866) that sat on top. The HP9831, although closely related to the HP9825 (which had a narrow thermal printer), did not have an internal printer and is very rare anyway. The handhelds (HP71B, HP75, the former having a much better BASIC) used any printer you wanted to hook up to them. Maybe you are thinking of the HP85, which had an internal thermal printer about 4" wide?

[Oldcodger]

I've found BASIN is useful for quick calculations. Like a few others I did TP at college ,but years ago I lent my notes to my son ( who wanted to get into programming ) and never got the notes back, so TP is now a distant memory. Pity, as TP had an elegance that basic never had. As an example-
One of our tasks was to produce a program that would give component values for a RC filter( given the equations), but in preferred values( e.g. K OHM ETC),and using values within a set percentage of the preferred values, picking the nearest to the preferred value. At that time I'd done a lot of Z80 programming on my +2 128 ,including a Wordprocessor in machine code, and found TP a lot easier than Basic, but TBH these days I'd struggle to set up the basics for a TP program. ( define variables etc ).
ne problem with BASIN is that programming is so like 48k Sinclair basic. Type "let r =?" and command line computes r to run.

[Gulliver]

I found Sinclair BASIC very easy to learn, and it worked well for me as my mind is geared for logic and grammar.

BBC Basic was pretty good too in those respects.

I could never get on with Commodore BASIC or even Microsoft BASIC because they always seemed very "dirty" to me...especially the lack of "LET" for variables and very limited ability to position text or graphics in the desired part of the screen using BASIC alone.

I still have a ZX81 and Spectrum set up in my living room, and still tinker with them from time to time.

[Gulliver]

Originally Posted by Top Cap

It was many years ago but I seem to remember that the Spectrum had the irritating habit of clearing the screen and re-displaying the lines of code, somewhat slowly, after each Return. When you had reached something like 100 lines it became too much of a tedious wait to continue, perhaps I am getting mixed up with the ZX81?

The ZX81 did this for sure. If you had filled the screen with code (roughly 1K of program) it would re-render the display it all when you typed in the reserved two lines below the main screen. This became a problem mostly if you were entering a long line of code. You could always CLS before typing, rather than LIST.

In addition as the screen memory was held as a string in the RAM. If you were approaching the limit of your RAM (common on 1K machines) you could end up with the machine unable to actually display the program listing in full. But the program might still run, for example if it used only a portion of the screen. That was the clever part of storing the screen memory as a string...the amount of RAM required to display the screen was dynamic, if the screen was 1/4 full you only used 80 bytes or so of RAM. Freeing up more for other operations.

Also the keyword system meant that a command such as "PRINT" a function such as "INKEY$" used only one byte of memory as each counted as one character. A line such as:

IF INKEY$="Y" THEN GOSUB 1000

uses just 12 characters, with IF, INKEY$, THEN and GOSUB each counting as just one.

IT was a very economical BASIC in an era when computers had little RAM. Also helped the Sinclair computers do things with 1K that others required much more to achieve.

[TonyDuell]

Most BASICs, including those where you typed PRINT as 5 letters (for example) would 'tokenise' the line you typed and replace keywords (outside quoted strings) with single byte code. Microsoft certainly did. The version of Microsoft BASIC I was most familiar with had a minor bug in that if one of those codes (they were in the range 128-255 decimal, so could not be typed on the keyboard) ended up in a quoted string, it would be displayed when you listed the program as the appropriate keyword. If you then edited that program line, it would be replaced by the appropriate letters. Which means if you used a quoted string in program line to store a machine code routine (say), you had to be very careful not to edit said line. Even if you made no changes the thing would no longer run.

I am pretty sure Microsoft BASIC allowed you to use LET if you wanted to. Nobody did because (a) it wasted a byte to store the token for LET and (b) it was slightly slower as the interpretter had to skip over said token.

[mhennessy]

Yes, "tokenise" is the word. BBC BASIC did the same. It would also allow you to use LET if you liked, but it was optional. As well as the byte for the token itself, it would also cost another byte as anyone choosing to use "LET" would include the space afterwards for clarity. Most people dropped it pretty quickly.

Having used BBC Micros for a year or so at school, I was completely foxed by our car-boot ZX Spectrum. Having done a fair bit of BASIC by this time, I thought I'd have no problem getting something simple going, but it took me ages to realise that just because the text on the screen looked exactly like the example on the page, it wasn't necessarily going to work! I needed to enter "PRINT" as Symbol+P (or whatever it was), instead of "P", "R", "I", "N", "T"

Once that penny dropped, it was a facility I really grew to like about the Spectrum - it certainly saved a lot of typing. But the BASIC wasn't half slow compared to BBC BASIC! We couldn't afford a BBC - not even s/h back then - but I was usually allowed to borrow one from school over the holidays.

You could abbreviate when entering code on the BBC - e.g., P. for PRINT - but of course this would be instantly tokenised upon entry. It meant that your program could contain lines that appeared to be longer than the size of the keyboard buffer - 255 (or was it 256?) characters. Which was fine until you needed to edit the line - you'd have to include every abbreviation in its shortest form!

Come to think about it, did Spectrum BASIC include a trailing space as part of the token? Can't remember... No spaces were included in BBC BASIC. As memory was short, you'd always omit spaces wherever possible (as well as comments!), which didn't exactly lead to readable, self-documenting code. The move to compiled or assembled languages was so liberating, to the point now where I hugely over-comment everything I do.

Happy days! But, I do use the BBC from time to time. The kids are enjoying the wonder of 8-bit gaming at the moment

[dominicbeesley]

I learnt on the ZX81 and then the Spectrum, moving to BBC Basic (which I still use every now and then) with proper REPEAT/UNTIL, PROCedures and FuNctions was a real joy. The versions on the Archimedes were probably the height of BASIC. I occasionally have to use MS Visual Basic and VBA for work, while more modern it's not nice.

The Spectrum 128K (which I also owned) and other later versions allowed you to type things in properly and did the tokenizing for you, no longer remembering which shift button followed by which key to get that tricky keyword you were after.

I also had a TI 99/4a for a while....that was woeful!

At work (in my holiday/evening job) I used MS/GW Basic - truly awful except for the COBOL like record descriptors which were nice.

An oddity of the Spectrum was that the top half of its character set was composed of BASIC keywords as opposed to simple characters, pushing BASIC into the depths of the Operating System.

The necessity of using keyboard shortcuts on the Sinclair machines was definitely a shortcoming and not a feature! Nearly all basics store their programs tokenized for speed and space reasons. It's just that the earlier Sinclairs required the user to do the tokenising! Once you'd learned to type and got a proper keyboard typing a line of code in the BBC was way quicker and smoother, especially given that you could abbreviate most keywords.

And as for having a built in assembler, utter joy!

As for Spectrum Basic being faster than BBC Basic, that was not my experience though I'd be interested to see the program that ran faster on a Spectrum than a BBC. (Sure it wasn't an Electron - they were quite slow in graphics modes).

Anyway if you don't own a BBC you can upgrade your speccy to BBC Basic http://mdfs.net/Software/Spectrum/BBCBasic/

D

[mhennessy]

BBC BASIC for Windows is probably the ultimate version of BBC BASIC available today. If you're a Windows programmer, it lets you interface directly the Windows API (not something I've really got good at).

That said, I haven't played with later versions of RISCOS, but as I have a Raspberry Pi, I really should give it a go.

I was playing with BBC BASIC on a BBC Master a couple of weeks back, and while it's a bit like putting on comfortable old shoes, it's actually quite nice and powerful (and so much nicer than Spectrum BASIC - sorry!). OK, so slower than we're used to today with PCs, but still quite usable if you write programs efficiently. I even did a bit of 6502 - partly for fun/nostalgia - and was surprised at how it all came flooding back. 6502 was surprisingly good preparation for Microchip PIC assembly, which I do a fair bit of.

OT: One feature I really like about PHP is associative arrays. That means an array where you can refer to an element using a word rather than a number. Is that feature available elsewhere?

[cmjones01]

Originally Posted by mhennessy

OT: One feature I really like about PHP is associative arrays. That means an array where you can refer to an element using a word rather than a number. Is that feature available elsewhere?

Yes. Most modern languages support it, though under different names. In Python it's a dictionary, and I think it's a map in C++ and it used to be a HashTable in Java though I know things have changed somewhat in that language.

Chris

[mhennessy]

Thanks, Chris

[Gulliver]

I was one of the few people who never had any problems with the keywords on the Sinclair computers. I learned very quickly which key corresponded to which keyword, which shift (on the Speccy) to press and so on...such that when emulators first started to appear in the early 90s I could use a regular UK QWERTY keyboard to program the emulator without reference to the Sinclair keyboard.

I didn't use a genuine Sinclair machine between 1990 and 2011, and it all came flooding back. Though I have forgotten my Z80 machine code.

As for which BASIC is faster, it may depend on what you're doing. The Sinclaid BASIC was good with some mathematical functions, I recall the ZX81 in FAST mode out-performing the Apple II and other far more expensive machines in determining arithmetical problems. But while the ability to place objects in a specified part of the screen is handled very well in Sinclair BASIC, actually moving things around the screen is inefficient and slow compared to the BBC.

But then the machines were a fraction of the cost. And I doubt anyone makes an ethernet or SD adaptor for the BBC Micro in 2016....

[MrBungle]

BBC BASIC on RISCOS is my favourite. It was the most flexible of all BASIC derivatives. Didn't need line numbers, had good structural elements, had a massively powerful inline assembler and good OS integration. I haven't been as productive since I got rid of my Acorn kit. Then again I didn't make a penny out of computers until I jumped into Unix so YMMV.

[arjoll]

Originally Posted by Gulliver

And I doubt anyone makes an ethernet or SD adaptor for the BBC Micro in 2016....

You'd be surprised I haven't looked specifically for the BBC (the BBC and Spectrum are the last items on my vintage computer wish list, but prohibitively expensive here), but you'll find flash (CF or SD) adapters for most models of computer - and if you can't find a specific one, the HxC2001 floppy emulator will give you options. Ethernet is very common too. Some of the emulators are limited runs, so you'll have to wait a little while for critical mass to do another run, but they're out there!

[mhennessy]

Originally Posted by Gulliver

And I doubt anyone makes an ethernet or SD adaptor for the BBC Micro in 2016....

Ethernet adaptor: http://www.sprow.co.uk/bbc/masternet.htm

Compact Flash adaptor: http://www.retroclinic.com/acorn/kit...kitide1mhz.htm