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28 September 2001

Running Programs in BASIC

by Sheldon Greaves
reprinted from "The Amateur Scientist. The Complete 20th Century Collection."

Back in the early 1980s, most computer and science hobbyists wrote computer programs in a language called BASIC. The name is an acronymn for Beginner's Algorithmic Symbolic Instruction Code. Most of the early personal computers such as the TRS 80, the Apple II+ and early IBM desktop models had a version of BASIC available.

Although designed for teaching the rudiments of programming, many people used BASIC to write remarkably sophisticated programs and applications. The features that made BASIC a good system for teaching programming also made it useful for amateurs and hobbyists. The commands were relatively simple. The code was easy to maintain and porting programs from one platform to another was fairly painless. Even today BASIC refuses to die out; some enthusiasts use it for simple programming tasks that do not require the power and sophistication of C, C++, Java and other languages.

However, unless you have an older machine (probably too old to run this product) your computer isn't likely to have BASIC installed. If you want to run some of the programs listed in "The Amateur Scientist" columns from the early 80s, you'll need to find a BASIC interpreter.

BASIC Under Windows
If you have a Windows machine, get into the prompt window and see if you have a directory for QBASIC. This is the older version of BASIC that used to come free with older versions of DOS and was last seen on the install CD for Windows 95. Rumor has it that the Windows 98 distribution CD also has a directory called oldmsdos. You can copy the entire contents of oldmsdos on the CD to a directory on your hard drive called C:\dos. To ensure smooth operation, you need to add C:\dos to your path. If you don't have access to these CDs, get on the web and visit ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Products/Windows/Windows95/CDRomExtras/otherutilities/ and download the file olddos.exe. This file contains QBASIC. You should be able to run it from the DOS prompt under Windows.

Another option is to use 1stBasic, a shareware BASIC interpreter published by PowerBASIC, Inc. A zip filed of this interpreter and supporting files is featured in the Science Software Library disc of The Amateur Scientist CD.

BASIC Under Macintosh
One of the distinguishing features of the first Macintosh computers was that they did not have any programming tools that were immediately available to the average user. Although many third-party programming environments soon became available for Pascal, C, Fourth, and other languages, not much was available for BASIC.

Chipmunk Basic good freeware version of a BASIC interpreter was written by Ron Nicholson, and is also available in the Science Software Library. This interpreter will run on both 68000- and PPC-based Macintoshes.

WARNING!
If you are new to programming, remember that something written in BASIC for the TRS 80 nearly two decades ago probably won't run on one of these interpreters the first time. However, there are a lot of resources on the Web for beginning BASIC programmers (or people looking for a refresher course) to help you understand the code. Try prowling used books stores for older books on BASIC, or find some old-timer who can teach you. BASIC can be frustrating (like any computer language) but it's a very straightforward language and more forgiving than most.