Which 'free' Basic language program?

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Doc Mindie

Why code in a dead BASIC?

Old 8 bit BASIC interpreters are slow and unstructured, no fun to be had for me.

Originally Posted by Doc Mindie

Why code on a dead computer in the first place?

For fun and the challenge.

[Doc Mindie]

Originally Posted by Thorham

Old 8 bit BASIC interpreters are slow and unstructured, no fun to be had for me.

For fun and the challenge.

Excactly. some people think the C=64 BASIC is fun and challenging. Some people thinks AmigaBASIC is fun and challenging

And there's even perverts who thinks Windows if fun, it's certainly a challenge to stay calm, though.

[Lonewolf10]

Originally Posted by Doc Mindie

BUT: To create the "same" demo on a Speccy with only a 6502 (or was it the Z-80?) at 1MHz and 48kB, Now THAT is satisfaction.

Spectrums (Z80, Z81, Spectrum 48K, Spectrum 128K (+2/+2a/+2b/+2c/+3)) all had the Z80 at the helm


Regards,
Lonewolf10

[Doc Mindie]

Originally Posted by Lonewolf10

Spectrums (Z80, Z81, Spectrum 48K, Spectrum 128K (+2/+2a/+2b/+2c/+3)) all had the Z80 at the helm


Regards,
Lonewolf10

The principle remains, though... to make a superstunning demo on such a limited piece of hardware, is a real challenge and also (I would believe) for most people, give a real satisfaction.

Doesn't really matter what language you're coding in, though the more limited, the more the challenge, and thus the more satisfaction when you see it working ^^

And of course... if you make... say... "State of the Art" for the C=64 utilising only C=64 BASIC, your epeen will grow to extreme proportions :P

[Coagulus]

Originally Posted by Doc Mindie

Doesn't really matter what language you're coding in, though the more limited, the more the challenge, and thus the more satisfaction when you see it working ^^

true, I have been most chuffed when I've accomplished something the language I've used isn't supposed to be able to do! (Usually a BASIC!)

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Doc Mindie

Excactly. some people think the C=64 BASIC is fun and challenging. Some people thinks AmigaBASIC is fun and challenging

Okay, okay, I got it It's just that I only use 680x0 for fun and the challenge, while I use FreeBasic on the peecee as a utility language, so I never expected people to enjoy old Basic dialects.

Originally Posted by Doc Mindie

And there's even perverts who thinks Windows if fun, it's certainly a challenge to stay calm, though.

Really? Hard to believe...

[Doc Mindie]

There was an article about it on the Onion, so it must be true :P

Having got my Raspberry Pi up and running, I was hoping (as a 74 year-old) to be able to draw on past experience so as to be able to drive the GPIO in BASIC. However I quickly discovered that bwBASIC does not have the necessary PEEK and POKE statements and GWBASIC only handles 8 bit registers.

Is there a BASIC which will run under the Raspberry Pi version of LINUX and which will enable me to load 32 bit registers having 32 bit Adresses?

[ajk]

I am not an expert on the Raspberry Pi, and not really Linux either, but as far as I can imagine, you can't have old-style PEEK and POKE commands in a program running on Linux. Each of the programs will have a virtual address space and can't operate on the actual physical addresses directly - any access to peripherals would have to go through the operating system (Linux).

This is not to say that a Basic interpreter that emulates this behaviour somehow might not exist, but I don't know of such a thing at least.

Thanks very much ajk. I have had some great advice from posters on my ybw.com forum (Practical Boat Owner!) and they have explained that I need to "export" the GPIO pins with a bit of LINUX. Then I can access the direction and value files of the GPIO pins through a BASIC OPEN statement and I am trying to use INPUT# and PRINT# to read and write into those files.

One of the posters is kindly having a look at my first attempt at the code, so I'm waiting to see what he says.

I lent the R-Pi and the Input/output experimental board to a pal, so I will have to get it back before I can try out the code.