DOS ain't dead

Hi there, first off if this is in the wrong area, please someone tell me and I can either move it there or someone can do it for me.

I am wondering if there is a BASIC programming language out there for DOS.
[
I am talking about code like the following:


10 REM *** A SIMPLE BASIC PROGRAM ***
20 FOR X = 1 TO 10
30 INPUT "What is your name";NAME$(X)
40 INPUT "How old are you";AGE(X)
50 NEXT X
60 FOR Y = 1 TO 10
70 PRINT "PERSON #";Y;" IS NAMED ";NAME$(X);" AND IS ";AGE(Y);" YEARS OLD"
80 NEXT Y
90 END

I know of GWBASIC and BWBASIC but somehow that isn't what I am looking for.

I am using MSDOS 6.22, FreeDOS 1.3RC3, and FreeDOS 1.2 in VirtualBox

Thanks :)

QBASIC (MS-DOS 6) is a good BASIC

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QBasic

> QBASIC (MS-DOS 6) is a good BASIC
>
> See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QBasic


Looking at it at that, somehow I don't remember BASIC looking like that when I started programming in it back around 1982. It had line numbers like I had in my programs, hence why I showed an example like that.

I had done it on Apple // series, Atari 8 bit series, and Vax/VMS systems and they all had line numbers. I had even a program called Microsoft BASIC (on the Atari 800) and it had line numbers.

I have just tested that the following program works perfectly well with QBASIC (from MS-DOS):

10 CLS
20 k% = 0
30 FOR i% = 400 TO 820 STEP 10
40 COLOR k%
50 SOUND i%, 9.1
60 PRINT "F= "; i%; " Hz", "color= "; k%
70 k% = k% + 1
80 IF k% = 16 THEN k% = 0
90 NEXT i%
99 SYSTEM

I did that test with a PC Pentium 3 "S" 1400 MHz Tualatin running on native/real/true/pure MS-DOS 6.00.

Hello DoctorVell,

> Looking at it at that, somehow I don't remember BASIC looking like that
> when I started programming in it back around 1982. It had line numbers
> like I had in my programs, hence why I showed an example like that.

I am pretty sure that

* either GW-BASIC (1983) (https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/forum_entry.php?id=16671)
* or DOS 1.x BASICA (1981) (https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/tree/master/v1.25/bin)

should be quite close to whatever you were looking for. The BASICA works with MS-DOS 1.x and relies on the original IBM PC ROM to function. GW-BASIC works with MS-DOS 2 and above.

Thank you!

---
https://gitlab.com/tkchia · https://codeberg.org/tkchia · 😴 "MOV AX,0D500H+CMOS_REG_D+NMI"

> Hello DoctorVell,
>
> > Looking at it at that, somehow I don't remember BASIC looking like that
> > when I started programming in it back around 1982. It had line numbers
> > like I had in my programs, hence why I showed an example like that.
>
> I am pretty sure that
>
> * either GW-BASIC (1983)
> (https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/forum_entry.php?id=16671)
> * or DOS 1.x BASICA (1981)
> (https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/tree/master/v1.25/bin)
>
> should be quite close to whatever you were looking for. The BASICA works
> with MS-DOS 1.x and relies on the original IBM PC ROM to function.
> GW-BASIC works with MS-DOS 2 and above.
>
> Thank you!


I will look for an .img for it then.

> Hi there, first off if this is in the wrong area, please someone tell me
> and I can either move it there or someone can do it for me.
>
> I am wondering if there is a BASIC programming language out there for DOS.
> [
> I am talking about code like the following:
>
>
> 10 REM *** A SIMPLE BASIC PROGRAM ***
> 20 FOR X = 1 TO 10
> 30 INPUT "What is your name";NAME$(X)
> 40 INPUT "How old are you";AGE(X)
> 50 NEXT X
> 60 FOR Y = 1 TO 10
> 70 PRINT "PERSON #";Y;" IS NAMED ";NAME$(X);" AND IS ";AGE(Y);" YEARS OLD"
> 80 NEXT Y
> 90 END
>
> I know of GWBASIC and BWBASIC but somehow that isn't what I am looking
> for.
>
> I am using MSDOS 6.22, FreeDOS 1.3RC3, and FreeDOS 1.2 in VirtualBox
>
> Thanks :)

Oh, for those thrilling days of yesteryore writing programs
in BASIC on the Radio Shack TRS-80 model 1 circa 1978
with programs & data stored on audio cassettes.

Thanks for the nostalgic look back. :)

PS: Still have mine & it still works.

---
--
http://glennmcc.org/

FreeDOS Software has Development, which includes some BASICs. Actually, that's probably partially outdated, check FreeDOS iBiblio's /basic/ for a few more. But I can already tell you that most people would recommend FreeBASIC (386+, based upon DJGPP but comes with all tools needed, compiles itself). It supports several dialects, too. However, any legacy 16-bit real-mode code doing low-level access will need to be rewritten to be DPMI friendly.