Microsoft GW-Basic Interpreter Source Code • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft GW-Basic Interpreter Source Code

#61

Post by gwbas1c » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 5:48 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #34

gwbas1c wrote: post #21

For awhile googling for GWBasic would find my homepage. (I used to have a video call widget and my username was "GWBasic.") Someone once emailed me looking for support for GWBasic. They apparently got ahold of an old GWBasic program that was saved in an encrypted manner. It was run-only but they couldn't list out the source code. I just dug out my old GWBasic manual. The command was "Save P"

Did the manual have the incredibly easy "decryption" process? https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.msdos.misc/c/PA9sve0eKAk

No. At the time I got the email my GWBasic manual was 3000 miles away.

But it was one of those cases of someone not having good internet etiquette. There was no reference to "GW-Basic" on my home page, other than metadata in the HTML. I should have responded with a link to let me google that for you.

Re: Microsoft GW-Basic Interpreter Source Code

#62

Post by codewiz » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 5:55 PM UTC

The GW-BASIC source code was published 2 years ago: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/microsoft-open-so...

Re: Microsoft GW-Basic Interpreter Source Code

#63

Post by oso2k » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 6:00 PM UTC

For those interested in building this repo, TKChia has a repo with changes for building the repo with MASM 5.1A or JWASM.

https://github.com/tkchia/GW-BASIC

Re: Microsoft GW-Basic Interpreter Source Code

#64

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 6:11 PM UTC

quietbritishjim wrote: post #27

jblazevic wrote: post #22

--------- ---- -- ---- ----- --- ---- ----- COPYRIGHT 1975 BY BILL GATES AND PAUL ALLEN --------- ---- -- ---- ----- --- ---- ----- ORIGINALLY WRITTEN ON THE PDP-10 FROM FEBRUARY 9 TO APRIL 9 1975 BILL GATES WROTE A LOT OF STUFF. PAUL ALLEN WROTE A LOT OF OTHER STUFF AND FAST CODE.

According to Paul Allen's book [1] about his time at Microsoft (admittedly a biased source), his particularly critical contribution was an 8088 emulator/simulator for the PDP-10. That allowed them to write and even interactively debug (if I remember right) BASIC for the 8088 on the PDP. It would've been hopeless to develop directly on a microcomputer, so they would've had to have written on the minicomputer, transfer…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft GW-Basic Interpreter Source Code

#65

Post by dang » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 6:16 PM UTC

codewiz wrote: post #62

The GW-BASIC source code was published 2 years ago: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/microsoft-open-so...

Thanks! Discussed at the time:

The original source code of Microsoft GW-BASIC from 1983 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23266917 - May 2020 (266 comments)

Converting GW-BASIC to the Z80 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23605821 - June 2020 (4 comments)

Help assemble the released GW-BASIC source code - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23275225 - May 2020 (1 comment)

GW-Basic creator Greg Whitten on Joel Spolsky and other MS things - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=506466 - March 2009 (31 comments)

Re: Microsoft GW-Basic Interpreter Source Code

#66

Post by unfocussed_mike » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 6:28 PM UTC

pieter_mj wrote: post #58

unfocussed_mike wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. There's an even more extraordinary story about them travelling to demonstrate their implementation of BASIC to the MITS team. They realise they have not written a bootloader for the Altair, and Allen writes out a bootloader on the plane, which works when they get to MITS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_BASIC#Origin_and_develo... My first encounter with a real Microsoft BASIC wasn't for another 15 years; th…

Interesting! Could you explain in a bit more detail how you used it for your CS project?

Oh I just mean, QBasic was the language I used for that project.

I can't actually remember it in detail now, but this was when I was 15 or 16. It was a database application; I guess mine would have been music lending.

I wonder if I still have the code. I definitely still wish I had the book.

I really enjoyed QBASIC because of the gentle way you were exposed to better programming practices; I've always admired that.

Five or six years later, my uni project was a BASIC-to-C transpiler for a simple dialect of BASIC as a teaching language with some specific language extensions for message-passing parallel programming. It had a simple IDE, too.

In some ways it is a shame BASIC itself is really gone; modern implementations only have a whisper of its original simplicity.

Re: Microsoft GW-Basic Interpreter Source Code

#67

Post by cbm-vic-20 » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 6:30 PM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #55

scionthefly wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I might be able to use a PiDP-11 microcomputer, presuming it is compatible with thd PDP-10, to run an 8088 emulator, on which I could run early DOS programs?

PDP-11 and PDP-10 are completely different. The 11 was in the DEC 16-bit series and the 10 was in the DEC 36-bit series.

While this is completely true, the PiDP-11 mentioned by the parent is based on SimH, which does simulate PDP-10 (as well as dozens of other early systems).

[1] https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/pidp-11 [2] https://github.com/simh/simh

Re: Microsoft GW-Basic Interpreter Source Code

#68

Post by wvenable » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 6:56 PM UTC

notacoward wrote: post #6

All of the "comments are useless because they get out of date" folks should look at this code, which is still comprehensible 40 years later because of the comments.

75% of assembly programming is writing comments.

Re: Microsoft GW-Basic Interpreter Source Code

#69

Post by Emigre_ » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 7:04 PM UTC

julian_sark wrote: post #32

Ah. GW Basic. Memories. On the very first day our household had a PC, they called "the guy". "The guy" was supposedly a PC guru, and he explained to me how to load a program in GW basic. And he put GW Basic in my autoexec.bat so it would launch automatically. On day #2, I had gotten hold of some games on the school yard and naturally attempted to load them in GW basic: "LOAD a:\alleycat.exe". It didn't work well. But…

Oooh Alley Cat! That game was so good!…

Re: Microsoft GW-Basic Interpreter Source Code

#70

Post by WalterBright » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 7:13 PM UTC

unfocussed_mike wrote: post #54

quietbritishjim wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Paul Allen's book [1] about his time at Microsoft (admittedly a biased source), his particularly critical contribution was an 8088 emulator/simulator for the PDP-10. That allowed them to write and even interactively debug (if I remember right) BASIC for the 8088 on the PDP. It would've been hopeless to develop directly on a microcomputer, so they would've had to have written on the minicomputer, transfer…

Yes. There's an even more extraordinary story about them travelling to demonstrate their implementation of BASIC to the MITS team. They realise they have not written a bootloader for the Altair, and Allen writes out a bootloader on the plane, which works when they get to MITS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_BASIC#Origin_and_develo... My first encounter with a real Microsoft BASIC wasn't for another 15 years; th…

Writing an 8080 emulator on the -10 is not extraordinary, after all, it's a trivial instruction set.

What was extraordinary is Allen realizing he could do this as a shortcut.