31–37 of 37 posts
Previous discussion: Microsoft BASIC for 6502 Microprocessor – Version 1.1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45118392 - Sept 2025 (198 comments) Related ongoing thread: Microsoft open-sources "the earliest DOS source code discovered to date" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48253386 - May 2026 (110 comments)
Sadly nothing in Scott's blog post about how they obtained the source. Was it still in Microsoft's archives? Did they happen upon some tractor-feed print-outs they had to type in by hand?
I assume today typing in by hand is no longer needed, with text parsing from images being table stakes for LLMs.
This source is a lot smaller, but still annoying if they had to type it all in or OCR it.
The Apple ][ basic interpreter placed its "get next token" routine down in the first 255 bytes of the computer's memory. Being there allowed for the machine instructions to be fetched twice as fast as "high memory". And "get next token" is definitely a good guess for hotpath.
Sadly nothing in Scott's blog post about how they obtained the source. Was it still in Microsoft's archives? Did they happen upon some tractor-feed print-outs they had to type in by hand?
https://www.pagetable.com/?p=774
This is what Microsoft slapped a license and an AI-slop README on. Sure, they can legally do that, they still own the copyright, but it's still pretty funny that they're essentially laundering pirated software.
The Zork I/II/III releases were even more blatant, with git commits adding license texts to existing pirate (or, if you prefer, archival) releases of the old source code:
https://github.com/historicalsource/zork1
https://github.com/historicalsource/zork2
https://github.com/historicalsource/zork3
It makes me wonder how many of Microsoft's other releases of old source code are laundered pirate releases, but I don't want to be too harsh. Microsoft's actions in these cases are considerably nicer than, say, what Warner Bros. did about pirated Mortal Kombat 2 source code (takedown), or Nintendo's continued legal hostility toward everyone everywhere. Maybe other companies could learn not to be so dog-in-the-manger about their precious Intellectual Property.
The Apple ][ basic interpreter placed its "get next token" routine down in the first 255 bytes of the computer's memory. Being there allowed for the machine instructions to be fetched twice as fast as "high memory". And "get next token" is definitely a good guess for hotpath.
C64 also has a token parsing routine in zeropage.
Sadly nothing in Scott's blog post about how they obtained the source. Was it still in Microsoft's archives? Did they happen upon some tractor-feed print-outs they had to type in by hand?
Sadly nothing in Scott's blog post about how they obtained the source. Was it still in Microsoft's archives? Did they happen upon some tractor-feed print-outs they had to type in by hand?