GW-BASIC
GW-BASIC is a family of BASIC programming languages developed by Microsoft initially in 1981. Microsoft modified their BASIC program to fit the needs of various companies like IBM, Tandy Corporation, and Compaq who would include their version of BASIC with the computers they sold. Each version used a similar command set and primitive IDE, but they also had unique functionality to work with their different hardware. These versions initially went under a host of different names like Cassette BASIC, Diskette BASIC, Advanced BASIC, and PCjr Cartridge BASIC, but, by the mid-1980s, Microsoft began marketing them all under the name, GW-BASIC. MS-DOS versions 3 and 4 included GW-BASIC, but, by the release of MS-DOS 5 in 1991, Microsoft began distributing the more impressive QuickBASIC. The language is, thankfully, case-insenstive.
Contents
Personal
For a short while in the late 1980s and early 1990s, before my family bought our first computer, I used GW-BASIC on my cousin Brian's Tandy 1000. The very first computer program I had ever personally written was in GW-BASIC. A lot of the first programs I played around with were hand-typed in from the Slipped Disk Show in 321 Contact magazine and even in my grade school textbooks.
I didn't know it at the time, but the Tandy 1000 version of GW-BASIC included special commands to access the machine's 3-voice audio chip. I didn't learn about this until decades later, and I was a bit bummed because my earliest programs still used the terrible PC speaker.
Download
- Download (Info) - Several different versions of GW-BASIC, earlier Microsoft BASICs, and the source code of GW-BASIC.
Documentation
Pre-GW-BASIC reference manual.
Tandy 1000 GW-BASIC manual.
GW-BASIC User's Guide.
Gallery
The interpreter of v3.23.
The Donkey game included in early PC BASIC versions.
Links
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_BASIC - Wikipedia (IBM BASIC).
- robhagemans.github.io/pcbasic/download.html - Recreation of PC-BASIC.
