ms80basic
Microsoft BASIC-80
After the Altair BASIC in its 8kB version, Microsoft created a more generic and refined version which would be ported to other 8-bit and 16-bit processors and soon would be licensed to form the basis of the most famous BASIC implementations of the decade. The so-called Microsoft BASIC-80 is the core of many interpreters and compilers listed here.
It was actually tempting to categorize such other BASICs as children of BASIC-80 in this section, but a decision was built upon the fact that BASIC-80 was not released as a stand-alone product nor implemented on a computer in its pure form (as far as I could investigate its history).
Comercially, BASIC-80 has been only a codebase written for the Intel 8080 and, by extension, for Zilog's Z-80, very soon ported to Motorola's 6800 and 6809 and MOS Technology 6502. By doing this, Microsoft would try to sell it not to final consumers, but to manufacturers which would bundle customized MS-BASIC with their machines, much like their previous experience with MITS and Altair BASIC.
More than this however, MS BASIC-80 became the de facto standard by which many other BASICs were measured in the microcomputer era and the final age of numbered-lines BASICs. When the folks from Dartmouth and ANSI came along to define an official standard, the genes of BASIC-80 were already pretty much spread all over, for good and for bad. Many of its idiosyncrasies and the various differences among implementations, either from the original ports or by manufactures customizations, were the beggining of the eternal split which to date holds back any practical idea of a "common BASIC" and the standardization seen in other programming languages ecosystems.
Where it is/was used
Noteworthy characteristics
Environment and usage
Extensions
Curiosities
Related to...
Influenced by
Influence for
Versions and successors
This page has to be an exception to this site's concepts and treatment of versions and successors. MS BASIC-80 had many children which share a lot of commonalities but are also way too peculiar.
- Most direct descendents:
- Microsoft MBASIC is something like a stripped-down but direct version of BASIC-80 made for the CP/M operating system, so it could not have hardware-specific features1).
- BASIC-86, made for for Seattle Computer Products' 8086 card for the S-100 Bus
- GW-BASIC for IBM-PC clones, also known as BASICA for the Big Blue originals
- "Half-siblings" which were customized enough to form BASIC families on their own:
- Commodore BASIC in various versions
- Thomson BASIC for the French manufacturer
- TRS-80 Microsoft BASICs, Level II and Level III
- Color BASIC for the Tandy Color Computer
- Model 100, the N82 version of BASIC-80 for Tandy´s famous portable and its successors