Altair Basic Discussion and Calculator Forensics

[Grant Stockly]

This is a discussion started off list.

>Startrek might port to 680 BASIC.

It runs the 8080 Tic Tac Toe program.  I haven't tried loading star trek 
yet.  It might just work out of the box.  I'll find out tonight.

More responses below...

>There are a couple of issues that I am not too sure about.
>
>The 680 BASIC VERSION 1.1 REV 3.2 lable uses VERSION and REVISION. I used
>mostly 300-5-C. The C and F revisions of Version 5 BASIC are the only 300
>series that work. There is a Version 5.0 that I don't remember much about. I
>started with BASIC 4.1 and always thought it was the first "good" version. I
>assumed all earlier versions were buggy and missing features.
>
>At first, I thought 680 BASIC VERSION 1.1 REV 3.2 was similar to 8080 BASIC
>3.2. Now I don't know because I'm not used to working with Revision numbers.
>The 300 series uses Revision letters. At this point, I don't know how the
>680 and 8080 BASIC versions compare. The 680 BASIC VERSION 1.1 REV 3.2
>language and interpreter have at least one feature introduced in 8080 BASIC
>4.0.
>
>The term "regular BASIC" is ambigous. There are several versions of BASIC.
>Which ones are "regular"? The term BASIC can refer to the language or the
>interpreter. When someone refers to 8K BASIC, the size is obvious and a set
>of language features is assumed. Disk Extended BASIC adds language features,
>bug fixes, and major internal changes. Do all 8K BASICS support the same
>languages and syntax.
>
>The term "patches" could be accurate, but I'm more comfortable with version
>and revision. The label MITS ALTAIR 680 BASIC VERSION 1.1 REV 3.2 may be a
>port of 8K BASIC. What version and revision of 8K BASIC? The examples below
>show the same lable on two two sizes of interpreter. MITS should have
>changed the lables.
>
>I don't know which 680 BASIC VERSION 1.1 REV 3.2 came first. Do they both
>translate the same exact language? The obvious guess would be that the paper
>tape interpreter has the CSAVE command removed or disabled. It could also be
>that the smaller BASIC supports the older CSAVE syntax. It could also be
>that the bigger version has changes and someone forgot to bump the revision
>number.

I think non KCACR came first.  The KCACR doesn't seem very popular.  Its 
not even in a lot of the -system- documentation.  What could we do to 
determine if the basics are the same?  This would tell us the math function 
similarity...

http://www.rskey.org/~mwsebastian/miscprj/forensics.htm

I could run the forensics on the Altair32 emulator and on both versions of 
the 680 basic.  If it matches up with any of the 8080 basics then we've 
found the "version" of 8080 basic used as a starting point.

>Does CSAVE work if you load the paper tape version into a machine with a
>cassette interface?

Nope.  Not with any of the syntax changes either.

Grant