Apple 1 Integer BASIC

Jim

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May 27, 2021, 2:47:17 PM5/27/21

to OpenAC1

I've been tinkering with Apple 1 Integer BASIC. I managed to relocate it, patch the I/O, and get it running on my PAL-1 (a KIM-1 clone). (It wasn't exactly that easy, but it wasn't too bad.)

Really wish I had an A1 clone to work with it on also (hint, hint)... :-)

Thanks,

Jim

famousd...@gmail.com

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May 29, 2021, 10:32:08 AM5/29/21

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Yeah that's a project I need to get back to...

Jim

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May 29, 2021, 5:10:48 PM5/29/21

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Aww man... That's a buzz kill.

6502 solving a sudoku puzzle in 23 seconds today. The processor I started on in high school and still my favorite!

Tom Wilson

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Jun 2, 2021, 3:39:42 PM6/2/21

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Have any of you heard of paulscottrobson's 6502 BASIC? This came up in discussion on the Commander X16 forum the other day.

https://github.com/paulscottrobson/6502-basic

Also, it's worth checking out Michael Stiel's BASIC git: he's got Microsoft BASIC assembled for various 6502 machines, including the Apple I.

https://github.com/mist64/msbasic

I'm wondering if it would be worth making a ROM available with that BASIC on it. I may play with this in the Apple-I emulator to see what I can come up with.

Jim

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Jun 3, 2021, 9:48:50 AM6/3/21

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I hadn't seen the work by Paul before. It assumes a lot of capabilities the Apple 1 didn't have; there is no timed interrupt tics and no graphics--not even a proper cursor. :-) You would have to gut a fair amount of its functionality to have something supported by traditional Apple 1 style hardware.

One of my favorite Woz stories about the Apple 1... "I spent a couple of hours trying to get the interrupt version of it working, but I kept failing. I couldn’t write a new program into the PROMs. To do that, I’d have to go to that other building again, just to burn the program into the chip... Finally I gave up and just popped in the other two PROMs, the ones with the 'polling' version of the monitor program. I typed a few keys on the keyboard and I was shocked! The letters were displayed on the screen!"

On MS BASIC, Applesoft v1 and Applesoft v2 were actually both for the Apple 2. There was never a floating point basic from Apple for the Apple 1. There is a (modern) back-ported version around that removes the graphics functions and some of the trig functions. That version can run on just about any 6502 machine with hooks to character in and out routines. I know it has been run on Apple 1 clones. I think it takes around 6.5K of memory.