B32 Business Basic

Last updated

B32 Business Basic was a competitor to Data General Business Basic written by Murray Haszard in 1986. It ran on the Data General Eclipse MV line of computers initially, and was ported to Unix in 1989 and to DOS in 1991.

B32 Software was the company that developed and supported B32 Business Basic, with the original site in Auckland, New Zealand, supplemented by a sales and support centre in Blue Ash, Ohio.

The B32 interpreter was highly compatible with Data General Business Basic (DGBB), but it also enhanced and extended that language in many ways. Like DGBB, B32 could access Data General's INFOS II database and it could use DGBB's lock server or its own improved version. B32 was over twice as fast for number crunching, string manipulation, and disk I/O. Many of the internal restrictions of DGBB were removed. B32 allowed 32,767 line numbers (65,535 in later versions), compared with DGBB's 9,999. B32 allowed more memory for programs, more simultaneous locks, and more files to be open at once. Language enhancements included a high-speed internal sort routine, do-while blocks, and the ability to step backwards through an indexed file. Debugging facilities were also significantly improved over DGBB.

B32 allowed programs to run with full cursor positioning and attribute support on non-Data General terminals, even programs which had Data General control sequences hard-coded into them.

B32 carried out all arithmetic at "quad precision", i.e. 64-bit, and emulated the "triple precision" and "double precision" versions of DGBB at runtime. This avoided the subtle incompatibilities between the two versions of DGBB.

On Unix and DOS, B32 emulated all commonly used system calls of Data General's AOS/VS and RDOS operating systems, including implementing its own symbolic links on SCO Xenix and DOS.

In 1991, a features war between B32 and one of its competitors, Transoft's Universal Business Basic, saw major improvements to the B32 language. B32 added a Bluebird Business Basic emulation mode, made line numbers optional, and added subroutine calls by name with parameter passing.

Transoft had greater financial resources than B32, and more effective marketing. It purchased B32 in 1992. The DOS and Unix versions of B32 were discarded as Universal Business Basic ran on those operating systems, but the Eclipse MV version of B32 continued to be sold while the MV line lasted. Some of the B32 Software staff in Blue Ash moved to Transoft's Atlanta, Georgia office. The New Zealand staff went on to found Binary Research.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GW-BASIC</span> Dialect of the BASIC programming language

GW-BASIC is a dialect of the BASIC programming language developed by Microsoft from IBM BASICA. Functionally identical to BASICA, its BASIC interpreter is a fully self-contained executable and does not need the Cassette BASIC ROM found in the original. It was bundled with MS-DOS operating systems on IBM PC–compatibles by Microsoft.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shell script</span> Script written for the shell, or command line interpreter, of an operating system

A shell script is a computer program designed to be run by a Unix shell, a command-line interpreter. The various dialects of shell scripts are considered to be command languages. Typical operations performed by shell scripts include file manipulation, program execution, and printing text. A script which sets up the environment, runs the program, and does any necessary cleanup or logging, is called a wrapper.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Terminal emulator</span> Program that emulates a video terminal

A terminal emulator, or terminal application, is a computer program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture. Though typically synonymous with a shell or text terminal, the term terminal covers all remote terminals, including graphical interfaces. A terminal emulator inside a graphical user interface is often called a terminal window.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of operating systems</span> Aspect of computing history

Computer operating systems (OSes) provide a set of functions needed and used by most application programs on a computer, and the links needed to control and synchronize computer hardware. On the first computers, with no operating system, every program needed the full hardware specification to run correctly and perform standard tasks, and its own drivers for peripheral devices like printers and punched paper card readers. The growing complexity of hardware and application programs eventually made operating systems a necessity for everyday use.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Data General</span> Minicomputer manufacturer, 1968–1999

Data General Corporation was one of the first minicomputer firms of the late 1960s. Three of the four founders were former employees of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).

The Data General RDOS is a real-time operating system released in 1970. The software was bundled with the company's popular Nova and Eclipse minicomputers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">RSTS/E</span> Computer operating system

RSTS is a multi-user time-sharing operating system developed by Digital Equipment Corporation for the PDP-11 series of 16-bit minicomputers. The first version of RSTS was implemented in 1970 by DEC software engineers that developed the TSS-8 time-sharing operating system for the PDP-8. The last version of RSTS was released in September 1992. RSTS-11 and RSTS/E are usually referred to just as "RSTS" and this article will generally use the shorter form. RSTS-11 supports the BASIC programming language, an extended version called BASIC-PLUS, developed under contract by Evans Griffiths & Hart of Boston. Starting with RSTS/E version 5B, DEC added support for additional programming languages by emulating the execution environment of the RT-11 and RSX-11 operating systems.

The Pick Operating System, also known as the Pick System or simply Pick, is a demand-paged, multi-user, virtual memory, time-sharing computer operating system based around a MultiValue database. Pick is used primarily for business data processing. It is named after one of its developers, Dick Pick.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Text-based user interface</span> Type of interface based on outputting to or controlling a text display

In computing, text-based user interfaces (TUI), is a retronym describing a type of user interface (UI) common as an early form of human–computer interaction, before the advent of bitmapped displays and modern conventional graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Like modern GUIs, they can use the entire screen area and may accept mouse and other inputs. They may also use color and often structure the display using box-drawing characters such as ┌ and ╣. The modern context of use is usually a terminal emulator.

Binary Research Ltd was a company founded in Auckland, New Zealand, by Murray Haszard in 1991 after the sale of his previous company, B32 Software.

Data General Business Basic was a BASIC interpreter marketed by Data General for their Nova minicomputer in the 1970s, and later ported to the Data General Eclipse MV and AViiON computers. Most business applications for the Nova were developed in Business Basic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murray Haszard</span>

Murray Hayden Haszard is a New Zealand entrepreneur and businessman who founded the companies B32 Software and Binary Research and is the chairman of Ilion Technology.

Business Basic is a category of variants of the BASIC computer programming language which were specialised for business use on minicomputers in the 1970s and 1980s. To the underlying BASIC language, these dialects added record handling instructions similar to those in COBOL, allowing programmers to build complex file-handling applications using what was at that time a much more modern programming language. MAI Systems released the first example as MAI Basic Four in 1972, and several similar versions emerged through the 1970s.

Data General AOS was the name of a family of operating systems for Data General 16-bit Eclipse C, M, and S minicomputers, followed by AOS/VS and AOS/RT32 (1980) and later AOS/VS II (1988) for the 32-bit Eclipse MV line.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FutureBASIC</span>

FutureBasic is a free BASIC compiler for Apple Inc.'s Macintosh.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Command-line interface</span> Computer interface that uses text

A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with a computer program by inputting lines of text called command-lines. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user-friendly alternative to the non-interactive interface available with punched cards.

DG/L is a programming language developed by Data General Corp for the Nova, Eclipse, and Eclipse/MV families of minicomputers in the 1970s and early 1980s.

References