This is a list of computers with on-board BASIC. They shipped standard with a version of BASIC that was installed in the computer. The computers can access the BASIC language without the user inserting cartridges or loading software from external media.
Make | Model | Version | Author | Bitwise Ops | FOR/NEXT Skip | Numeric Support | Variable Name Length | Tokenization |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Acorn | Atom | Atom BASIC, BBC BASIC I (Upgrade ROM) | ||||||
Acorn | Electron | BBC BASIC II | Sophie Wilson | Yes | No | I:32; FP:32/8 | Partial | |
Acorn | BBC Micro | BBC BASIC I, II, III | Sophie Wilson | Yes | No | I:32; FP:32/8 | Partial | |
Acorn | BBC Master | BBC BASIC IV | Sophie Wilson | Yes | No | I:32; FP:32/8 | Partial | |
Acorn | BBC Master Compact | BBC BASIC IV (Recoded Maths Routines) | Sophie Wilson | Yes | No | I:32; FP:32/8 | Partial | |
Acorn | Archimedes | BBC BASIC V | Yes | No | Partial | |||
Acorn | Risc PC | BBC BASIC VI | Yes | No | Partial | |||
Amstrad | CPC 464 | Locomotive BASIC 1.0 | Locomotive Software | Yes | Partial | |||
Amstrad | CPC 6128 | Locomotive BASIC 1.1 | Locomotive Software | Yes | Partial | |||
Amstrad | NC 100 | BBC BASIC | Richard Russell? | Yes | No | |||
Amstrad | NC 150 | BBC BASIC | Richard Russell? | Yes | No | |||
Amstrad | NC 200 | BBC BASIC | Richard Russell? | Yes | No | |||
Apple | Apple II | Integer | Steve Wozniak | No | No | I | Full | |
Apple | Apple II | Applesoft | Microsoft | No | No | I:16,FP:31/8 | 2 | Full |
Applied Technology | MicroBee | MicroWorld BASIC | Matthew Starr | No | Yes | FP | ||
Atari, Inc. | 600XL, 800XL | Atari BASIC Rev. B or C | Shepardson Microsystems | No | No | 120 | Full | |
Atari Corporation | 65XE, 130XE, 800XE, XEGS | Atari BASIC Rev. C | Shepardson Microsystems | No | No | 120 | Full | |
Cambridge Computer | Z88 | BBC BASIC | Yes | No | ||||
Commodore | PET | Commodore BASIC 1.0, 2.0, 4.0 | Microsoft | Yes | No | |||
Commodore | CBM 4000/8000 | Commodore BASIC 4.0 | Microsoft | Yes | No | |||
Commodore | VIC-20 | Commodore BASIC 2.0 | Microsoft | Yes | No | |||
Commodore | Commodore 64 | Commodore BASIC 2.0 | Microsoft | Yes | No | 2 | Partial | |
Commodore | C16 | Commodore BASIC 3.5 | Microsoft | Yes | No | |||
Commodore | Plus/4 | Commodore BASIC 3.5 | Microsoft | Yes | No | |||
Commodore | C128 | Commodore BASIC 7.0 | Microsoft | Yes | No | |||
Compukit | UK101 | Microsoft | No | |||||
Hewlett-Packard | Series 80 | Hewlett-Packard | No | I:32,FP:64 | 2 | Full | ||
IBM | PC 5150 | Cassette BASIC | Microsoft | Yes | Yes | 40 | Partial | |
IBM | XT 5160 | Microsoft | Yes | Yes | ||||
IBM | PS/2 | Microsoft | Yes | Yes | ||||
Luxor AB | ABC 80 | DIAB | Yes | Yes | I:16/FP | 2 | Full | |
Luxor AB | ABC 800 | BASIC II | DIAB | Yes | Yes | I:16; FP 32 or 64 bits | ||
Luxor AB | ABC 802 | BASIC II | DIAB | Yes | Yes | I:16; FP 32 or 64 bits | ||
Luxor AB | ABC 806 | BASIC II | DIAB | Yes | Yes | I:16; FP 32 or 64 bits | ||
Mattel | Aquarius | |||||||
Various | MSX, MSX2, MSX2+, MSX tR | MSX-BASIC v1.0 - v4.0 | Microsoft | Yes | No | I:16; FP 32 or 64 bits | 2 | Partial |
NEC | PC-6001 | N60-BASIC | NEC/Microsoft | |||||
NEC | PC-8001 | N-BASIC | NEC/Microsoft | |||||
NEC | PC-8801 | N88-BASIC and N-BASIC | NEC/Microsoft | |||||
NEC | PC-9801 | N88-BASIC | NEC/Microsoft | |||||
NEC | PC-9821 | N88-BASIC (86 Version) | NEC/Microsoft | |||||
Panasonic | JR-200 | JR-BASIC | ||||||
Radio Shack | TRS-80 Model 1 | Level I | Li-Chen Wang | |||||
Radio Shack | TRS-80 Model 1 | Level II | Microsoft | Yes | Yes | I:16; FP 32 or 64 bits | Full | |
Radio Shack | TRS-80 Model III | Level I | ||||||
Radio Shack | TRS-80 Model III | Level II | Microsoft | Yes | Yes | I:16; FP 32 or 64 bits | Full | |
Radio Shack | TRS-80 Model 4 | Level II | Microsoft | Yes | Yes | I:16; FP 32 or 64 bits | Full | |
Radio Shack | TRS-80 Model 4D | Level II | Microsoft | Yes | Yes | I:16; FP 32 or 64 bits | Full | |
Radio Shack | TRS-80 Pocket Computer PC-1 | |||||||
Radio Shack | TRS-80 PC-2 | |||||||
Radio Shack | TRS-80 PC-3 | |||||||
Radio Shack | TRS-80 PC-4 | |||||||
Radio Shack | TRS-80 CoCo | Microsoft | Yes | Yes | I:16; FP 32 or 64 bits | Full | ||
Radio Shack | TRS-80 CoCo 2 | Microsoft | Yes | Yes | I:16; FP 32 or 64 bits | Full | ||
Radio Shack | TRS-80 CoCo 3 | Microsoft | Yes | Yes | I:16; FP 32 or 64 bits | Full | ||
Radio Shack | TRS-80 M100 | Microsoft | Yes | Yes | I:16; FP 32 or 64 bits | Full | ||
Radio Shack | TRS-80 M102 | Microsoft | Yes | Yes | I:16; FP 32 or 64 bits | Full | ||
Radio Shack | TRS-80 MC-10 | Microsoft | Yes | No | FP | 2 | Partial | |
Sharp | PC-1500 | No | Full | |||||
Sinclair | ZX80 | Sinclair BASIC 4k | Nine Tiles Networks | |||||
Sinclair | ZX81 | Sinclair BASIC 8k | Nine Tiles Networks | No | Yes | Partial | ||
Sinclair | ZX Spectrum | Sinclair BASIC 48 | Nine Tiles Networks | No | Yes | Partial | ||
Sinclair | ZX Spectrum + | Sinclair BASIC 48 | Nine Tiles Networks | |||||
Sinclair | ZX Spectrum 128 | Sinclair BASIC 128 and 48 | Nine Tiles Networks | |||||
Sinclair | ZX Spectrum +2 | Sinclair BASIC 128 and 48 | Nine Tiles Networks | No | Yes | Partial | ||
Sinclair | ZX Spectrum +3 | Sinclair BASIC +3 and 48 | Nine Tiles Networks | |||||
Tangerine Computer Systems | Oric-1 | Yes | No | 2 | Partial | |||
Texas Instruments | TI-99/4A | TI BASIC | No | No | Full | |||
Texas Instruments | Compact Computer 40 | Yes | 2 | Full | ||||
Wang | Wang 2300 | Wang BASIC | ||||||
Wang | Wang 2200 | Wang BASIC | ||||||
Wang | Wang 2200VP | Wang BASIC-2 |
BASICs with Bitwise Ops use -1 as true and the AND and OR operators perform a bitwise operation on the arguments.
FOR
/NEXT
skip means that body of the loop is skipped if the initial value of the loop times the sign of the step exceeds the final value times the sign of the step (such as 2 TO 1 STEP 1
or 1 TO 2 STEP -1
). The statements inside the FOR
/NEXT
loop will not be executed at all. [1] [2]
Numeric support indicates if a BASIC supports Integers and/or Floating Point.
Variable Name Length is how many characters of a variable name are used to determine uniqueness.
Full tokenization means that all keywords are converted to tokens and all extra space characters are removed. Partial tokenization leaves extra space characters in the source. None means that no tokenization is done. How to test for full tokenization:
10PRINT"HELLO"LIST
If it is fully tokenized it should return 10 PRINT "HELLO" without all the extra spaces that were entered.
Applesoft BASIC is a dialect of Microsoft BASIC, developed by Marc McDonald and Ric Weiland, supplied with the Apple II series of computers. It supersedes Integer BASIC and is the BASIC in ROM in all Apple II series computers after the original Apple II model. It is also referred to as FP BASIC because of the Apple DOS command FP
used to invoke it, instead of INT
for Integer BASIC.
BASIC is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College in 1963. They wanted to enable students in non-scientific fields to use computers. At the time, nearly all computers required writing custom software, which only scientists and mathematicians tended to learn.
Tiny BASIC is a family of dialects of the BASIC programming language that can fit into 4 or fewer KBs of memory. Tiny BASIC was designed by Dennis Allison and the People's Computer Company (PCC) in response to the open letter published by Bill Gates complaining about users pirating Altair BASIC, which sold for $150. Tiny BASIC was intended to be a completely free version of BASIC that would run on the same early microcomputers.
Atari BASIC is an interpreter for the BASIC programming language that shipped with the Atari 8-bit family of 6502-based home computers. Unlike most American BASICs of the home computer era, Atari BASIC is not a derivative of Microsoft BASIC and differs in significant ways. It includes keywords for Atari-specific features and lacks support for string arrays, for example.
Integer BASIC is a BASIC interpreter written by Steve Wozniak for the Apple I and Apple II computers. Originally available on cassette for the Apple I in 1976, then included in ROM on the Apple II from its release in 1977, it was the first version of BASIC used by many early home computer owners.
Commodore BASIC, also known as PET BASIC or CBM-BASIC, is the dialect of the BASIC programming language used in Commodore International's 8-bit home computer line, stretching from the PET (1977) to the Commodore 128 (1985).
In computer science a for-loop or for loop is a control flow statement for specifying iteration. Specifically, a for loop functions by running a section of code repeatedly until a certain condition has been satisfied.
BASIC-PLUS is an extended dialect of the BASIC programming language that was developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) for use on its RSTS/E time-sharing operating system for the PDP-11 series of 16-bit minicomputers in the early 1970s through the 1980s.
TI-BASIC is the official name of a BASIC-like language built into Texas Instruments (TI)'s graphing calculators. TI-BASIC is a language family of three different and incompatible versions, released on different products:
ASIC is a compiler and integrated development environment for a subset of the BASIC programming language. It was released for MS-DOS and compatible systems as shareware. Written by Dave Visti of 80/20 Software, it was one of the few BASIC compilers legally available for download from BBSes. ASIC allows compiling to an EXE or COM file. A COM file for Hello world program is 360 bytes.
HP Time-Shared BASIC is a BASIC programming language interpreter for Hewlett-Packard's HP 2000 line of minicomputer-based time-sharing computer systems. TSB is historically notable as the platform that released the first public versions of the game Star Trek.
Color BASIC is the implementation of Microsoft BASIC that is included in the ROM of the Tandy/Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computers manufactured between 1980 and 1991. BASIC is a high level language with simple syntax that makes it easy to write simple programs. Color BASIC is interpreted, that is, decoded as it is run.
C# Open Source Managed Operating System (Cosmos) is a toolkit for building GUI and command-line based operating systems, written mostly in the programming language C# and small amounts of a high level assembly language named X#. Cosmos is a backronym, in that the acronym was chosen before the meaning. It is open-source software released under a BSD license.
The ZX Spectrum character set is the variant of ASCII used in the ZX Spectrum family computers. It is based on ASCII-1967 but the characters ^, ` and DEL
are replaced with ↑, £ and ©. It also differs in its use of the C0 control codes other than the common BS
and CR
, and it makes use of the 128 high-bit characters beyond the ASCII range. The ZX Spectrum's main set of printable characters and system font are also used by the Jupiter Ace computer.
TI-BASIC 83,TI-BASIC Z80 or simply TI-BASIC, is the built-in programming language for the Texas Instruments programmable calculators in the TI-83 series. Calculators that implement TI-BASIC have a built in editor for writing programs. While the considerably faster Z80 assembly language is supported for the calculators, TI-BASIC's in-calculator editor and more user friendly syntax make it easier to use. TI-BASIC is interpreted.
SCELBAL, short for SCientific ELementary BAsic Language, is a version of the BASIC programming language released in 1976 for the SCELBI and other early Intel 8008 and 8080-based microcomputers like the Mark-8. Later add-ons to the language included an extended math package and string handling. The original version required 8 kB of RAM, while the additions demanded at least 12 kB.
SUPER BASIC, sometimes SBASIC for short, is an advanced dialect of the BASIC programming language offered on Tymshare's SDS 940 systems starting in 1968 and available well into the 1970s.
SDS BASIC, also known as CP-V BASIC, Batch BASIC or Sigma BASIC depending on the version, is a BASIC programming language compiler for Scientific Data Systems's (SDS) Sigma series mainframe computers, originally released in 1967. Xerox purchased SDS in 1969 and began rebranding it as Xerox Data Systems, and finally just Xerox, at which time the language became known as Xerox BASIC.
A BASIC interpreter is an interpreter that enables users to enter and run programs in the BASIC language and was, for the first part of the microcomputer era, the default application that computers would launch. Users were expected to use the BASIC interpreter to type in programs or to load programs from storage.
Acorn System BASIC and Atom BASIC are two closely related dialects of the BASIC programming language developed by Acorn Computers for their early microcomputers like the Acorn System 3 and Acorn Atom. Developed in-house, they have a number of significant idiosyncrasies compared to most BASIC dialects of the home computer era.