Firsts

From: Philip.Belben_at_powertech.co.uk <(Philip.Belben_at_powertech.co.uk)>
Date: Tue Jan 13 09:57:28 1998

> <The 4051 BASIC is AWFUL. Example: the syntax of the IF statement is IF
> <condition THEN line number. Similarly the 4052 and 4054. The really
>
>
> 20 IF A=5 THEN 100
>
> That is standard Dartmouth BASIC! at least it has been since 1969 when I
> started programming with it.

I see. I can never remember which features were original, which later.
Most modern basics allow IF condition THEN line number, but also allow
IF condition THEN statement, which is usually more useful, and forbidden
on the Tek (which is what I was getting at).

The original BASIC, IIRC (correct me if I'm wrong!) had a lot of useful
array-handling commands, most of which remain on the IBM System/23
(Datamaster), and a few of which remain on the Tek, but which all
disappeared in the home computer BASICs (mostly Microsoft, of course).
But I digress.

The reason I found 4051/4052 BASIC awful was because that IF statement,
coupled with an absence of multistatement lines, takes away half the fun
things I used to do on the PET (wherewith I grew up). On the 4052A and
4054A, BASIC really was nice. I think this is the dialect that Transera
Corp. ported to PCs and some of their embedded processors. They call it
TBasic, and I think this stands for Tektronix Basic. Certainly it has a
lot of the graphics commands in common with the 4051/4052.

But perhaps I was a bit harsh - Tek BASIC does have very powerful
graphics and quite powerful GPIB handling. I still use it, after all
:-)

Philip.
Received on Tue Jan 13 1998 - 09:57:28 GMT