IBM 5100 tinkering

From: Bob Shannon <bshannon_at_tiac.net>
Date: Fri Aug 1 18:34:00 2003

I could run some benchmarks using HP's 1968 HPBASIC if needed.

hansp wrote:

> Hans Franke wrote:
>
>>> We did some tinkering with our IBM 5100 the other day with results
>>> which might be of interest.
>>
>>
>>
>>> 10 a = 0
>>> 20 print a, a*a, sqr(a)
>>> 30 a = a + 1
>>> 40 if a < 100 goto 20
>>> 50 stop
>>
>>
>>
>>> The 5100 seems about 30% faster on though with the following program:
>>
>>
>>
>>> 10 a = 0
>>> 20 b = a*a
>>> 25 c = sqr(a)
>>> 30 a = a + 1
>>> 40 if a < 100 goto 20
>>> 50 stop
>>
>>
>>
>>> So it seems it is the display which slows it down.
>>
>>
>>
>> Well, to some extend. To my experiance it's rather the PET who
>> slowed down the programm. The PET had realy one of the slowest
>> BASIC interpreters / Systems around at that time. An Apple II
>> did usualy outperform it by some 30-50% with exactly the same
>> coding.
>
>
> Interesting. We are told that the PET BASIC is in fact a version of
> microsoft BASIC which was an outright sale with no royalties. Can
> anyone confirm/deny that?
>
> We have a number of working BASIC machines of that era and plan on
> doing a grand performance comparison one of these days.
>
> -- hbp
Received on Fri Aug 01 2003 - 18:34:00 BST