Podcasts about commodore basic

Today we're going to talk through the history of the Commodore. That history starts with Idek Trzmiel, who would become Jack Tramiel when he immigrated to the United States. Tramiel was an Auschwitz survivor and Like many immigrants throughout history, he was a hard worker. He would buy a small office repair company in the Bronx with money he saved up driving taxis in New York and got a loan to help by the company through the US Army. He wanted a name that reflected the military that had rescued him from the camp so he picked Commodore and incorporated the company in Toronto. He would import Czeck typewriters through Toronto and assemble them, moving to adding machines when lower-cost Japanese typewriters started to enter the market. By 1962, Commodore got big enough to go public on the New York Stock Exchange. Those adding machines would soon be called calculators when they went from electromechanical devices to digital, with Commodore making a bundle off the Minuteman calculators. Tramiel and Commodore investor Irving Gould flew to Japan to see how to better compete with manufacturers in the market. They got their chips to build the calculators from MOS Technology and the MOS 6502 chip took off quickly becoming one of the most popular chips in early computing. When Texas Instruments, who designed the chips, entered the calculator market, everyone knew calculators were a dead end. The Altair had been released in 1975. But it used the Intel chips. Tramiel would get a loan to buy MOS for $3 million dollars and it would become the Commodore Semiconductor Group. The PC revolution was on the way and this is where Chuck Peddle, who came to Commodore from the acquisition comes in. Seeing the 6502 chips that MOS started building in 1975 and the 6507 that had been used in the Atari 2600, Pebble pushed to start building computers. Commodore had gotten to 60 million in revenues but the Japanese exports of calculators and typewriters left them needing a new product. Pebble proposed they build a computer and developed one called the Commodore PET. Starting at $800, the PET would come with a MOS 6502 chip - the same chip that shipped in the Apple I that year. It came with an integrated keyboard and monitor. And Commodore BASIC in a ROM. And as with many in that era, a cassette deck to load data in and save it. Commodore was now a real personal computer company. And one of the first. Along with the TRS-80, or Trash 80 and Apple when the Apple II was released they would be known as the Trinity of Personal Computers. By 1980 they would be a top 3 company in the market, which was growing rapidly. Unlike Apple, they didn't focus on great products or software and share was dropping. So in 1981 they would release the VIC-20. This machine came with Commodore BASIC 2.0, still used a 6502 chip. But by now prices had dropped to a level where the computer could sell for $299. The PET would be a computer integrated into a keyboard so you brought your own monitor, which could be composite, similar to what shipped in the Apple IIc. And it would be marked in retail outlets, like K-Mart where it was the first computer to be sold. They would outsource the development of the VICModem and did deals with the Source, CompuServe, and others to give out free services to get people connected to the fledgeling internet. The market was getting big. Over 800 software titles were available. Today you can use VICE, a VIC-20 emulator, to use many of them! But the list of vendors they were competing with would grow, including the Apple II, The TRS-80, and the Atari 800. They would sell over a million in that first year, but a new competitor emerged in the Commodore 64. Initially referred to as the VIC-40, the Commodore 64 showed up in 1982 and would start at around $600 and came with the improved 6510 or 8500 MOS chip and the 64k of ram that gave it its name. It is easily one of the most recognizable computer names in history. IT could double as a video game console. Sales were initially slow as software developers caught up to the new chips - and they kinda' had to work through some early problems with units failing. They still sold millions and millions by the mid 1980s. But they would need to go into a price war with Texas Instruments, Atari, and other big names of the time. Commodore would win that war but lost Tramiel along the way. He quit after disagreements with Gould, who brought in a former executive from a steel company with no experience in computers. Ironically, Tramel bought Atari after he left. A number of models would come out over the next few years with the Commodore MAX, Communicator 64, the SX-64, the C128, the Commodore 64 Game System, the 65, which was killed off by Irving Gould in 1991. And by 1993, Gould had mismanaged the company. But Commodore would buy Amiga for $25 million in 1984. They wouldn't rescue the company with a 32 bit computer. After the Mac and the IBM came along in 1984 and after the downward pressures that had been put on prices, Commodore never fully recovered. Yes, they released systems. Like the Amiga 500 and ST, but they were never as dominant and couldn't shake the low priced image for later Amiga models like one of the best machines made for its time, the Amiga 1000. Or the 2000s to compete with the Mac or with entries in the PC clone market to compete with the deluge of vendors that did that. They even tried a MicrosoftBASIC interpreter and their own Amiga Unix System V Release variant. But, ultimately by 1994 the company would go into bankruptcy with surviving subsidiaries going through that demise that happens where you end up with your intellectual property somehow being held by Gateway computers. More on them in a later episode. I do think the story here is a great one. A person manages to survive Auschwitz, move to the United States, and build a publicly traded empire that is easily one of the most recognizable names in computing. That survival and perseverance should be applauded. Tramiel would run Atari until he sold it in the mid-90s and would cofound the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He was a hard negotiator and a competent business person. Today, in tech we say that competing on price is a race to the bottom. He had to live that. But he and his exceptional team at Commodore certainly deserve our thanks, for helping to truly democratize computing, putting low-cost single board machines on the shelves at Toys-R-Us and K-mart and giving me exposure to BASIC at a young age. And thank you, listeners, for tuning in to this episode of the History of Computing Podcast. We are so lucky you listen to these stories. Have a great day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMD2nF7meDI.

BASIC Welcome to the History of Computing Podcast, where we explore the history of information technology. Because by understanding the past prepares us to innovate the future! Today we're going to look at the computer that was the history of the BASIC programming language. We say BASIC but really BASIC is more than just a programming language. It's a family of languages and stands for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. As the name implies it was written to help students that weren't math nerds learn how to use computers. When I was selling a house one time, someone was roaming around in my back yard and apparently they'd been to an open house and they asked if I'm a computer scientist after they saw a dozen books I'd written on my bookshelf. I really didn't know how to answer that question We'll start this story with Hungarian John George Kemeny. This guy was pretty smart. He was born in Budapest and moved to the US with his family in 1940 when his family fled anti-Jewish sentiment and laws in Hungary. Some of his family would go on to die in the Holocaust, including his grandfather. But safely nestled in New York City, he would graduate high school at the top of his class and go on to Princeton. Check this out, he took a year off to head out to Los Alamos and work on the Manhattan Project under Nobel laureate Richard Feynman. That's where he met fellow Hungarian immigrant Jon Von Neumann - two of a group George Marx wrote about in his book on great Hungarian Emmigrant Scientists and thinkers called The Martians. When he got back to Princeton he would get his Doctorate and act as an assistant to Albert Einstein. Seriously, THE Einstein. Within a few years he was a full professor at Dartmouth and go on to publish great works in mathematics. But we're not here to talk about those contributions to the world as an all around awesome place. You see, by the 60s math was evolving to the point that you needed computers. And Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz would do something special. Now Kurtz was another Dartmoth professor who got his PhD from Princeton. He and Kemeny got thick as thieves and wrote the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System (keep in mind that Time Sharing was all the rage in the 60s, as it gave more and more budding computer scientists access to those computer-things that prior to the advent of Unix and the PC revolution had mostly been reserved for the high priests of places like IBM. So Time Sharing was cool, but the two of them would go on to do something far more important. In 1956, they would write DARSIMCO, or Dartmouth Simplified Code. As with Pascal, you can blame Algol. Wait, no one has ever heard of DARSIMCO? Oh… I guess they wrote that other language you're here to hear the story of as well. So in 59 they got a half million dollar grant from the Alfred P. Sloan foundation to build a new department building. That's when Kurtz actually joined the department full time. Computers were just going from big batch processed behemoths to interactive systems. They tried teaching with DARSIMCO, FORTRAN, and the Dartmouth Oversimplified Programming Experiment, a classic acronym for 1960s era DOPE. But they didn't love the command structure nor the fact that the languages didn't produce feedback immediately. What was it called? Oh, so in 1964, Kemeny wrote the first iteration of the BASIC programming language and Kurtz joined him very shortly thereafter. They did it to teach students how to use computers. It's that simple. And as most software was free at the time, they released it to the public. We might think of this as open source-is by todays standards. I say ish as Dartmouth actually choose to copyright BASIC. Kurtz has said that the name BASIC was chosen because “We wanted a word that was simple but not simple-minded, and BASIC was that one.” The first program I wrote was in BASIC. BASIC used line numbers and read kinda' like the English language. The first line of my program said 10 print “Charles was here” And the computer responded that “Charles was here” - the second program I wrote just added a second line that said: 20 goto 10 Suddenly “Charles was here” took up the whole screen and I had to ask the teacher how to terminate the signal. She rolled her eyes and handed me a book. And that my friend, was the end of me for months. That was on an Apple IIc. But a lot happened with BASIC between 1964 and then. As with many technologies, it took some time to float around and evolve. The syntax was kinda' like a simplified FORTRAN, making my FORTRAN classes in college a breeze. That initial distribution evolved into Dartmouth BASIC, and they received a $300k grant and used student slave labor to write the initial BASIC compiler. Mary Kenneth Keller was one of those students and went on to finish her Doctorate in 65 along with Irving Tang, becoming the first two PhDs in computer science. After that she went off to Clarke College to found their computer science department. The language is pretty easy. I mean, like PASCAL, it was made for teaching. It spread through universities like wildfire during the rise of minicomputers like the PDP from Digital Equipment and the resultant Data General Nova. This lead to the first text-based games in BASIC, like Star Trek. And then came the Altair and one of the most pivotal moments in the history of computing, the porting of BASIC to the platform by Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen. But Tiny BASIC had appeared a year before and suddenly everyone needed “a basic.” You had Commodore BASIC, BBC Basic, Basic for the trash 80, the Apple II, Sinclair and more. Programmers from all over the country had learned BASIC in college on minicomputers and when the PC revolution came, a huge part of that was the explosion of applications, most of which were written in… you got it, BASIC! I typically think of the end of BASIC coming in 1991 when Microsoft bought Visual Basic off of Alan Cooper and object-oriented programming became the standard. But the things I could do with a simple if, then else statement. Or a for to statement or a while or repeat or do loop. Absolute values, exponential functions, cosines, tangents, even super-simple random number generation. And input and output was just INPUT and PRINT or LIST for source. Of course, functional programming was always simpler and more approachable. So there, you now have Kemeny as a direct connection between Einstein and the modern era of computing. Two immigrants that helped change the world. One famous, the other with a slightly more nuanced but probably no less important impact in a lot of ways. Those early BASIC programs opened our eyes. Games, spreadsheets, word processors, accounting, Human Resources, databases. Kemeny would go on to chair the commission investigating Three Mile Island, a partial nuclear meltdown that was a turning point in nuclear proliferation. I wonder what Kemeny thought when he read the following on the Statue of Liberty: Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Perhaps, like many before and after, he thought that he would breathe free and with that breath, do something great, helping bring the world into the nuclear era and preparing thousands of programmers to write software that would change the world. When you wake up in the morning, you have crusty bits in your eyes and things seem blurry at first. You have to struggle just a bit to get out of bed and see the sunrise. BASIC got us to that point. And for that, we owe them our sincerest thanks. And thank you dear listeners, for your contributions to the world in whatever way they may be. You're beautiful. And of course thank you for giving me some meaning on this planet by tuning in. We're so lucky to have you, have a great day!

In this screencast I’ll show you how to write your own INPUT routine in Commodore BASIC. This comes in handy when you want to reject certain keys from being used when asking users for keyboard input. In my example I’m going to allow all alpha characters (A-Z), as well as SPACE, RETURN and the DELETE … Continue reading How to write a text input routine in Commodore BASIC →

In this episode I’ll demonstrate how to use programmatic loops in Commodore BASIC. I’ll show you how to use the FOR/NEXT loop (available in all versions of Commodore BASIC), as well as the DO/WHILE loops (available on the Plus/4 and C128). Enjoy!

In this episode I’ll explain the concept of Flow Control in Commodore BASIC. It’s kind of a video update of a post I did a while ago. In essence, it means that we can tell the programme to take a different route in the code depending on a condition that’s met. We’ll explore the IF/THEN … Continue reading Flow Control in Commodore BASIC →

Did you know you can run Commodore BASIC v2 on your Mac and Linux systems as a scripting language? It’s true – thanks to the marvellous efforts of Michael Steil and James Abbatiello. They’ve adapted the original BASIC v2 as featured on the VIC-20 and C64 with additional routines so that it works natively on … Continue reading How to run Commodore BASIC as a Scripting Language on macOS →

In this episode I’m adding statistics support to my previous lottery generator on the Commodore 64. I’ll add an array that is updated if my supplied numbers have been matched, and how many times over how many draws this has happened. I’ll also add an option to pause the programme and display the statistics before … Continue reading Lottery Statistics in Commodore BASIC →

In this episode I’ll show you three ways to take user input from the keyboard in Commodore BASIC. The INPUT and GET commands work on all systems, while the GETKEY command only works on the Plus/4 and C128. I’ll demonstrate how to use all of them. This will come in handy for our little lottery … Continue reading Working with Keyboard Input in Commodore BASIC →

In this episode I’m demonstrating how to print numbers in evenly spaced columns in Commodore BASIC. On the C128 and the Plus/4 we can use a nifty little function called PRINT USING for this, with which we can format the output of any printed text or variable. On the C64 and VIC-20 that function doesn’t … Continue reading How to print numbers as columns in Commodore BASIC →

In this episode I’ll demonstrate how to sort a numeric array on the Commodore 64. The same principle works for string arrays, and of course on all other Commodore BASIC computers. The technique I’m using here is called Bubble Sort: in effect we’re comparing the first two items in the array, and if the left … Continue reading Sorting an Array on the Commodore 64 →

In this episode I’m demonstrating how to build a word splitter on the Commodore 64. We’ll use string functions to parse a sentence and split each word off into an array of words so that they can be analysed later (for example, as part of an adventure game). Here’s the code I’m building: [crayon-5edba332afbe8596267591/] The … Continue reading How to build a Word Splitter on the C64 in Commodore BASIC →

In this video I’ll demonstrate how to build a simple clock on the C64. We’ll go through this process step by step, including the built-in TI and TI$ variables, string formatting with LEFT$, RIGHT$ and MID$, as well as screen formatting. Here’s the code I’m writing – works in Commodore BASIC v2 and above: [crayon-5edba332afde3745922546/] … Continue reading How to build a time of day clock on the Commodore 64 →

In this episode I’ll demonstrate how to create those seemingly random YouTube Video IDs using a Commodore 64. Here’s the code I’m writing – works in BASIC v2 and above: [crayon-5edba332affd9334404013/] The first line switches to lower case letters (I forgot to show that in the video). NOTE: In addition to the upper case and … Continue reading How to create random YouTube URLs in Commodore BASIC v2 →

Finns det ingen Pascal för C128:an annat än i CP/m-läge? Jocke frågar lyssnarkretsen. Topp tre gamla filmer med datorer i? 00: Intro 41: Fredrik försöker köra Mac-app 03:04: Jocke ska programmera Commodore 128 06:35: Snabbare diskettstationer för Commodore 128! 10:56: Spectrum - maskiner vi knappt minns 22:43: Jobbuppföljning 23:04: Blade runner: the final cut 34:36: IOS 11, köpsug och klockförvirring 43:47: Jockes jobbigaste upptäckt i IOS 11 55:05: Vargen kommer, faktiskt 1:05:39: Hackers 1:08:34: Sidospår: snygga moderna spel 1:11:41: Jag har ingen lust! 1:17:57: Din utmaning är att se Hackers Länkar Podcast chapters Swift Cocoapods npm Gubbdata Basic 7.0 C Assembler Pascal - vad heter Pascal för Commodore 128? CP/M KOM-system Commodore 1571 Jiffydos Laserwriter Øredev Marco Ceccone - The ultimate ZX Spectrum talk ZX Spectrum Sinclair QL Jack Nutting Jacks Atari-presentation Jacks Taylor Swift-cover Spectrum-datorer Clive Sinclair Bild med skillnaden på Spectrum 128K och övriga Noah Falstein Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis SCUMM Blade runner: the final cut Dangerous days - den långa dokumentärern Blade runner 2049 släpps 6 oktober ET The thing Wrath of Kahn Future noir Ridley Scott diskuterar sin favoritscen i Blade runner Pridearmbandet Jolla Macstories IOS 11-recension Myke Hurley History on fire - en härlig historiepodd Theodore Roosevelt Franklin D. Roosevelt Vargen kommer! Hackers - Fredriks nya hemläxa Sneakers Batman Arkhamn knight Shadow of Mordor Gamelengths.com och howlongtobeat.com Wargames Fullständig avsnittsinformation finns här: https://www.bjoremanmelin.se/podcast/avsnitt-95-ett-bbs-system-for-min-c128.html.

MRS 016 Marc-Andre Cournoyer Today's episode is a My Ruby Story with Marc-Andre Cournoyer. He was the creator of the Thin web server and he will be speaking at the Ruby Dev Summit. On this episode, Marc talked about how he got into programming and Ruby. Listen to learn more about Marc! [01:05] – Introduction to Marc Marc is the creator of the Thin web server, one of the most popular Ruby server. He also had some minor contributions to Ruby. One of them is called Tinyrb, which is a small Ruby VM. Then, he wrote a book about creating your own programming language. He will be speaking at Ruby Dev Summit. [02:45] – How did you get into programming? Marc’s first experience with a computer was when he’s around 8 or 9 years old. It was on the early 1990s. His parents won a Commodore 64 at the grocery store. He got bored really fast with the games so he looked at other things. One of them is the Commodore Basic. You could not save on a Commodore 64 if you didn’t add the tape recorder so he would have to start again each time. He also went to a library and got some books about Commodore 64 programming. Eventually, he started creating his own simple programs. A few years later, Marc got a Pentium 2. It was around 1995. He saved money and bought himself Microsoft Visual Basic 4. It has the UI with the drags and drops where you drop buttons and timers on a page. You would double click the buttons and you would open a window where you can put your code. He had about hundred projects on that machine. [05:35] – How old were you when you got into VB? Marc was 14 or 15 years old when he got into VB. [06:05] – How did you get into Ruby? After that, it has become Marc’s career choice to become a programmer. He went to university. After that, he got his first job in 2002 doing Visual Basic 4 application that runs inside Microsoft Office suite. He also did a little bit of Java and .NET. He didn’t enjoy programming, he started losing my passion, and he stopped doing projects on the side. But he still kept on reading some books about programming. One of them is a book by Joel Spolsky, The Best Software Writing. It was published in 2005. The last chapter is an extract of Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby, which was an introductory book about Ruby. Marc liked the syntax so he started practicing Ruby more. He started doing side projects again because it was fun programming Ruby. And then, he discovered Rails about a year later. Because of that, he created many other projects and got a job at a startup in Montreal. Picks Marc-Andre Cournoyer Cooperpress Framework: Torch Charles Max Wood Eventual Millionaire Coursera course on Machine Learning by Andrew Ng Ruby Dev Summit

MRS 016 Marc-Andre Cournoyer Today's episode is a My Ruby Story with Marc-Andre Cournoyer. He was the creator of the Thin web server and he will be speaking at the Ruby Dev Summit. On this episode, Marc talked about how he got into programming and Ruby. Listen to learn more about Marc! [01:05] – Introduction to Marc Marc is the creator of the Thin web server, one of the most popular Ruby server. He also had some minor contributions to Ruby. One of them is called Tinyrb, which is a small Ruby VM. Then, he wrote a book about creating your own programming language. He will be speaking at Ruby Dev Summit. [02:45] – How did you get into programming? Marc’s first experience with a computer was when he’s around 8 or 9 years old. It was on the early 1990s. His parents won a Commodore 64 at the grocery store. He got bored really fast with the games so he looked at other things. One of them is the Commodore Basic. You could not save on a Commodore 64 if you didn’t add the tape recorder so he would have to start again each time. He also went to a library and got some books about Commodore 64 programming. Eventually, he started creating his own simple programs. A few years later, Marc got a Pentium 2. It was around 1995. He saved money and bought himself Microsoft Visual Basic 4. It has the UI with the drags and drops where you drop buttons and timers on a page. You would double click the buttons and you would open a window where you can put your code. He had about hundred projects on that machine. [05:35] – How old were you when you got into VB? Marc was 14 or 15 years old when he got into VB. [06:05] – How did you get into Ruby? After that, it has become Marc’s career choice to become a programmer. He went to university. After that, he got his first job in 2002 doing Visual Basic 4 application that runs inside Microsoft Office suite. He also did a little bit of Java and .NET. He didn’t enjoy programming, he started losing my passion, and he stopped doing projects on the side. But he still kept on reading some books about programming. One of them is a book by Joel Spolsky, The Best Software Writing. It was published in 2005. The last chapter is an extract of Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby, which was an introductory book about Ruby. Marc liked the syntax so he started practicing Ruby more. He started doing side projects again because it was fun programming Ruby. And then, he discovered Rails about a year later. Because of that, he created many other projects and got a job at a startup in Montreal. Picks Marc-Andre Cournoyer Cooperpress Framework: Torch Charles Max Wood Eventual Millionaire Coursera course on Machine Learning by Andrew Ng Ruby Dev Summit

MRS 016 Marc-Andre Cournoyer Today's episode is a My Ruby Story with Marc-Andre Cournoyer. He was the creator of the Thin web server and he will be speaking at the Ruby Dev Summit. On this episode, Marc talked about how he got into programming and Ruby. Listen to learn more about Marc! [01:05] – Introduction to Marc Marc is the creator of the Thin web server, one of the most popular Ruby server. He also had some minor contributions to Ruby. One of them is called Tinyrb, which is a small Ruby VM. Then, he wrote a book about creating your own programming language. He will be speaking at Ruby Dev Summit. [02:45] – How did you get into programming? Marc’s first experience with a computer was when he’s around 8 or 9 years old. It was on the early 1990s. His parents won a Commodore 64 at the grocery store. He got bored really fast with the games so he looked at other things. One of them is the Commodore Basic. You could not save on a Commodore 64 if you didn’t add the tape recorder so he would have to start again each time. He also went to a library and got some books about Commodore 64 programming. Eventually, he started creating his own simple programs. A few years later, Marc got a Pentium 2. It was around 1995. He saved money and bought himself Microsoft Visual Basic 4. It has the UI with the drags and drops where you drop buttons and timers on a page. You would double click the buttons and you would open a window where you can put your code. He had about hundred projects on that machine. [05:35] – How old were you when you got into VB? Marc was 14 or 15 years old when he got into VB. [06:05] – How did you get into Ruby? After that, it has become Marc’s career choice to become a programmer. He went to university. After that, he got his first job in 2002 doing Visual Basic 4 application that runs inside Microsoft Office suite. He also did a little bit of Java and .NET. He didn’t enjoy programming, he started losing my passion, and he stopped doing projects on the side. But he still kept on reading some books about programming. One of them is a book by Joel Spolsky, The Best Software Writing. It was published in 2005. The last chapter is an extract of Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby, which was an introductory book about Ruby. Marc liked the syntax so he started practicing Ruby more. He started doing side projects again because it was fun programming Ruby. And then, he discovered Rails about a year later. Because of that, he created many other projects and got a job at a startup in Montreal. Picks Marc-Andre Cournoyer Cooperpress Framework: Torch Charles Max Wood Eventual Millionaire Coursera course on Machine Learning by Andrew Ng Ruby Dev Summit