Programming Languages Created in the 1970s: Programming Languages Created in 1978, Ml, Atari Basic, Plex

by Books LLC

Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Atari BASIC is a BASIC interpreter for the Atari 8-bit family of 6502-based home computers. The interpreter originally shipped on an 8 KB cartridge; on later XL/XE model computers it was built in, with an option to disable it, and started when the machines were booted with no other cartridges in place. The complete commented source code and design specifications of Atari BASIC were published as a book in 1983. This marked the first time source code was made available for a commercial language. The output of a small program using GRAPHICS 2 mode. The text says in READY. In the nomenclature of the time when these machines were designed, "K" was taken to mean one kilobyte, so that is how it is expressed here. Similarly, further, on the family of processors use by Atari machines, in the assembly langage "$" introduced a hexadecimal number, or it was suffixed subscripted with its radix, so, for example, "one hundred and twenty-eight" is "12810", "$80", or "8016". If a number is expressed with no radix, decimal (10) is assumed, and a leading 0 does not imply octal. These are used instead of more modern conventions because they appear as such in many of the sources and will be seen often by those using simulators an so forth. The machines that would become the Atari 8-bit family had originally been developed as second-generation games consoles intended to replace the Atari 2600. Ray Kassar, the new president of Atari, decided to challenge Apple Computer by building a home computer instead. This meant Atari needed the BASIC programming language, then the standard language for home computers. Atari did what many of the other home computer companies did: they purchased the source code to the MOS 6502 version of Microsoft 8K BASIC, intending to port it ... More: http://booksllc.net/?id=147581

44 pages, Paperback

First published June 13, 2010

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