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Commodore PETĬommodore had bought MOS in October 1976 and worked on converting the KIM platform into a complete computer system.
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On the Apple II Plus (1978), AppleSoft II replaced Integer BASIC. An enhanced version of Woz’ “Integer BASIC” came in the ROM of the Apple II in 1977 Microsoft BASIC (called “AppleSoft”) was available as an option on tape. The 1976 Apple I was the first system besides the KIM to use the MOS 6502 CPU, but Steve Wozniak wrote his own 4KB BASIC interpreter instead of licensing Microsoft’s. In the same year, MOS started selling a tape version of 9 digit Microsoft BASIC 1.1 for the KIM-1. In 1977, Ohio Scientific introduced the “Model 500”, which was the first machine to contain (6 digit) Microsoft BASIC 1.0 in ROM.
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The 6 digit math code was still an assembly time option the 1981 Atari Microsoft BASIC used that code. A 6502 machine with BASIC in ROM needed more than 8 KB anyway, why not make it a little bigger to add extra features. In 1977, Microsoft changed the 6 digit floating point code to support 9 digits and included actual error stings instead of two-character codes, while leaving everything else unchanged. The BASIC ROMs of the Ohio Scientific Model 500/600 (KIM-like microcomputer kits from 1977/1978) and the Compukit UK101 were indeed 8 KB in size, but unlike the 8080 version, it didn’t leave enough room for the machine-specific I/O code that had to be added by the OEM, so these machines required an extra ROM chip containing this I/O code.
Some sources claim that, while BASIC for the 8080 was 8 KB in size, Microsoft just couldn’t fit BASIC 6502 into 8 KB, while other sources claim there was an 8KB version for the 6502.
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Microsoft converted their BASIC for the Intel 8080 to run on the 6502, keeping both the architecture of the interpreter and its data structures the same, and created two versions: an 8 KB version with a 32 bit floating point library (6 digits), and a 9 KB system with 40 bit floating point support (9 digits). In 1976, MOS Technology launched the KIM-1, an evaluation board based around the new 6502 CPU from the same company. In 1975, Microsoft (back then still spelled “Micro-soft”) released Altair BASIC, a 4 KB BASIC interpreter for the Intel 8080-based MITS Altair 8800, which, despite all its other limitations, included a 32 bit floating point library.Īn extended version (BASIC-80) that consisted of 8 KB of code contained extra instructions and functions, and, most importantly, support for strings. Let’s dig into the history of Microsoft’s BASIC interpreters.
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This whole story sounds similar to Apple embedding a “Stolen From Apple” icon into the Macintosh firmware in 1983, so that in case a cloner copies the ROM, in court, Steve Jobs could hit a few keys on the clone, revealing the icon and proving that not just a “functional mechanism” was copied but instead the whole software was copied verbatim. In this episode of “ Computer Archeology“, we will not only examine this story, but also track down the history of Microsoft BASIC on various computers, and see see how Microsoft added a second easter egg to the TSR-80 Color Computer – because they had forgotten about the first one. Legend has it Bill Gates himself inserted this easter egg “after he had had an argument with Commodore founder Jack Tramiel”, “just in case Commodore ever tried to claim that the code wasn’t from Microsoft”. If you type “WAIT6502,1” into a Commodore PET with BASIC V2 (1979), it will show the string “MICROSOFT!” at the top left corner of the screen.