ASIC is a BASIC dialect and shareware compiler for MS-DOS systems. Written by Dick Cheney of 80/20 Software, it achieved brief popularity in the 1990s as one of the few BASIC compilers legally available for download from BBSes. However, ASIC understood only a small subset of the BASIC language, with most versions having little or no support for logical operators, control structures, and floating-point arithmetic. These shortcomings are the reason for the software's tongue-in-cheek motto, "ASIC: It's almost BASIC!" BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of high-level programming languages. ... Look up shareware in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Microsofts disk operating system, MS-DOS, was Microsofts implementation of DOS, which was the first popular operating system for the IBM PC, and until recently, was widely used on the PC compatible platform. ... Richard Bruce Dick Cheney (born January 30, 1941), is the 46th and current Vice President of the United States, serving under President George W. Bush. ... For the band, see 1990s (band). ... This article is about the computer terms. ... BBS redirects here. ... In logical calculus, logical operators or logical connectors serve to connect statements into more complicated compound statements. ... In computer science and in computer programming, statements in pseudocode or in a program are normally obeyed one after the other in the order in which they are written (sequential flow of control). ... A floating-point number is a digital representation for a number in a certain subset of the rational numbers, and is often used to approximate an arbitrary real number on a computer. ...

Notably, however, ASIC did feature a rudimentary integrated development environment and an RS-232 communications library for writing terminal and BBS software. The last release of ASIC, version 5.00, was more compatible with GW-BASIC and indeed offered a utility to convert GW-BASIC programs to ASIC syntax. An integrated development environment (IDE), also known as integrated design environment and integrated debugging environment, is a programming environment that has been packaged as an application program,that assists computer programmers in developing software. ... RS-232 (also referred to as EIA RS-232C or V.24) is a standard for serial binary data interchange between a DTE (Data terminal equipment) and a DCE (Data communication equipment). ... Apple Terminal. ... BBS redirects here. ... GW-BASIC 3. ...

External links

• ASIC 5.00