Commodore BASIC is the dialect of BASIC used in Commodore International's 8-bit home computer line, stretching from the PET of 1977 to the C128 of 1985. The core part was based on 6502 Microsoft BASIC, licensed from the young, cash-strapped Microsoft on a "pay once, no royalties" basis for $10,000. As such it shares most of the core code with other 6502 BASICs of the time, such as Applesoft BASIC (which, like CBM BASIC, was flat-fee-licenced from Microsoft). BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of high-level programming languages. ... Commodore is the commonly used name for Commodore International, a West Chester, Pennsylvania based electronics company who was a vital player in the home/personal computer field in the 1980s. ... 8-bit refers to the number of bits used in the data bus of a computer. ... TRS-80 Color Computer II The home computer is a consumer-friendly word for the second generation of microcomputers (the technical term that was previously used), entering the market in 1977 and becoming common during the 1980s. ... The MOS Technology 6502 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by MOS Technology in 1975. ... Microsoft BASIC is the foundation product of the Microsoft company. ... Applesoft BASIC was the second dialect of BASIC supplied on the Apple II computer, superseding Integer BASIC. Applesoft BASIC was supplied by Microsoft; Apple was looking for a new version of BASIC for the Apple II Plus computer with 48 KB of RAM, and after their success with Altair BASIC...

It remains unclear if Microsoft actually believed that Commodore would come back for new BASIC editions for their follow-on computer projects, however they never did. Commodore took the source code of the flat-fee BASIC and developed it further internally for all their home computers.

A very convenient feature of Commodore's ROM-resident BASIC interpreter and KERNAL was the full-screen editor, which allowed users to input, edit, and enter direct commands as well as program lines anywhere on the screen—simply by pressing the RETURN key whenever the cursor happened to be on a line containing a valid BASIC statement. This marked a significant change in program entry interfaces compared to other common home computer BASICs at the time, which typically used line editors, invoked by a separate EDIT command or the like. Read-only memory (ROM) is a class of storage media used in computers and other electronic devices. ... An interpreter is a computer program that executes other programs. ... The KERNAL is Commodores name for the ROM-resident operating system core in its 8-bit home computers; from the original PET of 1977, via the extended, but strongly related, versions used in its successors; the VIC-20, C64, Plus/4, C16, and C128. ... A typical arrow-like mouse cursor. ... A line editor is a text editor computer program that is oriented around lines. ...

Versions and features

A list of CBM BASIC versions in chronological order, with successively added features:

Released versions

• V1.0: PET 2001 with chiclet keyboard and built-in Datassette (original PET)
  • bug: arrays limited to 256 elements
  • bug: PEEK command won't work above memory location $C000

• V2.0: PET 2001 with full-travel keyboard & upgrade ROMs; VIC-20; C64
  • most 1.0 bugs squashed
  • PET Easter egg – enter WAIT 6502,<x> and see what happens...

• V4.0: PET/CBM 4000/8000 series (and late version PET 2001s)
  • disk operations: DLOAD,DSAVE,COPY,SCRATCH, etc (15 in all)
  • disk error-channel variables: DS,$DS

• V4+ : CBM-II series (aka B, P range)
  • information to be added

• V3.5: C16/116, Plus/4
  • sound and graphics commands
  • joystick input: JOY
  • decimal ← → hexadecimal conversion: DEC(),HEX$()
  • flexible DATA read: RESTORE [linenumber]
  • string search function: INSTR
  • formatted printing: PRINT USING,PUDEF
  • alternative branching: ELSE
  • structured looping: DO,LOOP,WHILE,UNTIL,EXIT
  • function key assignment: KEY (also direct mode)
  • program entry/editing: AUTO,DELETE,RENUMBER
  • dynamic error handling: TRAP,RESUME,ERR$()
  • debugging (tracing): TRON,TROFF
  • MLM entry command: MONITOR
  • C(1)16, Plus/4 Easter egg – enter SYS 52650

• V7.0: C128
  • more sound and graphics commands, incl sprite handling
  • paddle, lightpen input: POT,PEN
  • exclusive or function: XOR
  • get variable address: POINTER
  • text mode windowing: WINDOW
  • controlled time delay: SLEEP
  • memory management: BANK,SWAP,FETCH,STASH
  • more disk operations: BOOT,BLOAD,BSAVE,DVERIFY,DCLEAR
  • CPU speed adjustment: FAST,SLOW (2 vs 1 MHz)
  • undocumented, working: RREG (read CPU registers after a SYS)
  • unimplemented commands: OFF,QUIT
  • C128 Easter egg – enter SYS 32800,123,45,6

The PET (Personal Electronic Transactor) was a home-/personal computer produced by Commodore starting in the late 1970s. ... A chiclet keyboard is slang for a computer keyboard built with an array of small, flat rectangular or lozenge-shaped rubber or plastic keys that look like erasers or pieces of chewing gum. ... The Commodore 1530* (C2N) Datassette (a portmanteau of data + cassette), was Commodores dedicated computer tape recorder. ... In computing, PEEK is a BASIC programming language function used for reading the contents of a memory cell at a specified address. ... The PET (Personal Electronic Transactor) was a home-/personal computer produced by Commodore starting in the late 1970s. ... VIC-20 with accessories. ... For the hip hop group, see Commodore 64 (band). ... A virtual Easter egg is a hidden message or feature in an object such as a movie, book, CD, DVD, computer program, or video game. ... The PET (Personal Electronic Transactor) was a home-/personal computer produced by Commodore starting in the late 1970s. ... Commodore DOS, aka CBM DOS, was the disk operating system used with Commodores 8-bit computers. ... The Commodore CBM-II series was a short-lived series of personal computers from Commodore International, intended as a follow-on to the Commodore PET series, released in 1982. ... The Commodore 16 was a home computer made by Commodore with a 6502-compatible 7501 CPU, released in 1984. ... Commodore Plus/4. ... For other uses, see Joystick (disambiguation). ... The decimal (base ten or occasionally denary) numeral system has ten as its base. ... james In mathematics and computer science, base-16, hexadecimal, or simply hex, is a numeral system with a radix or base of 16 usually written using the symbols 0–9 and A–F or a–f. ... Debugging is a methodical process of finding and reducing the number of bugs, or defects, in a computer program or a piece of electronic hardware thus making it behave as expected. ... The Commodore 128 included a built-in machine language monitor. ... The Commodore 128 is a home/personal computer, also known as the C128. ... In computer graphics, a sprite is a two-dimensional image or animation that is integrated into a larger scene. ... A paddle is a game controller with a round wheel and one or more fire buttons, where the wheel is typically used to control movement of the player object along one axis of the video screen. ... A lightpen is a device similar to a touch screen, but is facilitated by use of a special light sensitive pen instead of the finger. ... Exclusive disjunction, also known as exclusive or and symbolized by XOR or EOR, is a logical operation on two operands that results in a logical value of true if and only if one of the operands, but not both, has a value of XOR Logic Gate // Definition In many natural... Commodore DOS, aka CBM DOS, was the disk operating system used with Commodores 8-bit computers. ...

Unreleased versions

• V10 : Commodore 65 (unreleased prototype)
  • graphics/video commands: PALETTE,GENLOCK
  • mouse input: MOUSE,RMOUSE
  • text file (SEQ) utility: TYPE
  • program editing: FIND,CHANGE
  • memory management: DMA, FRE(<0>|<1>|<2>)
  • unimplemented commands: PAINT,LOCATE,SCALE,WIDTH,SET,VIEWPORT
PASTE,CUT

The Commodore 65 (also known as the C64DX, not to be confused with the Commodore DX-64 portable unit) was a prototype computer created by Fred Bowen and others at Commodore Business Machines (CBM) (part of Commodore International) in 1990–91. ... Operating a mechanical 1: Pulling the mouse turns the ball. ...

Technical details

• Like the original Microsoft BASIC interpreter, which it is based on, Commodore BASIC is known to be woefully slow compared to machine code. Test results have shown that copying 16 kilobytes of memory from ROM to RAM takes less than a second in machine code, but over 10 minutes in BASIC. To try to make up for the slowness of the interpreter, programmers started using various tricks to speed up execution. One idea was to store often-used integer values into variables rather than using them as literal values, as interpreting a variable name was faster than interpreting a literal number. Programmers also often wrote speed-critical sections of a program in 6510 assembly language and executed them from BASIC using the SYS keyword.
• The order of execution of Commodore BASIC lines did not follow the line numbering; instead, it followed the order in which the lines were stored in memory. When entering code with the on-screen editor, the lines were automatically reordered to follow the line numbers. However, by manually altering the line numbers via POKE commands, the line numbering could be altered to achieve out-of-order execution or even give each line the same line number.
• Commodore BASIC tokens could be shortened by entering only the first letter, followed by a shifted version of the second letter (the shifted version appeared as a graphics symbol). The shortened token was equivalent to the full token and appeared as the full token when LIST-ing the program.
• The native number format of Commodore BASIC, like that of its parent MS BASIC, was floating point. (All arithmetic was done using these floating point numbers; integer calculations were performed via conversion to and from floating point.) Most of the contemporary BASIC implementations used one byte for the characteristic (exponent) and three bytes for the mantissa. This led to problems in business applications since the accuracy of a floating point number using a three-byte mantissa is only about 6.5 decimal digits, and round-off error is common. Commodore, however, used MS BASIC's four-byte mantissa, which made their BASIC much more adapted for business than most other BASICs of the era.
• Many BASIC extensions were released for the Commodore 64, due to the relatively limited capabilities of its native BASIC 2.0. One of the most popular extensions was the DOS Wedge, due to its inclusion on the Commodore 1541 Test/Demo Disk. This 1 KB extension to BASIC added a number of disk-related commands, including the ability to read a disk directory without destroying the program in memory. Its features were subsequently incorporated in various third-party extensions, such as the popular Epyx FastLoad cartridge. Other BASIC extensions added additional keywords to make it easier to code sprites, sound, and high-resolution graphics.

Microsoft BASIC is the foundation product of the Microsoft company. ... An interpreter is a computer program that executes other programs. ... Machine code or machine language is a system of instructions and data directly understandable by a computers central processing unit. ... Depending on the context in which it is used, the word kilobyte may mean either 1,000 or 1,024 bytes. ... Read-only memory (ROM) is a class of storage media used in computers and other electronic devices. ... Different types of RAM. From top to bottom: DIP, SIPP, SIMM 30 pin, SIMM 72 pin, DIMM, RIMM RAM redirects here. ... In computing, PEEK is a BASIC programming language function used for reading the contents of a memory cell at a specified address. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Tokenizing. ... 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. ... In mathematics, exponentiation is a process generalized from repeated multiplication, in much the same way that multiplication is a process generalized from repeated addition. ... The significand (also coefficient or, more informally, mantissa) is the part of a floating-point number that contains its significant digits. ... Startup message of DOS Wedge (DOS MANAGER) V5. ... The Epyx FastLoad is a floppy disk fast loader cartridge made by American software company Epyx in 1984 for the Commodore 64 (C64) home computer. ...

Notable extension packages

• Super Expander (VIC-20; delivered on cartridge) (CBM in-house)
• Super Expander 64 (C64; cartridge) (in-house)
• Simons' BASIC (C64; cartridge) (in-house)
• Graphics BASIC (C64; floppy disk) (Hesware)
• BASIC 8 (C128; floppy disk and optional internal ROM chip) (Walrusoft)

The VIC-1211 Super Expander was a cartridge for the Commodore VIC-20 home computer. ... In a variety of electronic equipments, a cartridge (in video game terms, cart, game pack, or Game Pak) can be one method of programming different functionality, providing variable content, or a method by which consumables may be replenished. ... Simons BASIC was an extension to BASIC 2. ... Graphics BASIC is a third-party extension to the Commodore BASIC V2. ... HESware (from Human Engineered Software) was an American home computer software developer/publisher during the 1980s, who concentrated on the Commodore 64. ... BASIC 8. ... American software company Walrusoft, Inc. ...

References

BASIC 2.0:

• Angerhausen et.al. (1983). The Anatomy of the Commodore 64 (for the full reference, see the C64 article).

BASIC 7.0: For the hip hop group, see Commodore 64 (band). ...

• Jarvis, Dennis; Springer, Jim D. (1987). BASIC 7.0 Internals. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Abacus Software, Inc. ISBN 0-916439-71-2.