Games - Commodore BASIC

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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).

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.

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, 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$()
* flexible DATA read: RESTORE
* string search function: INSTR
* formatted printing: PRINT USING,PUDEF
* alternative branching: ELSE
* structured looping: DO,LOOP,WHILE,UNTIL,EXIT
* function key assignment: KEY (also direct mode)
* program entry/editing: AUTO,DELETE,RENUMBER
* dynamic error handling: TRAP,RESUME,ERR$()
* 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

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Games - Commodore BASIC

Versions and features

Released versions

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