MS 6502 BASIC “officially” Open Sourced!



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Author	MS 6502 BASIC “officially” Open Sourced! (Read 115965 times)
Cashed 128 MB Posts: 192 System 7 Newcomer!	on: September 15, 2025, 20:59 Microsoft BASIC v1.1 source code for 6502 Microprocessor —>released. This is great news for the future of FPGA. Edit: Thread title renamed
Last Edit: September 21, 2025, 03:52 by Cashed
cballero 1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever	Reply #1 on: September 17, 2025, 18:14 Nice! My first programming language was BASIC on a DOS-based PC!

Cashed 128 MB Posts: 192 System 7 Newcomer!	Reply #2 on: September 21, 2025, 03:53 @cballero way cool! Man -I envy all who started out programming in BASIC I wasn’t aware, it was only due to my latest research focus and arcade archiving subject. Yesterday on AppleFritter, I learned that the source on new GitHub page is identical to the page with the leaked source, and that Microsoft confirms the source was leaked years ago -official publication. Back in March I had the pleasure of watching Linus Akesson using only the built-in BASIC interpreter, to program a music editor, and player with UI in assembly language from scratch -worth a watch Linus also wrote A Mind Is Born (256 bytes), and the intro music Trinket. If others also dig chip music, one can listen to his album on Spotify or get his SID tunes on linusakesson.net The MOS 6502 CPU with BASIC was used in Altair, Apple I & II, Acorn, Atom, BBC Micro, all the Commodore series, all the Atari 8-bit consoles and systems, Nintendo Entertainment System, and Super Nintendo. That reminds me of a blog I read in the past of Mr Sid who got his 6502 assembly juices flowing again and converted Broderbund’s Prince of Persia for Apple II over to the Commodore 64/128. Worth mentioning now that Commodore is Back on Track! —New game opportunities! I really wanna get there one day, at least try it out. It’d be cool starting out learning programming —knowing the BASICs.
Last Edit: September 21, 2025, 03:54 by Cashed
wove 1024 MB Posts: 1363	Reply #3 on: September 21, 2025, 14:05 Basic was developed at by a university (Dartmouth?) using tax payer funds, so the Basic language specifications have always been in the “Public Domain”. Bill Gates used that to create his own MS Basic, which via the weakness in Public Domain compared to GPL allowed him to make it propriatary. Acorn developed their own version for the BBC micro, and I believe it was Woz who created Apple’s included version of Basic for the Apple 8bits. You needed to purchase MS Basic for Apple’s 8bits. I am not sure if Apple ever released the code for their implementation. BBC Basic for the ARM processor has has been open source for some time. I have always thought of MS as quick to take credit and money, and very slow to acknowledge the work of those who created the ground work they used to build upon.

lauland 512 MB Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!	Reply #4 on: September 21, 2025, 15:40 Speaking as a grey beard whose first language was Basic, I find the nostalgia for it a little puzzling. No arguing it opened the doors wide for home computers, but, as a language, it leaves a LOT to be desired. Its a bit hard to elucidate, without coming off like some sort of a language snob, though. (And of course not all Basics are "created equal", some far more powerful and well written than others...) But there are reasons I have zero interest or excitement about the original MS one being open sourced. And even those are hard to articulate. But mostly it feels like yet more "hero celebration" of Bill Gates and pure 80's (or 70's in this case) nostalgia, and to people like me that cut my teeth on computers in the 80's, he was definitely the Putin and Microsoft the Russia of the computing world. I hate to even mention politics here, but that's a pretty good way of putting it. They existed, "did great things", "fed people" and "made the trains run on time", but you'd try and avoid them whenever possible. You HAD to work with them because they were so powerful, but, you really wished someone else was "in charge", someone a little less strong handed and full of themselves. MS only open sources things that they are forced to, or know are pretty much useless. This version of basic has no graphics or sound of course, and not even any real support for FILES. (Let alone things like serial or paper printing or io at all etc). Ok, here comes the language snob...no real functions, no multi dim arrays, the only loop construct is "for", goto and gosub are it. These are important to avoid "spaghetti code", you see, when you need to...blah blah blah...I'll spare you. For 8 bit cpus, compilers were clunky at best (to say the least), and impossible at worst (due to memory and other limitations), so Basic was a godsend. There weren't any other interpreted languages that were as powerful as it, or far more important, as easy to learn and use. I'm not even going to start on the history of 70's computing, you can find it yourselves, but there was a lot of bad blood and differences of opinions about the way software would be "shared", and MS basic (for REALLY ancient z80 based machines before operating systems even really existed) was the first widely pirated piece of software. People were "sharing" it on paper tape...yes, a roll of tape with holes punched into it! Was this wrong and breaking a law? Arguably. And that early experience shaped Bill Gates and how he interacted with the world and made him who he is. For the trivia minded, Basic's closest cousin is FORTRAN, and it inherited a lot of concepts from it. Apple's first Basic (Integer Basic) didn't do decimal points and was missing a LOT that MS's had. So the second one (AppleSoft) used licensed MS code, as did Commodore's and Atari's and many others. As wove mentioned Acorn's didn't, nor did Spectrum's and a few others. Basic isn't interpreted as text, but is first translated into "bytecodes" very much like a virtual machine (but a very "high level" one, which is why it is "slow"). Anyway...I'm climbing off my soap box.
Last Edit: September 21, 2025, 15:46 by lauland
Cashed 128 MB Posts: 192 System 7 Newcomer!	Reply #5 on: September 21, 2025, 20:56 Thanks for sharing all those informative perspectives and inputs. Luv to learn, the more I learn, the less I know. I finally found the time to just do some casual surfing, I grabbed a page I had jotted down in 2022. And what do I stumble into on a site from 1997 . . . bwbasic-2.10.tar.gz -good riddance!. Back to more input. I read up on the Acorn System BASIC and Atom BASIC. Couldn’t avoid seeing the List of BASIC dialects I dig when threads initiate and sustains a conversation. Completed my programming language overview with a 'BASIC for CP/M’ In 1971-72 Mike Mayfield wrote SUPER STAR TREK in HP BASIC. It’s known as one of the most famous early BASIC program games. Davis Ahl converted it to DEC BASIC/-PLUS in 1973 -and many followed. I’m sitting here looking at a list of 28 other systems it got converted to. And 22 others it was ported to. No more BASIC input for me -need stasis period! :-) Back to surfing and archiving hope to find something for the lost attic pages

cballero 1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever	Reply #6 on: September 22, 2025, 18:27 To be fair, my intro to BASIC class was super basic, FORTRAN was very interesting, similar I think? But it wasn't until I took Pascal class for a text drive that I got more into programming to be sure; this doesn't stop me from reminiscing as a kid programming very simple routines that were barely any kind of program on my Vic20, but that's a whole other thing, lol! When I worked at a software company overseas that also sold Macs, they used Pascal for their DOS applications and I'm thinking they used the same programming to make it run on Macs as well? I'm not completely sure on that one! Of course, I sat and played with a few routines with the software programmers, nothing ever serious, more of just talking about the current projects and setting up Macs for some clients; most that only used a simple POS system the company developed and I think FoxBASE was also used to program, although most businesses liked using FileMaker Pro, version 2 at the time, which was a quite nice networked solution at the time!

lauland 512 MB Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!	Reply #7 on: September 23, 2025, 18:08 I'm currently wearing this shirt (well, not THAT one, but my own copy)! "T Shirt that has "NOT BASIC" on it" (modern browser link) I'm not making any sort of statement against the computer language, just a "funny" tshirt I happened to have that was very apropos.
Last Edit: September 23, 2025, 18:14 by lauland
Cashed 128 MB Posts: 192 System 7 Newcomer!	Reply #8 on: September 23, 2025, 18:49 lol are you sure yours ain’t a pirated copy? You mentioned TI-X calculator projects -so I went reading up on those yesterday. C programming to transfer is cool, and TI-BASIC -good riddance! Took a break later and suddenly found myself watching two YouTubes of mini DIY 6502 computers -just running the CPU with BASIC. One at 1/2 MHz, the other stable at 35 MHz. Oh also saw a comparison, the 6502 was faster than Z80. There’s currently no escaping the BASICs. been wondering if a patch for SSW 7 would be possible regarding @wove’s UTM post.

lauland 512 MB Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!	Reply #9 on: September 23, 2025, 19:30 The 6502 was a great design, and clock per clock, would definitely beat a z80 at the same mhz...for various esoteric reasons I won't go into here. It was also much cheaper. There's some great history about how it came about, a bit of a rebel project by escaping designers of the Motorola 6800. It was used in all Atari computers and consoles, until the Atari ST. All commodore's until the Amiga, and, of course the Apple 1 2 and 3. The Apple IIgs used its big brother the 16-bit 65816. The NES used a 6502, and the SNES used a 65816. Many early Atari arcade machines such as Centipede, and the early vector games like Battlezone, also used it. Major Havoc used two 6502's, one to do game logic and the other vector drawing. There was a 32-bit version that was designed, but never reached silicon as far as I know, but people out there have taken the spec and built ones using...you guessed it...FPGA's! https://joedavisson.com/software/w65c832/w65c832.html (modern link) ...but, the z80 is FAR nicer to program for (in assembly). With many more registers and some sparing 16-bit operations. (The 65816 is a lot nicer, and, of course does 16-bit native, but still only has a paltry 3 registers). So most other home computers and arcade machines used z80's, at least the 8-bit ones.

lauland 512 MB Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!	Reply #10 on: September 30, 2025, 16:57 In a now, sadly, closed park in Ireland (the owner retired): If it's good enough for Lord Ganesha... (modern link) (Other statues in the park reference tech, so he IS studying the programming language).

Cashed 128 MB Posts: 192 System 7 Newcomer!	Reply #11 on: September 30, 2025, 18:57 Is that the Victor's Way park, previously known as Victoria's Way? Link took me to Facebook login screen -soz I don’t have a FB/Meta account. Really wanted to see which statue you referred to, so looked it up -there’s a lot of cool statues

wove 1024 MB Posts: 1363	Reply #12 on: September 30, 2025, 19:01 I ran into the same Facebook login screen and do not have an account, but if you cancel the login screen it will display the image. It also tells you that you can not interact or leave comments unless you have an account and login. Loved the statue, I need one for the front yard.

Cashed 128 MB Posts: 192 System 7 Newcomer!	Reply #13 on: September 30, 2025, 20:41 Ah, thanks @wove -was trying link from phone, didn’t show that option, normally it does, (only showed as facebook.com) -will look later when I’m allowed to borrow my daughters MBP. I lived in Ireland, in the town called Drogheda in Country Louth, from April to September in 1982. Victoria Park is located only a little hours drive from Drogheda past Dublin. Can’t recall if we ever went to see the park, but sure we must have -might ask my mom. Know we were in Dublin many times. Edit: oops wasn’t open, first opened in 1989. 2nd Edit: nope can’t see it, no way to cancel login here like normal. gonna try from iPad tomorrow on an older browser. I do see more of the link, instead of only m.facebook.com I saw on phone. I see the full link now. maybe this happens when one is logged into FB and shares a link. 3rd Edit: Nope still can’t see it, I presume this might affect everybody outside of USA, same using VPN. Deleted the long pasted link messing up.
Last Edit: October 02, 2025, 20:10 by Cashed
Cashed 128 MB Posts: 192 System 7 Newcomer!	Reply #14 on: October 02, 2025, 20:11 back to topic Found and watched this the day it got uploaded, it’s his first YouTube video. He build a New 8080A Computer and a BASIC interpreter with floating point.

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