Amiga Basic on Amiga 1200

[swift240]

Hi all,
I like to mess about with Amos pro, and when I had my A600 I used to use Amiga Basic that came with the A500.

I can not remember if this has already been talked about but, is there some way that
 I can use Amiga Basic on my A1200?

TIA,

Mike.

[bloodline]

Hi all,
I like to mess about with Amos pro, and when I had my A600 I used to use Amiga Basic that came with the A500.

I can not remember if this has already been talked about but, is there some way that
 I can use Amiga Basic on my A1200?

TIA,

Mike.

IIRC Amiga Basic simply doesn't work on OS 2.0+, so if you wanted to run it you would have to run a "degrader" to boot into OS1.3 (proabably a good idea to disable as much RAM as possible, as I'm sure it freaks out if it detects too much).

The big question is why you would want to run it? Much better to use AMOS or Blitz Basic 2 (Blitz being the better option).

[swift240]

Aha I just found this little jem in Aminet, I will give it a try and see how it works out.

http://aminet.net/package/dev/misc/PtchAmigaBASIC

OK, yes that Aminet program works very well with no bugs.

Mike.

[bloodline]

Aha I just found this little jem in Aminet, I will give it a try and see how it works out.

http://aminet.net/package/dev/misc/PtchAmigaBASIC

OK, yes that Aminet program works very well with no bugs.

Mike.

Ah! Yeah, it was the CPU that was the problem with Amiga Basic, no the OS! Good find.

[ferrellsl]

I seem to remember that I also had to disable any Fast RAM by running the NoFastMEM program to get this working too, but that was many years ago so I my be wrong.

[Fats]

Ah! Yeah, it was the CPU that was the problem with Amiga Basic, no the OS! Good find.

If I remember correctly it was some 'clever' Microsoft hacking that was the problem. 24bit of address space should be enough and the top 8bit of addresses (e.g. pointers in C speak) were used for other purposes.

[Pentad]

Does anybody know who wrote Amiga Basic at Microsoft? I have always wondered and thought their story would be interesting to hear. Considering DOS, Windows, and Mac development was being pushed hard by Gates, I can't imagine there was a lot of love for Commodore or the Amiga.

-P

[Pat the Cat]

If I remember correctly it was some 'clever' Microsoft hacking that was the problem. 24bit of address space should be enough and the top 8bit of addresses (e.g. pointers in C speak) were used for other purposes.

It's way more likely the fault of the compiler used to write the code... although if that was an MS tool, you would still be right. Just not intentionally so.

IIRC, Amiga Basic was dropped in WB 3.0, but was shipped with the A500+ and A600. I am not too sure about that, but it should work on those machines.

Could be wrong about that, but I do remember thinking "Why isn't this included anymore?" and never getting a straight answer from anybody. If it plain didn't work on an A1200, that would explain why it wasn't included with the computer anymore.

EDIT: Yep, wrong, ABasic was dropped in favour of Arexx, which CBM acquired from IBM. Never included with the A500+ or A600 either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmigaBASIC

[guest11527]

It's way more likely the fault of the compiler used to write the code... although if that was an MS tool, you would still be right. Just not intentionally so.

AmigaBasic is mixed Assembler/(probably C), and it's rather the matter of the memory management that is not 32-bit clean.

IIRC, Amiga Basic was dropped in WB 3.0, but was shipped with the A500+ and A600. I am not too sure about that, but it should work on those machines.

No, dropped at v37 (Os 2.0). There was an AmigaBasic 1.3 and also an AmigaBasic 2.0 that was mostly bugfixed, but CBM had to pay one extra dollar per sold machine to MS to allow it to be included, and they went too cheap to make the deal.

Could be wrong about that, but I do remember thinking "Why isn't this included anymore?" and never getting a straight answer from anybody.

See above. CBM didn't want to pay royalties.

EDIT: Yep, wrong, ABasic was dropped in favour of Arexx, which CBM acquired from IBM. Never included with the A500+ or A600 either.

CBM didn't accquire anything. Arexx was implemented by William Hawes, and CBM never paid him a penny for it. Bill should have better protected his interest... I'm close to saying CBM just took it (in avoidance of the harsher, but probably correct "stole it").

[kolla]

What did CBM ever pay royalties for?