How to get AmigaBASIC running on Kickstart 3.1?

[AmigaBruno]

I started programming in AmigaBASIC when I first got an Amiga in December 1988. I enjoyed using it. It's easy to program using all the Amiga facilities, such as windows, the mouse, pull down menus, bobs, and sprites. I remember using all these facilities in AmigaBASIC programs I wrote. I later got a copy of AMOS, but didn't manage to do much with it. When it comes to C, I remember skimming through someone else's book about C on the Amiga and I told him that there was nothing specific to the Amiga until about 80-90% of the way through the book! I've just bought a DVD ROM from eBay, which contains 78 Amiga books as PDF scans. There are more Amiga books on it than I have ever owned before. I seem to remember that each book would have cost about £25 when published. This makes a total of about £1,950 worth! A lot of, or at least several of these books are about AmigaBASIC. I've decided to get a copy of AmigaBASIC to use on my Amiga A500 Plus, which I'm fairly sure is compatible, but if not, then I'll just run Relokick first. There's no copy of AmigaBASIC on my set of Workbench 2.04 disks. I'm fairly sure this is on the Workbench 1.2 disks, which I think is the version that was first supplied to me. I've only recently heard about ACE BASIC, so I need to look into that. Can someone tell me if 100% of AmigaBASIC programs can be loaded into ACE BASIC and compiled, or what problems are there?

[AmigaBruno]

And surprisingly, perhaps, the MetaComCo Basic is better than Microsoft's effort...

I've never even owned, let alone used, ABasiC (SP?), by Metacomco. I know that Metacomco was chosen because of their previous work on the 68008 based Sinclair QL computer, though. Is this version of BASIC similar to or the same as SuperBASIC on the Sinclair QL computer?

[AmigaBruno]

Various books have been written about AmigaBASIC, including some by Data Becker (in German), republished by Abacus (in English). I've just got some scanned versions of them. I'm not aware of many books being published for some other type of BASIC on the Amiga, though. This makes me want to get back into doing some programming in AmigaBASIC or a BASIC which supports the OS and which is 100% compatible with AmigaBASIC.

[AmigaBruno]

I've never even owned, let alone used, SuperBASIC so can't say how similar or not it is.

But if you want to try it, download the ABasiC patch from Aminet. The readme file lists several URLs where you can download ABasiC from. Also get the user manual and errata from here. There are some ABasiC programs on Aminet.

I've just tried a few links where I was supposed to be able to get a copy of the manual, but they're all out of date.

I've never owned or used Sinclair QL SuperBASIC, but I've read various listings in that BASIC dialect. It seems to be like an extended version of Sinclair Spectrum BASIC, including some features such as procedures, which are like BBC BASIC. It has been called similar to COMAL. Here's a link to an introduction to this BASIC dialect https://sites.google.com/site/iwant2learn2/home/superbasic .

Unfortunately, I still haven't found any ABasiC listings or a list of ABasiC commands, but I have read that although it didn't have much support for the Amiga's Intuition features, including windows, it was good at doing Amiga graphics.

[AmigaBruno]

Most BASIC programming languages for the Amiga do support the OS.  AFAIK there are only 1 or 2 that don't and all the rest do.

Lots of people, including me, bought AMOS, but this had its own environment, designed for creating games. When I used to run it, there was no sign on the Amiga Workbench, because I think it totally bypassed it. It was a port of STOS for the Atari ST, so that's not surprising. I'm talking about AMOS, not AMOS Pro. I never got very far with AMOS.

Here's a pic of the AMOS packaging. No sign of the Workbench there!

http://www.triumphoverchallenges.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/AMOS-whats-in-the-box.jpg

Here's the main page about AMOS and STOS.

http://www.triumphoverchallenges.com/stos-and-amos-game-creators/

Here's the AMOS program editor screen.

http://agateau.com/2013/01/22/plouf/amos.png

[AmigaBruno]

FYI: There were gazillions of books published about True BASIC back in the 80s and 90s.  There are more books about True BASIC than all other versions of BASIC for Amiga put together.  Dozens of different books.

And there are lots more books about algorithms which are not about True BASIC per se, but they include True BASIC source code on the accompanying floppy disk.  Lots of different science books and algorithm books used that technique so they could support multiple langauges in a single book.

The thing is that True BASIC is a multiplatform language.  It is the same language on Amiga, Atari ST, Mac, Windoze and Unix.  This is why there were so many books written about it.

It has most of the advantages of JAVA, without all the horrible disadvantages of JAVA, 10 years before JAVA ever even existed.  It has write once, run anywhere technology built-in for free.  You can compile your programs into byte-code and distribute the byte-code versions.  Or you can distribute the source code.  Whichever.

I heard years ago that True BASIC was one of various BASICs available for the Amiga, but I never had a copy of it. I've just done a search on Amazon, but only found a few books available about it. The features such as compiling into byte code and having all the advantages of JAVA sound impressive, though.

[AmigaBruno]

After looking at that manual, I can say it seems to contain a mixture of commands from Microsoft BASIC (various, including LOCATE, SCREEN), Sinclair BASIC (PRINT AT, PEN), Commodore BASIC 3.5 (SCNCLR, GETKEY), and uses DRAW instead of LINE. So now I know!