Which Basic for Amiga?

[SamuraiCrow]

You can get AmosPro from the Amos Factory website but you'll have to buy the manual from Software Hut.  There is a new sequel to AmosPro in the works that is going to recompile old AmosPro source code to run on many platforms but it is not ready for distribution yet.

[SamuraiCrow]

AMOS is good for a quick and dirty program, downside is, atleast that's my opinion, that it doesn't default to Amiga's intuition components.

That's true but it will definitely be fixed in the sequel, tentatively named Mattathias.

[SamuraiCrow]

Don't buy Blitz Basic.  It has since been re-released as open-source and renamed as AmiBlitz.  AmiBlitz is just Blitz Basic with new features added and bugs fixed.

Also, incidentally, the versions of Blitz Basic for the PC, Mac, and Linux are a total rewrite and are completely incompatible with the original Amiga version of Blitz Basic.

If you want to write software that will work on all of those platforms and Amiga as well, stick to using C and use the SDL APIs.  (Note that this will require a graphics card on your Amiga.)

[SamuraiCrow]

AmiBlitz/Blitz Basic support the AGA chipset if that is what you are currently using.  It's harder to use AmiBlitz than it is for AmosPro but it has an add-on that lets it access the system libraries directly like C does.

AmosPro has some AGA supporting extensions but no native support at the moment and Mattathias is behind schedule so I'd expect an SDL version of Mattathias before an AGA version comes out.

The author of ACE basic has been struggling to get his system library written in C so it will work on PowerPC and x86 under AROS, AmigaOS 4.x and possibly MorphOS.  It should be fine for classic Amiga work, though.

[SamuraiCrow]

If C is too heavy for your system then Mattathias Basic is out of the question.  It uses C as a backend for compatibility with PowerPC and x86.

AmiBlitz requires a hard drive to hold all of its include files.

Blitz Basic is buggy but has a fast compiler.

PureBasic requires AmigaOS 3.0+ according to its webpage.

If you're on an ECS or OCS Amiga then AmosPro might be okay since it was designed to run on 1 meg A500s with dual floppys.  I wouldn't recommend running anything on under 1 meg nowadays.  Also, Amos includes an interpreter which is handy for debugging if you don't want to compile all of the time.

ACE will run on a bag standard A500 if you want to.  The code generated wasn't very well optimized the last time I looked into it, though.  It uses an extensive linker library for all of its functions so the compile times are faster than other Basics.

I'd say that if you're on a flat 68000, go with Amos or Ace (or both).  But I'd definitely look into downloading Dice C as well if I were you.

[SamuraiCrow]

Don't let portability to the PC scare you away from some of the more powerful Basics on the Amiga.  AmiBlitz code can be ported to the PC's BlitzPlus.  Likewise, AmosPro can be ported to DarkBasic without too much difficulty.

BTW, try downclocking your '040 back to 40MHz and see if that works.