AmigaBasic

[melott]

Hello....
 I know this is going to sound silly when all these
 newer and better languages are available but
 I would like to run AmigaBasic. I want to learn and
 I have a book I bought many years ago on AmigaBasic. This book will take an IDIOT (me) and
lead him by the hand through the process. I have
several other programing languages but
AmigaBasic seems the easiest to start with.
The problem is it doesn't seem to run on my A3000.
 I've setup a seperate boot drive on my HD and installed Dos 1.3.
I'm wondering IF it will run on an A3000???
It seems to run but I can't load or save a file.
I don't think the prg.file will run eather.
I've went through the usual things, assigning &
pathing and such.
It doesn't even run when I try strictly from floppy.
Does anyone know how to make it run on an A3000??
I'm sure it ran on my A500.
Any help out there??

Mel Ott :-?

[iamaboringperson]

The problem is it doesn't seem to run on my A3000.

LOL!
people say that program was crap - because it was CRAP!

throw that book away and find another basic
like blitz basic

or even better, grow up, be a man and use C, C++, or assembler!
or just about anything else for that matter!

im sorry, but you just cant run amiga basic on the A3000, unless your using UAE!
speaking of emulation, try an ibm-pc emulator & run QBASIC, there almost the same
 :-)

[teo]

Try using hisoft basic. It came out on a coverdisk at one point (i think i have a copy of it if you need, email me) but the coverdisk is crippled, i think it will only compile a certain number of lines (thousands???) but is still way cool for starting out and you can create some pretty sweet mini apps with it.

The code is (i think) 100% compatible with amigabasic, however the biggest advantage is that instead of runing the programs interpreted, it will compile them to binaries, so it runs heaps faster and you can make standalone executables with it. Muchos good.

However it is BASIC in the end, and you should not concetrate too hard on it, If you want an easy programming language to move to, try java. Its a very well formed and wisely constructed language, and a good stepping stone to c++ etc.

Personally i would LOVE to see a new language, with the syntax of java but compiles to binaries like c++ and no, a jit compiler for java it not what im talking about. Perhaps some precompiler that converts the java source to c++ files??? it so crazy, it just might work!

[Sidewinder]

Hello Melott.

I would venture to guess that AmigaBASIC will not work on your A3000.  There are a couple of reasons for this:

1.  AmigaBASIC was designed for use with Kickstart 1.x ROMS only so, unless you have the ability to switch to 1.x ROMS via hardware or software, many of the file requesters and things will not work properly.  The A3000s came with 2.x ROMS and these can usually only be changed by installing additional hardware.

2.  AmigaBASIC was designed to work with a 68000 processor only.  There were some changes made to the 68020 and 68030 processors found in later Amigas (A3000 and newer) that make AmigaBASIC crash.  The problem has something to do with storing additional information in unused areas of processor registers or some such non-sense.

Your only real solutions are to either buy an old A500 with OS1.3 or use an emulator such as Amiga Forever or WinUAE to emulate the 68000 processor and the 1.x ROMS.

There are also some patches available on Aminet that you can try to use to patch the AmigaBASIC executable to overcome the 68000 only problem.  However, you will still need the 1.x ROMS.

There are also some AmigaBASIC compilers on Aminet .  These may work on newer OS revisions.  It's worth a look anyway.

AmigaBASIC may be old and buggy, but it is still a good language to learn from.  If you have a good AmigaBASIC book there is no reason you shouldn't be able to use it.  If you have any other questions feel free to ask me.

I suggest that you look into Python. It really is a good language to start out on.

[Desmon]

AmigaBasic (c)Microsoft! (do I need to say any more?) won't run with Fast memory enabled. Try the NoFastMem on your 1.3 disks.

[analogkid]

there are 2 good compilers in Aminet, which use the AmigaBASIC-logic.

1. The ACE paket. It has several extensions to AmigaBASIC (usage of OS 2.x Features) and it allows System-Programming via Include-Files.

2. Cursor. It's practically nothing more than an AmigaBASIC Compiler. Try it and see if it works for you.

IMHO there's nothing against learning programming with AmigaBASIC. That what it was famous in the good old (sniff) Amiga-Days.

I can recommend ARexx as well. There are many good tutorials and programming examples in Aminet.

[Dagon]

M$Basic sucks :-P Try Amos which is very easy or Blitz which is OS-friendly (or am I wrong?) and faster.

Nice programming language is also Arexx, you can make also GUI programs with RxMUI

for serious programming I`ll recommend to you C++.
Guys will AmigaOS 4.0 have a C++ API? This would be very neat.

[Lo]

AmigaBasic is not 32 bit "pure", another fine example of brillant programming by microsoft, like the 640K "limit".

[peroxidechicken]

AmigaBASIC may have a problem on 32 bit processors but it worked fine on my old A2000 with 3.1 rom.  If you've got a fast enough pc or mac to run UAE then it's probably the easiest way for you to get started with that book of yours.  

(Don't listen to detractors!  Amiga basic is as good a learning tool as any) :-)

[Atheist]

I don't know how good it works on machines after the 68000 (you have a 68030 CPU), but Amos Professional and the compiler, are GREAT. Easy to use, and you can even use machine language (very complicated).

It is very similar to Amiga Basic, but MUCH faster and WAY more stable.

When you write your code with Amos Prfessional, you can compile it, which means, you make 1 file, which you can give to someone else and it will work on their computer, by itself. If you have pictures, animations, or sound, they are separate files, which need to be given as well. They can be in the same, or other directories, it depends how YOU want it to work. When you compile a program, the person you give it to, has no idea what instructions you used to make it work (it also speeds it up, as much as 10 times). There are ways of examining your code, but 1 in 1000 programmers know how to.

The best news for you is, ITS FREE. The genius programmer Francois Lionet gave it away as freeware. It was for sale at 1 time (I think it became free around 1995), and has a 400+ page manual available, some stores on the net still have them (used) available. Get it, learn it, make some games, hehe.

Get it at http://www.back2roots.org/Tools/Dev/

Get Amos Professional 1.0   6 disks
the version 1.2 update
and the version 2.0 update (this one comes with the compiler)
Be careful to not get the regular compiler.

Aminet has 1000's of programs for it.

I don't know if Amos 3D is of any use, you should give it a try, available from the same location and free.

Only flaw, not able to access AGA graphics, although, some people tried to enhance it to do so, but I don't know how successful they were.

Get it, and find out why AMIGA is the greatest computer EVER!

Amiga! "The fun dispenser!!!", Jim, Mission Hill.

[ple3003]

I would go for Amos, but blitz basic isn't that bad either. I can assure you that Amos is a dream to use  compared to AmigaBasic. Trust me.

[alx]

Don't even think of using AmigaBasic - it really is a dead-end route.  Since all BASIC compillers use pretty much the same syntaxes, just pick up AMOS or Blitz.  I was always an AMOS person, but I've heard that it isn't as system friendly Blitz.

Blitz is being developed as commercial s/w for the PC, but go to www.blitz-2000.co.uk and you will find an updated version of Blitz 2, called AmiBlitz2 .

Another alternative is PureBasic, very similar to Blitz.  It has support for PPC, and other OSes (Linux, Windows).  It's not free though, but you can get a great demo.

AMOS, as Atheist said, is released for free.  There are a few people developing AMOS-like languages - have a look in Sourceforge if you are interested.

Blitz would probably be more OS4 compatible, but that's just my guess.

Go to www,truebasic.com and get your free version of TrueBasic by the inventors of the basic programming language that should run on your AmigaOne under linux.  Their student books for learning basic are great.

If you are lucky you might have the older version they produced for the Amiga when it was in its prime.  My same source code with graphics runs on Amiga, Linux and PC without change.  It is very structured and quick to learn.  My version of Amiga TrueBasic runs on all Amiga's.

Correction - The free linux version does not include the graphics.