How to get AmigaBASIC running on Kickstart 3.1?

[ChaosLord]

Hey,

I am having a problem running AmigaBASIC on OS 3.9 on my Amiga 1200 68030. Is there a patch or a trick that allows me to run AmigaBASIC correctly on my Amiga 1200? Thanks in advance.

AmigaBASIC is actually M$ Basic.  It is the worst basic ever for Amiga and should never be used by anyone for anything.

If you need AmigaBASIC compatibility then you use an AmigaBASIC-compatible compiler.  There are a few to choose from.  Someone mentioned HiSoft BASIC.  A/C Basic is another choice.  I think there were others but I never used them so I can't remember their names.

A/C BASIC is like AmigaBASIC on steroids.  It is much better than silly 24-bit AmigaBASIC.

Of Course Blitz and AMOS are both widely regarded as being transdimensionally better.  But if you just absolutely must have M$-BASIC compatibility then you should definitely try out A/C BASIC.

[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.

[mark_k]

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?

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.

[ChaosLord]

or a BASIC which supports the OS

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.

[ChaosLord]

I'm not aware of many books being published for some other type of BASIC on the Amiga, though.

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.

[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.

[bloodline]

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/

AMOS is pretty powerful, but if you want some serious grunt and full OS compatibility (so you can use intuition etc)... then you have little choice beyond BlitzBasic2 (or amiblitz as I think it is called now).

Give up with AmigaBASIC now, it really is junk.

[Dwyloc]

Using WHDLOAD and this installer maybe worth a try http://www.whdload.de/apps/Workbench13.html but I have not tried using it to run AmigaBasic, but it may work and as it should install AmigaBasic from your workbench extra's disk it should be quite easy to test.

[mark_k]

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.

The links for the ABasiC manual and errata shown here are still valid. I linked to an archive of ABasiC programs on Aminet already. ABasiC programs are plain text files; you can load them into any text editor.

It looks like QL SuperBASIC is more sophisticated than ABasiC. You can't define your own procedures in ABasiC, for example.

[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!