Mastodawn

👀

now this is some arcane magicks...

Tiny BASIC for the RCA 1802!

https://www.retrotechnology.com/memship/mship_tbasic.html

http://www.cosmacelf.com/software/tbsourcep.txt

may have some joy structuring the eternal meandering for a 2K Tiny BASIC around this processor's implementation.

with 16 general purpose registers, the 1802 seems to better resemble the AVR microcontroller architecture than other examples we have dug up.

so far we know of:

6502, 8080, Z80, x86, and now the RCA 1802 assembly implementations of Tiny BASIC.

#tinybasic #basic #retrocomputing #vintagecomputing #permacomputing

COSMAC 1802 Tiny BASIC Software

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Stylus Apr 24

Let's stick a ~20kB TTS dictionary in this thing.

This required adding two TBIL opcodes (TALK, followed by a sequence of phonemes; and JX, 16-bit jump)

1 REM SIMULATED 6800 + TINYBASIC + VOTRAX SC-01A + TTS DICTIONARY
10 SAYE "HELLO"
15 SAY "K UH1 M P Y1 IU U T E R"
20 SAYE "I LIKE CHEESE. IT IS GREAT."
30 SAYE "SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW"
999 END

#retroComputing #tinyBasic #votrax #mc6800 #eightbit

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People's Permacomputer Project Apr 22

Thinking about string arrays in BASIC in connection with this display text editor.

Ordinarily, a string array would be defined as, e.g. L$(25).

This would take the place of the text buffer of the editor. Every line n is represented by L$(n).

A FOR loop could be used to print the buffer.

There should be variables to track the cursor, and it would point within a substring of L$(n).

This looks a lot like EDIT.BAS. I think one improvement could be a kind of 'word editor', where the cursor over some string bounded by spaces could select that string and allow editing of it without having to reproduce the whole line.

#basic #retrocomputing #arduino #TinyBASIC

People's Permacomputer Project Apr 21

work has been proceeding on an original text editor written in Tiny BASIC.

the idea is to produce a type in text editor, printed on paper.

one small wrinkle--GET is non-blocking on the microcontroller setup, but not within the POSIX development environment version.

here is a small code snippet:

https://paste.sr.ht/~vidak/54699878e10b891569c7e4b2c3ad953a811f9167

#basic #retrocomputing #arduino #tinybasic

Stylus Apr 14

The famous TinyBASIC interpreter is actually a nested interpreter: the bulk of the logic is implemented in a bytecode called TBIL.

There's a TBIL assembler implemented in TinyBASIC, but I wanted a modern one. So, I added a dialect to the fine assembler often called asl.

It doesn't quite match the syntax of what Tom Pittman's assembler took, and I haven't checked the output for correctness, but I did reach the milestone of getting a complete compiler run with no errors.

My code is on codeberg as is the listing file of my built version of the TinyBASIC interpreter

#retroComputing #mc6800 #tinyBASIC #BASIC

People's Permacomputer Project Apr 6

https://github.com/jggames/trs80mc10/tree/master/quicktype/Productivity%20%26%20Education/Visicalc

Visicalc... in BASIC??

there is also _another_ text editor here:

https://github.com/jggames/trs80mc10/blob/master/quicktype/Productivity%20%26%20Education/Editor/EDITOR0.TXT

#basic #permacomputing #tinybasic

trs80mc10/quicktype/Productivity & Education/Visicalc at master · jggames/trs80mc10

Games and other software for the TRS-80 MC-10. Contribute to jggames/trs80mc10 development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub

The Oasis BBS Dec 31

1541 KIM-1 Kernel: Turning a Commodore 1541 Into a Computer
#Commodore64 #Commodore1541 #MOS6502 #RetroComputing #VintageComputing #8Bit #HardwareHacks #TinyBASIC #KIM1 #CommodoreHistory
https://theoasisbbs.com/1541-kim-1-kernel-turning-a-commodore-1541-into-a-computer/?feed_id=7361&_unique_id=695538a5d09fa

J. Alan Henning Nov 15

I stumbled online across the manual for Sinclair 4K BASIC for the ZX80, which brought back memories of using a friend's ZX80 or ZX81. While most people bought it for the price, its Tiny BASIC had some clever ideas: https://troypress.com/sinclair-4k-basic-for-the-zx80/ #TinyBASIC #Retrocomputing

Sinclair 4K BASIC for the ZX80

In my study of Tiny BASICs, one I overlooked reviewing was Sinclair 4K BASIC, which stands out for its unique keyboard, its approach to graphics, and its memory usage.

Troy Press

People's Permacomputer Project Oct 6, 2025

okay!

the text editor is beginning to croak back into life!

this is a 100-ish line text editor written in Altair BASIC

i have corrected and adapted the program to run on this Tiny BASIC, which runs on virtually every micro-controller board available in the west:

https://github.com/slviajero/tinybasic

what happens in this video is:

1. a text file is loaded at the INPUT prompt

2. the file is read into memory with "R"

3. the file paged through with "N"

4. individual lines for editing are listed with "L"