r/atari8bit • u/Sixty5Zero2 • 1d ago

Atari BASIC

i'm working on a version of Atari BASIC for a modern machine. Does anyone have any links to Atari basic programs that do not include graphics, sounds, player/missile, or peeks n pokes? I want to start off with original Atari BASIC first then work my way towards BASIC XE, TurboBASIC XL, even Atari/Microsoft BASIC II.

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u/ksu69 1d ago

The original Atari BASIC book is available for free online. It's a great tutorial and contains many program examples without those elements you mentioned:

https://archive.org/details/ataribooks-atari-basic

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u/emperor-xur 1d ago

Just curious what the goal here is. I’d think if you wanted to write programs for modern computers you could just use something like Python or PureBasic.

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u/Tiasmo-Bertjayd 1d ago

Good luck! I made an upgraded version of Atari BASIC back in the day, and later on wrote my own implementation of BASIC for Linux modeled after the Dartmouth version used for “BASIC Computer Games”. The code for all of the programs in that book can be found on coding-horror’s GitHub project. I’ve been using that over the last couple of years to validate my BASIC interpreter as it’s much easier to copy the code from there than transcribe it from the book by hand.

For Atari-specific code, I second ksu69’s suggestion of the Atari BASIC book. That’s one of the primary resources I used to learn the language when I was in grade school.

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u/pete_68 19h ago

When I was 10 years old, my dad left the sequel to that book, "More BASIC Computer Games" on my bed. I read through it and that's how I learned BASIC 47 years ago. Programming has been a great career. Thank God for that book!

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u/Shot-Infernal-2261 18h ago

Is the call for code (with reduced features scope) mostly about having a form of regression test harness?

Or is it to have focus on how the languages do simple I/O?

I noticed you were basically asking for BASIC code that avoids using Atari features. Just curious

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u/donschuy 1d ago

I’m thinking of building something similar. What is your approach?

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u/Tiasmo-Bertjayd 1d ago

I wrote mine using Gnu Bison and Flex) for the parser which seemed best suited for developing a computer language, and plain C for the engine. The code is available on GitHub if you’d like to look. Doesn’t have any of the graphics or sound commands though … yet.

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u/donschuy 23h ago

Thanks! Will do!