A treat for retro lovers. A portion of Microsoft s ancient code came in

Last year, lovers of burying in old code received access to the source code MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0 from Microsoft. Now the company has released the source code of the GW-BASIC interpreter.

What is GW-BASIC?

GW-BASIC was the Microsoft version of IBM's BASICA program (with "A" at the end). Unfortunately, it was only available on original IBM PC DOS computers. It did not work on the popular IBM PC clones.

Compared to other BASIC implementations of the time (the first release of GW-BASIC took place 37 years ago), GW-BASIC had some interesting features. One of them was the availability of the BASCOM program, which made it possible to compile programs into executable files, then launched without source code and without GW-BASIC. For those times it was an advanced function.

GW-BASIC was included in the various versions of MS-DOS to eventually be replaced in version 5.0 by QBasic. QBasic has already presented a different approach - it was not a program run from the command line, but the entire development environment (IDE).

What did GW-BASIC have?

GW-BASIC had several interesting features that developed BASIC's basic functionalities. Among others, they were WHILE loops, long variable names (up to 40 characters), the ability to decide whether indexing arrays start from 1 or from 0, and in later versions even the possibility of using graphics. Initially, it was graphics in EGA standard, later VGA. Programs written in GW-BASIC could read the position of the joystick and play simple single-channel music - which allowed you to write simple games.

Can the shared code somehow be used?

In fact, it's very difficult. The source code provided contains only files in assembler, without any supporting files. If you would like to do the compilation yourself, there is a long way to go. You would probably have to do it e.g. in a virtual machine with DOS or in a DOS-BOX program. It's best to download the already compiled version or use a virtual machine with an MS-DOS copy older than 5.0 - where GW-BASIC is included.

If we are interested in old BASIC programs and their use on modern computers, we can go to which of the following addresses:

A page that contains listings of several games written in BASIC
Page with information about GW-BASIC
Copy of the GW-BASIC user guide
PC-BASIC - application emulating GW-BASIC on a modern computer
Fan site dedicated to GW-BASIC

A treat for retro lovers. A portion of Microsoft's ancient code came in

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