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Looking for "BASIC/Z - Native Code Compiler" software

Indeed, it seems that "do one thing and do it well" line of thought has vanished from the scene. :(
One of the reasons that I've retreated to MCU work, BTW.
 
Chuck(G) said:
It's a pretty big manual--more than I can reliably scan. If someone wants to do the work and post the result online, please contact me. It's about an inch and a quarter of two-sided letter-sized pages.
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Chuck, I sent you an email about this - I'd be happy to scan the stuff you've got.

g.
 
daverand said:

DOS Days - Borland Turbo BASIC

website description
www.dosdays.co.uk

Name was changed to PowerBASIC. I think I used this briefly, back in the 80's, but ended up mostly on CBASIC, then C. I had a look for a copy, but was unable to find mine. I have a pallet of my old gear on the way to me, though... if I do find it, I'll post it here.
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Pallet arrived, and no luck. Apologies.
 
If my memory is correct, Borland purchased Power BASIC and renamed it to Turbo BASIC. Some time after that, they sold it back to the Power Basic author who then renamed it back and continued development.

g.
 
TIdbit is that the manual was prepared on a dot-matrix printer. The printer was a multipass 9 wire job using a film ribbon. Downloadable fonts, too.
The manual does go on a bit (don't blame me; I didn't write it)--61 pages before you get to discuss BASIC.

At any rate, there it is for posterity.
 
No, unfortunately I still haven't located the Z80 CP/M version. I created an account on the PowerBASIC forum to ask over there, but it seems like I don't have the permission to post. I've emailed and asked for permissions and months later, still nothing. If anyone has an account on the PowerBASIC forum - could you please ask about this over there? I'm thinking someone on that forum is bound to have a copy..
 
granzeier said:
@nullvalue, you mentioned that you had two binders with the documentation for BASIC/Z. Were you able to get those scanned in?
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I do have the manuals but have not scanned them yet as I no longer have a working scanner. Wouldn't mind lending them out to be scanned if you or someone else here would do it.
 
I do have a scanner, but the automatic document feeder only handles 35 pages, and only scans single-sided. If anyone else can do it, it would be much better than me trying (also, I have never tried to scan in a large document like that - it will take a bit of playing around to figure out how best to do it.)
 
Just found this link - by accident. Little reference to the history of BASIC/Z and PowerBasic?

.NET Rocks! Ethan Winer and Bob Zale

Carl and Mark talk with Ethan and Bob about the Good Old Days of the BASIC language, and some of their experiences early on in the first days of the industry, as well as PowerBASIC past, present, and future, crazy tech-support calls, and other stories.
www.dotnetrocks.com www.dotnetrocks.com

Geoff
 
Software bloats in proportion to the resources available in the target host system.

If the target host has unlimited resources, then why optimize? I write in FreeBasic for the PC. I have 64G of memory. If I want to simulate a megabyte of disk, I just create an array of 1 million floating point numbers. If I wanted to optimize, I'd do that as a string, or maybe an array of 8 bit numbers, but at most it's going to take around 8Mb of space in a system that runs 10 million times faster than it needs to, and in which my program bloat is insignificant.

Computing power just increased out of all proportion as an exponential progression.

I rewrote Linux's "Grep" in FreeBasic the other day, just as bloated as ever. The file size was ridiculously large, but small compared to other similar compiled versions, and it ran at 70% of the speed of the actual Linux Grep when I compared on the same system.

Bloat will cease once (if) computers reach a peak capability. We do see improvements however in the area of Video Games which push the graphics engines further and further. The current ability of games still push PCs to new limits.
 
GeoffB17 said:
Just found this link - by accident. Little reference to the history of BASIC/Z and PowerBasic?

Geoff
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Thanks yeah I found that/listened to that a few months ago when I was trying to hunt this down. One of the few references to "BASIC/Z" I could find on the net.

nullvalue said:
I created an account on the PowerBASIC forum to ask over there, but it seems like I don't have the permission to post. I've emailed and asked for permissions and months later, still nothing.
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Actually just re-registered and realized I missed a step to get full Post permissions - so I've just completed that and hopefully I can post the request over there soon.
 
cj7hawk said:
I rewrote Linux's "Grep" in FreeBasic the other day, just as bloated as ever. The file size was ridiculously large, but small compared to other similar compiled versions, and it ran at 70% of the speed of the actual Linux Grep when I compared on the same system.
Click to expand...
I rewrote it in C recently.

Linked dynamically it's about 18.7K; static 862.7K (that C library!) That means at least my share of the code (which is, to be fair, very little of the actual code; all the heavy lifting is in libc) is pretty light. That's compared to 203K for a dynamic GNU grep (though it might be doing a lot more of the lifting outside of the C libraries).
 
Argh.. still no access on the PowerBASIC forums. I'm going to email the powerbasic sales address to see if they know anyone who could assist.
 
Have you tried asking PowerBasic tech support, themselves? I just read that someone on the BASIC Programming FaceBook page was able to get a link to PB/DOS (which is not available through their web site.) They may have an archived copy somewhere. If you haven't asked them, I will go ahead and ask.
 
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