#basic programming language

Monty Jaggers McGraw:

I am writing new BASIC programs to demo at my VCF Southwest 2025 exhibit of my 1979 Tektronix 4054A color vector graphics computer.

One of the programs I am writing is a 1978-1979 Battlestar Galactica TV demo. That TV show had $500,000 of Tektronix vector graphics computers and test equipment and many screenshots of their green vector storage CRT displays - some stills - some animated. These computer graphics were generated on both 1975 4051 and 1976 4081 vector graphics computers - predecessors to my 4052 and 4054A computers (see first photo attached).

Miami Herald TV 1978 magazine interview with the Battlestar Galactica set designer indicated extras on the set stationed in front of the 4051 computers were playing games during filming to increase realism and were so absorbed they kept playing after the cut! (article page attached).

The 4051 and second generation 4052 were the same physical size and used the same CRT and same Display board, but the 4052 and 4054 computers replaced the 800KHz Motorola 6800 CPU with a custom four AMD2901 bit-slice CPU to create a 16-bit address and data bus ALU which emulated the 6800 opcodes and added hardware floating point opcodes to speed up these computers 10x over the Motorola 6800, doubled the BASIC ROM space to 64KB and doubled the RAM space to 64KB!

I created these vector bitmap graphics using a "3D CAD" picture I found on the web of the Battlestar Galactica (last attachment).

As far as I know - there was never any 4050 BASIC program to view bitmap pictures on any of the 4050 computers. The 1979 4014 vector graphics terminal had a grayscale bitmap mode in the Extended Graphics option board, but I have only found a couple of bitmap 4014 images on a single Tektronix demo tape cartridge.

My 4050 BASIC program to display bitmaps works on all 4050 series computers - with an optional Tektronix 4050R12 Fast Graphics/Graphics Enhancement ROM Pack. This ROM Pack speeds up displaying vector images (including vector dot images) 10x over using BASIC MOVE and DRAW commands.

The Battlestar Galactica bitmap image in R12 binary format is 332234 bytes - slightly larger than would fit on a DC300 quarter-inch tape cartridge in the internal tape drive of all three 4050 computers, but would have fit on a 3M DC600 tape cartridge with a capacity of 600KB - it would have been very slow to load.

I designed an Arduino board to emulate the Tektronix 4924 GPIB tape drive - with the help of my software developer. My GPIB Flash Drive board contains a MicroSD card with gigabytes of storage and the Flash Drive emulates a GPIB tape changer, storing all the files of a "tape" in a single directory. I have also attached to this post a photo of my GPIB Flash Drive.

I have recovered almost 100 Tektronix 4050 Tapes and posted the ones I think are the most interesting at this time on my github repository for Tektronix 4051/4052/4054 computers: https://github.com/mmcgraw74/Tektronix-4051-4052-4054-Program-Files I included Tektronix published MATH volumes 1, 2, and 3 and Electrical Engineering, but I don't think they have a lot of use today. I have in my collection but not recovered tapes on Project Management, Statistics, and over 100 more tapes from the very active user group, which Tektronix made collections and published abstracts in their newsletter and the newletter customer got the tape for free. Commercial software like CAD programs were likely encrypted to eliminate copying - since Tektronix 4050 BASIC included a SECRET command which would then encrypt the program file as it was recorded to tape and add a SECRET flag in the tape header that would signal to BASIC ROM when that file was accessed to decrypt the program when it was loaded into memory. One big limiter to the size of the program was RAM in the 4051 was limited to 32KB and the 4052 and 4054 were limited to 64KB of RAM, although Tek BASIC did include commands to allow program "chunks" to be overlayed as necessary. Tektronix used those commands in their 4050 System Tape which was shipped with every system and included a tutorial on many of their BASIC commands. The tutorial ran on the original 4051 with 8KB of memory, and if the program detected 16KB of memory it would APPEND larger program files to speed up the tutorial.

The development of BASIC was a collaborative effort between Kemeny, Kurtz, and a team of students, including Mary Kenneth Keller, John McGeachie, and others. The team worked tirelessly to design a language that was easy to learn and use, with a syntax that was simple and intuitive. They drew inspiration from existing programming languages, such as ALGOL and FORTRAN, but also introduced many innovative features that would become hallmarks of the BASIC language.

One of the key innovations of BASIC was its use of simple, English-like commands. Unlike other programming languages, which required users to learn complex syntax and notation, BASIC used commands such as “PRINT” and “INPUT” that were easy to understand and remember. This made it possible for non-technical users to write programs and interact with the computer, without needing to have a deep understanding of computer science.

BASIC was first implemented on the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System, a pioneering computer system that allowed multiple users to interact with the computer simultaneously. The Time-Sharing System was a major innovation in itself, as it allowed users to share the computer’s resources and work on their own projects independently. With BASIC, users could write programs, run simulations, and analyze data, all from the comfort of their own terminals.

The impact of BASIC was immediate and profound. The language quickly gained popularity, not just at Dartmouth, but also at other universities and institutions around the world. It became the language of choice for many introductory programming courses, and its simplicity and ease of use made it an ideal language for beginners. As the personal computer revolution took hold in the 1970s and 1980s, BASIC became the language of choice for many hobbyists and enthusiasts, who used it to write games, utilities, and other applications.

Today, BASIC remains a popular language, with many variants and implementations available. While it may not be as widely used as it once was, its influence can still be seen in many modern programming languages, including Visual Basic, Python, and JavaScript. The development of BASIC was a major milestone in the history of computer science, as it democratized computing and made it accessible to a wider range of people.

The Birth of BASIC (Dartmouth College, August 2014)

I like a lot Basic. Programming language. Which is going with its roots in 80s – that’s for sure. First time I see Basic with computer lessons in school. It was MSX2 computer. Yamaha Kuvt 2. And there was MSX Basic or Microsoft Basic. With green background.

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