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[img]  BBC BASIC for the PDP-11     

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I started BBC BASIC for the PDP-11 at university on the late 1980s. It got as far as starting up, producing its startup message and prompting for input. I've now written a PDP emulator, so I am working on completing BBC BASIC for the PDP-11. I have also been testing it on UNIX Version 6 and UNIX Version 7 running on the SIMH PDP-11 emulator.

BBC BASIC uses standard PDP-11 UNIX TRAPs for I/O (eg TRAP 4 for character output and TRAP 3 for character input), so should run on any compliant PDP-11 UNIX. With modification to the HostIO source BBC BASIC should run on other PDP-11 systems, eg on RSX-11.

Running BBC BASIC
  • Download bbcbasic (11K, v0.14, 22-Jun-2010).
  • Copy the file to an appropriate directory or into a Unix disk image with a tool such as UxFiler. On Unix a suitable location would be /usr/bin/bbcbasic.
  • With PDPTube on RISC OS, Windows or UNIX, type bbcbasic at the PDP> prompt. PDPTube implements the full BBC graphics interface.
  • With a real PDP-11 system, or an emulator that boots into Unix, log on and type bbcbasic at the user prompt.
Install shows more detailed examples on running PDP-11 BBC BASIC. You can also see blog entries following PDP-11 BASIC's development.

See Also


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Last update: 02-Jul-2010