BBC BASIC for the PDP-11

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

bbcbasic BBC BASIC for PDP-11 Unix basic.rom BBC BASIC ROM for PDP-11 Tube bbcpdp.zip Full BBC BASIC archive, source, docs, demos

Read.me Brief overview BBCBasic.txt BBC BASIC documentation blog Development blog

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Last update: 02-Jul-2010