BBC BASIC for the PDP-11 - MDFS::Software.PDP11.BBCBasic

MDFS::Software.PDP11.BBCBasic

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 (7K, v0.12, 01-Sep-2008).
	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.

Running BBC BASIC

See Also