7.3) What is Atari BASIC?

Subject: 7.3) What is Atari BASIC?

BASIC is an acronym for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.
Developed by John Kemeney and Thomas Kurtz in the mid 1960s at Dartmouth
College, BASIC is one of the earliest and simplest high-level programming
languages, incorporating components of FORTRAN and ALGOL.

In 1978 Atari contracted with Shepardson Microsystems, Inc (SMI) to create a
version of BASIC for their upcoming home computers. The following worked
together on the project, which resulted in Atari BASIC:

Paul Laughton (author of Apple DOS) - project leader, co-primary contributor
Kathleen O'Brien - co-primary contributor
Bill Wilkinson - floating point scheme design
Paul Krasno - implemented the math library routines following guidelines
supplied by Fred Ruckdeschel (author of the acclaimed text,
BASIC Scientific Subroutines)
Bob Shepardson - Modified IMP-16 Assembler to accept special syntax tables
Paul invented
Mike Peters - keypuncher/computer operator/junior programmer/troubleshooter

Three Revisions of Atari BASIC were produced: A, B, and C:
A - cartridge produced for use with the 400/800/1200XL
B - built-in to the 600XL/800XL, also produced on cartridge
C - built-in to the 800XL(late models)/65XE/130XE/800XE/XE Game System,
also produced on cartridge.

In order to find out what version you are running, at the READY prompt,
enter "? PEEK(43234)"

If the result is: You have Revision: Atari Part#:
162 A CO12402/CO14502
96 B CO60302A
234 C CO24947A

On versions A, B, and C, Greg Miller writes:
"Rev A had a number of bugs, not just the commonly described crash bug.
Rev B fixed most (maybe all, I don't remember) of these, but in the
process, they added a new bug. You see, the crashes were caused by a bu
g
in one of OSS's memory move routines. When the bug was fixed, the fix
mistakenly applied to a routine that actually worked in Rev A, causing t
he
new lockup problem.

Rev C differs in only a few bytes. AFAIK, the only change was to remove
the alteration made to the routine that was broken by Rev B.
Also concerning versions A, B and C, Russ Gilbert writes (3 Jul 2002):
"I've got an opinion on this, my opinion is wrong to 95% of Atari users.

B is a re-compile of A. C is a 12 byte patch to B.

I've used Atari BASIC for a millenium (?). B has less hangs and
ridiculous stuff like losing DIMs and stuff. C hangs like a lot. I must
admit I don't have very much experience with C as I go back to B after
using C for a short time.

I prefer B. I know its foibles. Just LIST, NEW, ENTER, SAVE every 5 or
6 SAVEs. Also, 0 REM will help with ENTERs that aren't working (put a
immediate 0 REM line before you ENTER.)"