New: Console Mode editions of BBC BASIC

[Richard Russell]

I have updated the Console Mode editions of BBC BASIC to version 0.36.  The changes in this version are:

• Fixed a memory leak which could occur if you incompletely initialise a string array from a list of literals.
  
  
• Added macros to support CPUs having strict alignment requirements (e.g. the ARM Cortex-M0+).
  
  
• Reduced the memory footprint by removing unneccessary sound and graphics allocations.
  
  
• Allow PAGE to be reduced (if you are aware of the dangers) in low-memory situations.
  
  
• Added a fix (in Windows only) for fread() not always updating the file pointer correctly (this appears not to affect 64-bit Windows but it's safer to fix it anyway).
  

Version 0.36 may be downloaded from the usual place:

• Windows edition (64-bits)
• MacOS edition (64-bits)
• Mac M1 native edition
• Linux edition (64-bits)
• Raspberry Pi OS edition (32-bits)
• Raspberry Pi OS edition (64-bits)

[Richard Russell]

I have updated the Console Mode editions of BBC BASIC to version 0.38.  The changes in this version are:

• The SUM operator has been introduced, which does modulo-2⁶⁴ addition (modulo 2⁶⁴ subtraction and multiplication are also possible using it); this brings the console editions into line with BBC BASIC for SDL 2.0.
  
  
• The Raspberry Pi Pico  edition now has a working assembler (thanks to Memotech Bill), which supports the subset of the Thumb 2 instruction set executed by the ARM Cortex-M0+ CPU.  A new example program hello.bbc is included to demonstrate its use.
  

Version 0.38 may be downloaded from the usual place:

• Windows edition (64-bits)
• MacOS edition (64-bits)
• Mac M1 native edition
• Linux edition (64-bits)
• Raspberry Pi OS edition (32-bits)
• Raspberry Pi OS edition (64-bits)
• Raspberry Pi Pico edition

The Raspberry Pi Pico download consists of a UF2 file containing a flash image, including an initialised filesystem.  To program the Pico, connect it via USB whilst the button is pressed; it will appear as an external drive (typically D:\ in Windows or /dev/ttyACM0 on a Pi).  Then copy the UF2 file to that drive.

[Richard Russell]

I have updated the Console Mode editions of BBC BASIC to version 0.39.  The changes in this version are:

• Fixed an off-by-one bug which resulted in a crash if the response to an INPUT LINE statement was a maximum length string (255 characters).
  
  
• Added a new example program patience.bbc which is a simple Patience (Solitaire) program, adapted from one first published in Practical Computing nearly 40 years ago!  Note that it uses VT100 line-drawing characters, which may need to be enabled in some terminal emulators (particularly PuTTY).  See the code for more information.
  

Version 0.39 may be downloaded from the usual place:

• Windows edition (64-bits)
• MacOS edition (64-bits)
• Mac M1 native edition
• Linux edition (64-bits)
• Raspberry Pi OS edition (32-bits)
• Raspberry Pi OS edition (64-bits)
• Raspberry Pi Pico edition

[Richard Russell]

I have updated the Console Mode editions of BBC BASIC to version 0.40.  The changes in this version are:

• Fixed a bug in the handling of @% whereby setting the field width (LS byte) to zero didn't have the correct effect.
  
  
• Hexadecimal addresses passed to *commands are now assumed to be unsigned.  This fixes a problem (on 32-bit editions only) when the address is in the top half of the memory map.
  
  
• Fixed a warning issued by GCC 11 related to the way the pseudo-random number prand is handled.  This doesn't affect operation.
  
  
• Added a new example program solve.bbc which is a console version of the program of the same name supplied with the GUI editions (it solves simultaneous equations by inverting a matrix).

Version 0.40 may be downloaded from the usual place.

[Richard Russell]

I have updated the Console Mode editions of BBC BASIC to version 0.41.  The changes in this version are:

• Added support for serial I/O, for example the EXT# function returns the number of characters waiting in the input buffer.
  
  
• Added a new example program animal.bbc which is the famous 'guess the animal' program, which learns from its mistakes (sort of).
  

Version 0.41 may be downloaded from the usual place.