Author: Gordon Brandly
The 100th issue of Dr. Dobb’s Journal (February 1985) published an article I wrote describing a Tiny Basic interpreter I had written for the Motorola 68000 microprocessor. I am maintaining this web page as a place to pick up my latest version of the software, and to announce any new updates that might come along. Of course, others have probably extended my work in other directions. If so, I’d love to hear about it. You can contact me at
![[Sorry, thanks to browser-cache-scavenging worm programs, I can't make a text version of this address available.]](https://web.archive.org/web/20140914104607im_/http://members.shaw.ca/gbrandly/Images/MyShaw.gif)
Some History
Getting The Software
The entire package of source code, documentation, and example programs is available as a Zip file, which you can download by clicking here:
- 68000 Tiny Basic version 1.2 (zip file, 79K)
The interpreter’s source was written for the Quelo freeware 68000 assembler for CP/M. (Note: this assembler does not run on a PC unless you have a CP/M emulator program!) I’ve made the Quelo assembler package available for downloading by clicking on this link:
If you don’t have the ability to extract the contents of a zipped file, you can download the interpreter’s source code in text form (in MS-DOS ASCII text format) by clicking here:
More Tiny Basic Resources
Here are a few other Tiny Basic resources on the Web:
Chipmunk Basic – many links to various Tiny Basic resources, including (what I surmise is) the original Sherry Brothers Tiny Basic source code that I based my work on.
A Brief History of BASIC – a bit more on the history of the BASIC language and Microsoft’s involvement.
Obsolete Computer Museum – nothing really to do with Tiny Basic, I just put this here ’cause I think it’s a really neat site!
Computer History 1946-1997 (Archive.org) – An impressively detailed timeline of computer and microcomputer developments. Unlike most, this even includes events from Canada’s computer history (though they did miss the Inter Alia computer). Even though Tiny Basic isn’t specifically mentioned, this timeline helps put its development into the context of the events happening around it.