Appreciation of Qbasic

[Zap]

I've been programmin since I was 5 (1993), when I watched my dad make the PC do what-ever-he-wanted. He found Qbasic on the HD, and tought me some stuff. Later I tought him VB ...

[Anonymous]

i started proggin back when i was like 8.. my apple 2gs crashed hard core and always gave me the fatal error message (with that thing going back n forth!) and just dropped me at a command prompt. i was all like wtf is this thing. try typin in sumthin *syntax error* try something else.. finally i think i typed in run or something and it worked so im like 'no way this thing can be worked on!' i found a simple book that tought how to INITialize disks so i could make progs, and learned a couple commands. The 'epitemy' of my apple proggin was a prog thhat let you make very simple bitmaps with the arrows to move, space to PLOT and c to change colors. i found that prog like 5 yrs later n i was like 'whoa how did i do that?' lol i found qb in like 92 or 93 i think on a school cpu..
imagine my delight in seeing my code on screen instead of having to type LIST every freakin time! since then me n qb have had a very fruitful relationship

Welcome cuboid! its always nice to have people around that enjoy qb too! iv only been around here for like 2 months, but ive enjoyed it a lot and hopefully, ive helped a few people along the way too!

adi

[peace]

If you think you want to work with the old computers you used to work on try emulators. I have 2 of the best apple 2 (8-bit) emulators myself. Applewin that mimics a platinum Apple 2E calibrated for acutual clock speed but can be adjusted to upto 3 times that. And, ApplePC (dos) that is about equal but doesn't calibrate speed manually. Full out it runs like a 20Mhz Apple2+, 2E, or 2C your choice. Though you can manually calibrate and it has save states.

[defiant1dave]

I don't really see the need to run an emulator program on a newer machine. Why not just obtain one of the old machines themselves, and REALLY see what they can do? Many types of these old dogs are easily obtainable on E-bay for very low prices....... I recently bought an IBM 5140, with enough memory to run QBasic well, for $9.00 US. With shipping it was $25.00 total. I've also seen Comodores of all sorts, Apples, Next's, Osbornes, Texas Instruments, Timex's ..... and PC compatibles from 8088's on up. Of course, the more exotic the machine, the more it costs....... but most of the fun oldies can be had for well less than $100.

Emulators might provide some of the experience of working within the limitations of older machines, and can be helpful for experimenting with some old machine that is unobtainable, like an Apple 1 maybe. But to REALLY understand what it's like to work with old dog, why not get an old a real old dog to begin with?

Granted, the old machines are not as user friendly as the new ones are......and they are slow....... and have memory and bios issues of all types........ and limited HDD capacity, IF they have any at all...... and have very limited video output cpabilities..... and ... and ... and..... but I think THAT is the point. No emulator can really duplicate all of the clunkiness that makes working with them so maddeningly fun!

[adosorken]

Emulators also eliminate a lot of the hassles that kept people from enjoying all the great software from the olden days as well.

I remember being addicted to Pool Of Radiance on the C64...but loading battles was painfully slow. When I started playing the same game in PC64, the load time was virtually gone, and the game was so much more enjoyable.

Also, not all of us have the space to house a bunch of old, often HUGE beasts of ancient technology. I know we sure don't.

[peace]

I don't really see the need to run an emulator program on a newer machine. Why not just obtain one of the old machines themselves, and REALLY see what they can do? Many types of these old dogs are easily obtainable on E-bay for very low prices....... I recently bought an IBM 5140, with enough memory to run QBasic well, for $9.00 US. With shipping it was $25.00 total. I've also seen Comodores of all sorts, Apples, Next's, Osbornes, Texas Instruments, Timex's ..... and PC compatibles from 8088's on up. Of course, the more exotic the machine, the more it costs....... but most of the fun oldies can be had for well less than $100.

Emulators might provide some of the experience of working within the limitations of older machines, and can be helpful for experimenting with some old machine that is unobtainable, like an Apple 1 maybe. But to REALLY understand what it's like to work with old dog, why not get an old a real old dog to begin with?

Granted, the old machines are not as user friendly as the new ones are......and they are slow....... and have memory and bios issues of all types........ and limited HDD capacity, IF they have any at all...... and have very limited video output cpabilities..... and ... and ... and..... but I think THAT is the point. No emulator can really duplicate all of the clunkiness that makes working with them so maddeningly fun!

Getting software and disk that work with older systems is harder than getting disk images of the same software.
Also, they are mostly free, better ones perfectly mimic the old machine. And, if yoiu want top got back and forth between qbasic and applesoft which I do with some programs (make them work with little change.) emulators are easier towork with even if you have the old systems. You really don't need any emulators for dos as most programs in dos will run on win 9X with moslo or alone.
And, applewin and applepc both as close as is possible mimic
apple 2 series. I used to own an apple 2e and from programming and game play stand point applewin in full screen mode are nearly identical. Only real difference is it is slightlky easier to swap disk images than disk. If you really want that experience put one disk image on one floppy and another disk image on another floppy.