Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/13/sinclair_basic_for_raspberry_pi/
Sinclair BASIC comes to Raspberry Pi
Or Linux, Windows and Pandora
Posted in Hardware, 13th November 2012 00:42 GMT
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The 80's are so now, as hot on the heels of the RISC OS' Raspberry Pi debut [1] comes the equally retro-tastic news that the BASIC version used in the Sinclair ZX Spectrum can also run on the Pi.
The BASIC in question is SpecBAS, is a project run by a chap called Paul Dunn.
Full Pi support came to the project with the recently-released version 0.755.
SpecBAS is billed as offering “all the features of Sinclair BASIC” , but also adds the following:
- Procedures, with both referenced and normal variable parameters
- Flow control with DO..LOOP, WHILE..LOOP, DO..UNTIL
- Better array handling, with variable BASE settings and FOR..EACH support
- Better string handling with LEFT$, RIGHT$, MID$, REPEAT$ etc
- Memory banks which can be loaded, saved and utilised to hold a variety of data types
- Many, many more maths functions, with both radians and degrees support
- Graphics with 8bpp in any supported resolution with full palette changing, rotation, scaling etc
- Sound support with MOD/S3M/XM/IT/MP3/VOC/WAV etc
- Turtle graphics, sprites, tilemaps.
The language also offers mouse support, which will sadly make the Kempston mouse [2] redundant. On the upside, SpecBAS busts the 48K memory limit, which may or may not be a good thing depending on your appetite for large BASIC projects.
To get SpecBAS working on a Pi, you'll first need to run a linux distribution with hard floating point support. Raspbian Wheezy, the distribution recommended by Raspberry, fits the bill.
The software is free and available here [3]. ®