GW-BASIC VS micro_8088

Fun fact...Microsoft open sourced GW-BASIC under the MIT license a couple years ago...

https://github.com/microsoft/GW-BASIC

The blog post announcing it is here if you want more information about it...

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/microsoft-open-so...

I'm way ahead of you :)

Unfortunately, rewriting it without reverse engineering makes it almost impossible to reach the same performance characteristics. These are essential to reproduce proper timing in several games.

Also, it may not be much code, but the floating point operations are quite a piece of art. See the GW-BASIC source code, which is somewhat similar [1].

I also rewrote most of the BASIC interpreter directly in Kotlin, omitting assembly, but obviously that runs into the same compatibility issues.

As far as I understand it, reverse engineering is not allowed without permission, although some people suggest that it is ok to get other software to run. Not sure whether that case would hold up for my entertainment value.

[1] https://github.com/microsoft/GW-BASIC/blob/master/MATH2.ASM

Someone could take this and try to make it ROM-able in order to "complete" the BIOS:

https://github.com/microsoft/GW-BASIC

Hey! They use an emulation. You can implement this yourself but it's quite the undertaking if you also want trigonometry functions etc. There are libraries available but they can be hard to build on older compilers, search for floating point emulation c library to get some ideas. Depending on what you want to do however are you sure you need floating point? I thought so in the past but have reconsidered. Many times you can work something out by either scaling or smart fractions like 355/113 for pi etc. Regarding scaling, this is also how fixed point math works, certainly also of interest and maybe more then enough?

> but if ever the source for QBasic leaked

QBasic? - Why that modern thing. Just use the proper BASIC: https://github.com/microsoft/GW-BASIC ;)

Microsoft GW-Basic Interpreter Source Code\ (20 comments)

No, CPU is irrelevant, even the early chipsets didnt try to invent anything and mostly implemented XT peripherals leading to universal exchangeable clone bioses. OP didnt suggest otherwise, he simply mentioned author also publishes a couple open source 8088 motherboard projects:

http://www.malinov.com/Home/sergeys-projects/sergey-s-xt

http://www.malinov.com/Home/sergeys-projects/xi-8088

https://github.com/skiselev/micro_8088

http://www.malinov.com/Home/sergeys-projects/wildcard-88-mot...

I sort of wanted to try the Micro 8088 myself, but it seems like the FE2010 is very expensive, and the more available PT8010A apparently is slower (https://github.com/skiselev/micro_8088/blob/master/Documentation/Proton-XT_Controller-PT8010AF.md)

This seems to much similar to the https://github.com/skiselev/micro_8088 because both use "FARADAY" chipset, which makes BOM much smaller. The original "FARADAY" chipset is hard to find now but I have seen "PROTON" version of that but there are slight to be addressed changes. It is readily available for around USD 20.

I built a micro 8088 with an 8bit ISA backplane (https://github.com/skiselev/micro_8088) and I use a D-Link DE-220CT (http://support.dlink.com.au/drivers/files/adapters/de220.htm) in an 8 bit slot . The driver dowloads have the packet driver for DOS. I have mTCP plus some WATTCP apps, all of which work perfectly.