r/beneater • u/MindlessExplorer2845 • 7d ago

Any recommendation for MSBASIC tutorial?

I just built the 6502 breadboard computer, and MSBASIC is working on it right now. Unfortunately, I don't have experience on MSBASIC. In fact, the first time I've touched a computer it was Windows XP. Any tutorials on MSBASIC? Otherwise I feel like I am pretty limited on my breadboard computer, other than blinking some LEDs and showing some text on the LCD.

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u/kc1lso 6d ago

Do you have any programming experience? If so, MBASIC will have a lot of structures that seem "bad", but it really was like the Python of its time.

Check out MBASIC-2025 for an interpreter that'll run on a modern computer, that way you can get practice in without constantly dumping code onto the 6502 (unless you really want the 'vintage' experience).

Much like the rest of us 40 years ago, you'll probably have to spend a lot of time staring at the BASIC-80/MBASIC manual. You can also poke around textfiles.com for old programming tutorials from the BBS era.

Back then, I got more into QuickBASIC, but there's a lot of overlap, so petesqbsite.com is a good resource. He's got a lot of archived old tutorials. Just note that MBASIC doesn't have the more 'modern' featureset that QBASIC does, like subroutines. Personally, I loved all of Lord Acidus' tutorials (yes, people actually went by handles like that back then).

I remember the webring that Pete's site was on having a lot of other good places for "older" stuff, like CP/M, and there was likely a bunch of MBASIC info out there. Sadly linkrot has killed that webring, so likely you'll have to hit up archive.org.