Have your ever wished the ZX81 BASIC allowed multistatement lines, or provided commands such as READ, DATA, RESTORE, IN, OUT, etc? Sure, lots of utilities have been around which provide these features, but most require RAND USR commands and POKEs which just aren’t “friendly” BASIC. Programming genius Frits Beniest, of Holland, has come to the rescue with a superb piece of software called EXTENDED BASIC.
EX.BAS. is an actual BASIC interpreter which lives in a 3.5 K long 0>REM statement. Since the EX.BAS. statements are very compact, you can still write a large program in 16K. Use of EX.BAS. does not require any POKEs or RAND USR commands. EX.BAS. is activated by the statement GOSUB 0 in your program. The following line begins with REM, then the EXTENDED BASIC commands. After the REM, it’s almost like Microsoft BASIC. ALL the commands must be typed in (spelled out). You can include as many commands in a line as you want, separated by colons. A whole new world of BASIC programming opens up, since lots of Microsoft-type commands are included.
This makes it a snap to type in some neat BASIC listings published for the IBM, Apple, TRS80, 2068, etc. which use commands that were nonexistant in ZX BASIC.
EX.BASIC provides 22 new commands, extending Display, Data & String Handling, and Input/Output control.
DISPLAY COMMANDS include: DRAW, UNDRAW, CIRCLE, UNCIRCLE, FILL, PAPER, UNPAPER, PRINT, PRINT AT, MOVE (a window scroll), SCROLL(by N lines), CLS (fast!), COPY, SCREEN$ (looks up character at specified screen coordinstes, & returns it to a specified variable) *These 14 commands use all 24 lines. PRINT auto-scrolls at the bottom line: no more 5/ reports!
DATA & STRING HANDLING commands include DATA, READ, RESTORE, (to specified DATA line), LEFT$, MID$, RIGHT$ (slice it!)
INPUT/OUTPUT CONTROL commands include KEY (like INKEY$, but faster, and can deal with multiple keys), IN (tests an input port and returns result to specified variable),OUT (sends contents of specified variable to indicated output port.) With these commands, you can program port-mapped control or measurement interfaces from BASIC.
EXTENDED BASIC seems to be virtually crash proof, and has 12 meaningful new report codes to tell you when you messed up. Due to the ingenious nature of the interpreter, it’s incredibly fast- it can print up to 6,000 chars/sec. to the screen in SLOW mode! Due to the speed of the Display utilities, you can easily write animated games or graphics applications in EX.BAS. that rival the speed of Machine Code!
I simply cannot recommend this program highly enough. By the time you read this,it will be available from Thomas B. Woods (P.O. Box 64, Jeffferson NH 03583). Send an SASE to Tom for his new catalog-I don’t know his price but it should be in the $16.95- $19.95 range. Fred Nachbaur has written a 20 page manual for EX.BAS., which is loaded with examples, tutorials on the use of the “new” commands, etc. E. Arthur Brown is also distributing EX.BAS., but with the (inferior) documentation provided by the author. Until E.A. Brown makes arrangements to supply the Nachbaur manual, I’d suggest you order EX.BAS. from Tom Woods.
TSH