This Arduino BASIC interpreter will make a really fun one-day project if you’ve already got the parts on hand. [Usmar A. Padow] put together an Arduino Uno, SD card, four line character LCD, and PS/2 keyboard. but he’s also included alternative options to go without an LCD screen by using a computer terminal, or without the SD card by using only the Uno’s RAM. As you can see in his demo after the break, this simple input/output is all you need to experiment with some ancient computing.
It’s hard for us to watch this and not think back to an orange or green monochrome display. Just like decades past, this implementation of BASIC has you start each line of code with a line number, and doesn’t allow for character editing once the line has been input. The example programs that [Usmar] shows off are simple to understand but cover enough to get you started if you’ve never worked with BASIC before.
Last August we saw another hack which ported Tiny BASIC to the Arduino. You may want to take a gander at that one as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m8IKQNJNZY
No line editing? Psh, even my old VTech Precomputer 2000 had line editing =3
Well, I still have my TRS-80 Pocket Computer 1 – so I guess I don’t need this yet.
I wonder if this code could be used with the tv out lib…or maybe not enough memory…however could probably use 2 arduino’s, one for the BASIC interpreter and one for the terminal out…
getting pretty close to the uzebox…with just the arduino…looks like memory is limited to the bytes range though, from the one last year…
but still cool stuff….
Holy crap…just checked on youtube…and looks like amigojapan already made something like that…but just something like where two arduinos are connected to a pc in a unix shell or something…and do the same thing…I am thinking it would be cool to just use the two arduinos with the sd-card…basic interpreter running in serial mode with the other aqduino running the tv-out lib with his terminal screen program…problem is finding an analogue crt tv here in japan..I had to resort to using a video capture card I found at Hard-Off and running through my computer to mess around with the tv-out/terminal lib…heheheh…
It might be nice to get in contact with amigojapan…I am here too…but kind of out in the boonies…
First link points to amigojapan’s Github. And amigojapan is Usmar. 🙂 I know the guy from Tokyo HackerSpace, he showed this project during last night’s meeting. 🙂
I got the sans lcd working with the serial monitor but sometimes it didn’t work…I dont know if he changed the code on github or what…now everytime I type list once then all the code is gone….but I got the whole thing working with tv lib on a mega….but the basic interpreter and program stuff just isnt working…look spretty cool though…
Can’t imagine how long it took him to code this, lost a year just watching the first minute.
Congrats Usmar!
Usmar IS AMIGOJAPAN!
Decided to go with uBASIC that compiled right from the cut and paste but there was one misplaced letter f near the top…