Tiny Basic missing

El Paisa

I just received the Hydra book and CD.
I am trying to find the Tini Basic stuff, but I can not find it.
Is this Tiny Basic in this book or I have to buy the Hydra board?

AndreL

Tiny basic is on the CD in the sources directory "RGW_tinybasic_010.spin" is the top level file, also goto chapter 25.1.15, it is demo'ed there.

Andre'

M. K. Borri

Is that available for those of us who didn't buy the Hydra yet? (Kinda waiting for Christmas here)

Mike Green

There is a different "tiny basic" written in SPIN which is downloadable from this forum (and attached here). It requires several objects (Graphics, Keyboard, TV) which are provided with the Propeller Tool.

Post Edited (Mike Green) : 11/29/2006 11:56:13 PM GMT

rokicki

That Tiny BASIC is intended only as a joke. It can be extended into a real, usable BASIC without *too* much work,
but that work has not been done and I'm not sure it "should" be done (for some definition of "should"). However, it
does prove how trivial a Spin-based BASIC can be.

The actual interpreter part of things could probably (?) be moved to assembly language for a speed bump.

Personally, if I were doing a BASIC for the propellor, I'd probably base it on something closer to the old BASIC09
for OS/9 (the Microware OS/9, not the Mac OS/9). This is a much more structured BASIC that retains the
accessibility but doesn't make Djikstra spin in his grave quite so much.

(Oh, and "fb" stands for "femto basic" in case anyone asks.)

Post Edited (rokicki) : 11/30/2006 12:05:32 AM GMT

M. K. Borri

Thanks! I want to see if it can be converted into something that looks like pbasic... easier than starting from scratch.

AndreL

The Tiny BASIC on the HYDRA is called "HYDRA Tiny BASIC" and its a real basic written in assembly language with the whole tiny basic spec more or less implemented. As noted there was a TRS coco Tiny Basic written in SPIN, that is available on the board here in the download or somewhere. The HYDRA basic is available with the hydra book or hydra kit and is VERY fast. Source is included so it can be updated and augmented.

Andre'

Gavin

Andre,

Is the Hydra Tiny Basic faster than spin?

GAvin

inaki

The one included with Hydra is really fast. Only it is somewhat limited, that is why is called Tiny.
Specially I miss the PLOT function !

By the way, in my own Hydra board Tiny Basic locks sometimes. I suspect my board has something wrong so it may be a hardware problem and not software related.

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AndreL

Its the basic, its only a demo, and not bullet proof. The author will make an updated version once he gets more time. And I haven't bench marked it against spin. Its an interpreter, where spin is I-code VM, so its like compariing apples to pears [noparse]:)[/noparse] But, why don't you run some benchmarks like simple counting, math, etc. in a loop from 1 to 100_000 or something and see what you get with each system.

I will bug the author again to see how he is doing on a 2.0 verison with graphics, gamepad, and sound support. Then it will be really useful to get real work done and write some simple games, etc.

Andre'