BASIC turning 50

[normeus]

Gang,

There is an article about BASIC turning 50 so I figured PureBasic should also be celebrated by hitting that PureBasic paypal button!

here is the article:
http://www.networkworld.com/community/b ... g-language

and I don't have a link to donate to PureBasic but if you are a member and download the latest releases then you'll see the donate button.

Thank you.
Norm.

[TI-994A]

A sampling of TI-Basic, which was built into the Texas Instruments 99/4A Home Computer; the BASIC I started with:

Code: Select all

100 CALL CLEAR
110 PRINT "Start Program? (Y/N)"
120 CALL KEY (0, K, S)
130 IF K = 89 THEN 160
140 IF K <> 78 THEN 120
150 END
160 CALL SAY ("#READY TO START#")
170 REM start program...

To the best of my knowledge, speech synthesis (line 160) was not possible on any other home computer of its time.

[UUICEO]

A sampling of TI-Basic, which was built into the Texas Instruments 99/4A Home Computer; the BASIC I started with:

Code: Select all

100 CALL CLEAR
110 PRINT "Start Program? (Y/N)"
120 CALL KEY (0, K, S)
130 IF K = 89 THEN 160
140 IF K <> 78 THEN 120
150 END
160 CALL SAY ("#READY TO START#")
170 REM start program...

To the best of my knowledge, speech synthesis (line 160) was not possible on any other home computer of its time.

Wow.. I haven't seen this stuff in more than 30 years. Thats awesome. My first computer was a TI 99/4A.

[TI-994A]

Wow.. I haven't seen this stuff in more than 30 years. Thats awesome. My first computer was a TI 99/4A.

It truly still is! Unfortunately, the solid state cartridges proved to be a little pricey, and copies on cassette tape or floppies were scarce. Couple that with its discontinued support, and my programming life began. I was relegated to typing in source listings from magazines, and even adapting code meant for other machines.

[heartbone]

{snip}the Texas Instruments 99/4A Home Computer;{snip}To the best of my knowledge, speech synthesis (line 160) was not possible on any other home computer of its time.

Here's to knowledge expansion.

It seems that the TI HARDWARE speech synthesis was released in 1982,
the very same year that speech synthesis was implemented on my 8-bit system in a different way,
by means of software loaded from a floppy disk to exploit the system's (for the time) high end audio circuitry.

The pioneering speech synthesizer was named S.A.M. (Software Automatic Mouth) [1982],
and it was created by a third party developer (Don't Ask Computer Software).
The bad thing is that users had to blank the computer's display to keep the speech from sounding distorted, which somewhat limited its usefulness.

[TI-994A]

It seems that the TI HARDWARE speech synthesis was released in 1982, the very same year that speech synthesis was implemented on my 8-bit system in a different way, by means of software loaded from a floppy disk to exploit the system's (for the time) high end audio circuitry.

The pioneering speech synthesizer was named S.A.M. (Software Automatic Mouth) [1982], and it was created by a third party developer (Don't Ask Computer Software).

Hi heartbone. Yes, I had an opportunity to tinker with SAM as well, and it was pretty cool too. However, your timeline seems to be a little off. The Texas Instruments Solid State Speech Synthesizer was originally released in 1979 for the TI-99/4 Home Computer, which was the predecessor to the TI-99/4A. I received mine in the fall of 1981.

SAM was actually a TSR application that had to be invoked through abstruse memory calls in association with a reserved string variable (SA$), and TTS required cryptic phonetic representations in order to be intelligible. Here's an example in Applesoft BASIC:

Code: Select all

100 SA$ = "PYUW4R BEY4SIHK RAA4KS."
110 CALL 38128

That would presumably say PureBasic Rocks.

[heartbone]

Hi heartbone. Yes, I had an opportunity to tinker with SAM as well, and it was pretty cool too. However, your timeline seems to be a little off. The Texas Instruments Solid State Speech Synthesizer was originally released in 1979 for the TI-99/4 Home Computer, which was the predecessor to the TI-99/4A. I received mine in the fall of 1981.

SAM was actually a TSR application that had to be invoked through abstruse memory calls in association with a reserved string variable (SA$), and TTS required cryptic phonetic representations in order to be intelligible. Here's an example in Applesoft BASIC:

Code: Select all

100 SA$ = "PYUW4R BEY4SIHK RAA4KS."
110 CALL 38128

That would presumably say PureBasic Rocks.

Yes sir TI-994A, thanks for the correction.
Nowadays my memory can be a bit hazy about the proper year.
I used to be able to quickly tell you the make and model of any 1960s era GM automobile by sight.
Nowadays I sometimes miss by a couple of years.
Although I can find nothing on the web to validate that 1979 release year, I do believe you.

SAM was downright fun to play with trying to get it to say certain words, and it could be called from BASIC or ML programs.
Most applications were rather limited back then, it seemed that SAM implementations never went very deep.

BTW, AFAIK TSR only applies to IBM PC/MS DOS applications.
TTFN

[TI-994A]

...Nowadays my memory can be a bit hazy...

Tell me about it; even Ginkgo's no help! Here are some links to corroborate the dates:
- Wikipedia image archive
- the PHP1500 brochure

BTW, AFAIK TSR only applies to IBM PC/MS DOS applications.

Well, Apple had their own version of DOS, and BLOADed programs were technically equivalent to TSR programs. IMHO.