help with Altair BASIC

[Des]

hi

I had a quick question re Altair BASIC,

I've been playing around with SIMH, an Altair 8800 emulator:

http://simh.trailing-edge.com/


Can any tell me firstly which version of Altair BASIC supports loading of .bas Basic files?
so I can run a program without having to type it up manually? I thought this would be the disk basic, but im not sure?
I've been trying with the LOAD CHESS.BAS

(I have some basic programs in .bas files)
as an example but not getting anywhere.


Apart from the Altair Basic Manual are there any other good sources of information on there to get me started with Altair basic and maybe some game files?


thanks.

 

[ahm]

I've been trying with the LOAD CHESS.BAS

Have you tried

LOAD"CHESS.BAS"

 

[Des]

hi

gives me an SN ERROR

in 8k basic,

and in disk basic BAD FILE NAME


I do have the file in the same directory,


thanks for any help

 

[xprt]

Altair BASIC stored the programs in plain text. Starting with MBASIC or BASIC-80 for CP/M the default when saving was .BAS and programs were stored in "a compressed binary format". With an option, you could store in plain text.

If you can read you program in a text editor like NOTEPAD, then it's in plain text.

If you're looking for basic games, Rich Cini's emulator comes with lots of them: http://www.altair32.com/Altair32code.htm (download the current release).

Here's another game page: http://www.moorecad.com/classicbasic/index.html

You may also be able to run your CHESS.BAS with a later version of basic like GW-BASIC or Quick BASIC as discussed on that page.

 

[Des]

oh cheers thanks, that should give me something to play with until I can get my hands on a real Altair

thanks