Great story. I remember using tiny BASIC back in the day. And FORTRAN. And CP/M. In fact, I disassembled CP/M to add new functionality to it as part of my thesis project. Good times. Good times!
As usual, another great article. I’ve been wanting to give you some feedback for some time but never got around to it. You had mentioned about using BASIC on the job and yes, I used it on several jobs that I had over the years.
I had learned BASIC in the late 70’s when I worked for Sperry UNIVAC. My programming experience at that time was writing machine code pressed through a maintenance panel and later on with Assembly Language. I never used BASIC while at UNIVAC but thought that the language greatly simplified writing programs.
After five years at UNIVAC, I found a job at an Army Depot writing Automated Test Program Sets on the HP 1000. This system could troubleshoot and isolate problems on failed circuit boards using the programs that we wrote for that particular card. Although HP had its own programming language for the majority of the testing being done, we sometimes had to augment the test program with special code written in either FORTRAN IV or BASIC.
My next job that required BASIC was working for the Department of Interior for Hoover Dam. As luck would have it, I ended up programming environmental Data Logging Equipment. These were first generation Data Loggers that took remote field measurements on the Colorado River and elsewhere. The BASIC used on these Data Loggers was referred to as ‘Tiny BASIC’ that was interpreted. This BASIC was slow, crude and extremely limited. We could use 26 total variables A-Z. Also reading STRING information from an RS-232 port was done by a character to character basis. Learning to implement BASIC was pretty crude as the vendor supplied several snippets of code as programming examples. Even with the limitations of TINY BASIC, we could refine the measurements to be more accurate.
One thing you learn in time is ALL equipment has a lifecycle. When the vendor was developing the new generation of its Data Loggers, I had been asked to be a Beta Tester. The new equipment had a better BASIC. In this version that was compiled, the differences and abilities were like comparing going from driving a Yugo to a fancy race car. Measurements could be refined. I could talk to third party instruments without any difficulty. Man… It was a game changer.
I wrote many routines over the years. All specialized stuff. The company that we had been working with over the last two decades was bought out and it was time to design a new data logging product. The new generation would utilize PYTHON as the goto language. I was asked to be the Beta Tester but retired before I had their product in my hot little hands.
So what about BASIC? It had (and still is) being used in the Data Collection of water from the Colorado River in both the river and the distribution points from Hoover Dam to Mexico. As the river is the life’s blood to the Southwest and to the millions of people that rely on it, probably one of BASIC’s more noteworthy roles…
Great story. I remember using tiny BASIC back in the day. And FORTRAN. And CP/M. In fact, I disassembled CP/M to add new functionality to it as part of my thesis project. Good times. Good times!
As usual, another great article. I’ve been wanting to give you some feedback for some time but never got around to it. You had mentioned about using BASIC on the job and yes, I used it on several jobs that I had over the years.
I had learned BASIC in the late 70’s when I worked for Sperry UNIVAC. My programming experience at that time was writing machine code pressed through a maintenance panel and later on with Assembly Language. I never used BASIC while at UNIVAC but thought that the language greatly simplified writing programs.
After five years at UNIVAC, I found a job at an Army Depot writing Automated Test Program Sets on the HP 1000. This system could troubleshoot and isolate problems on failed circuit boards using the programs that we wrote for that particular card. Although HP had its own programming language for the majority of the testing being done, we sometimes had to augment the test program with special code written in either FORTRAN IV or BASIC.
My next job that required BASIC was working for the Department of Interior for Hoover Dam. As luck would have it, I ended up programming environmental Data Logging Equipment. These were first generation Data Loggers that took remote field measurements on the Colorado River and elsewhere. The BASIC used on these Data Loggers was referred to as ‘Tiny BASIC’ that was interpreted. This BASIC was slow, crude and extremely limited. We could use 26 total variables A-Z. Also reading STRING information from an RS-232 port was done by a character to character basis. Learning to implement BASIC was pretty crude as the vendor supplied several snippets of code as programming examples. Even with the limitations of TINY BASIC, we could refine the measurements to be more accurate.
One thing you learn in time is ALL equipment has a lifecycle. When the vendor was developing the new generation of its Data Loggers, I had been asked to be a Beta Tester. The new equipment had a better BASIC. In this version that was compiled, the differences and abilities were like comparing going from driving a Yugo to a fancy race car. Measurements could be refined. I could talk to third party instruments without any difficulty. Man… It was a game changer.
I wrote many routines over the years. All specialized stuff. The company that we had been working with over the last two decades was bought out and it was time to design a new data logging product. The new generation would utilize PYTHON as the goto language. I was asked to be the Beta Tester but retired before I had their product in my hot little hands.
So what about BASIC? It had (and still is) being used in the Data Collection of water from the Colorado River in both the river and the distribution points from Hoover Dam to Mexico. As the river is the life’s blood to the Southwest and to the millions of people that rely on it, probably one of BASIC’s more noteworthy roles…