CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO BASIC-80
BASIC-SO
is
Intel's implementation
of
disk extended BASIC for Intellec and Intellec
Series II Microcomputer Development Systems, which use the Intel Systems Im-
plementation Supervisor (ISIS-II), and for Intel Single Board Computers, which use
Intel's Real-Time Multitasking Executive (RMX/SO).
It
offers a quick method
of
applying the computational and input! output capabilities
of
the microcomputer
development system to a wide range of business, information handling, numeric
analysis, and data processing applications.
BASIC-SO
can be used with either the ISIS-II or RMX/SO operating systems. Re-
quirements for ISIS-II BASIC-80 include an Intellec Microcomputer Development
System with at least
4SK
of memory space, and one disk drive. RMX/SO
BASIC-SO
requirements, both hardware and software, are described in Appendix F
of
this
manual.
BASIC-SO
includes
21
commands,
39
statements,
4S
functions, a line-editing
capability, and full disk
I/O
(both sequential and random access). In addition, user-
written functions can be defined, and up to
25
subroutines can
be
written in other
Intel-supported languages (FORTRAN-SO, PL/M-SO, and
SOSO/SOS5
assembly
language) and called from
BASIC-SO.
Intel integer, single-precision floating-point, and double-precision floating-point
arithmetic standards are all supported, offering flexible combinations of processing
speed and accuracy (up to
16
digits in the range ± 2.2 x
-308
to ±
1.S
x
10
308
).
Arrays
can have virtually as many dimensions as needed; the only limit on the number
of
dimensions that can be specified
is
the 255-character program statement length.
Hexadecimal and octal integer representation, combined with bitwise Boolean
logical operators, make sophisticated mask operations easy. A full range
of
string
functions
is
available to provide flexibility in manipulating character data.
The disk
I/O
features include not only the ability to read from and write to disk
files, but also the ability to create, rename, change the attributes of, delete, and list
the directory
of
disk files without returning to the operating system.
BASIC-SO
requires
an
Intellec or Intellec Series II microcomputer development
system with at least
4SK
RAM and ISIS-II operating system (version 3.4 or later).

Operating System Interface

You can invoke
BASIC-SO
from ISIS-II, or configure
RMX-SO
BASIC-SO
in PROM
for boot loading upon restart. Once BASIC
is
running, you have access to many
of
the disk file-handling functions as well as the ability to load and save programs.

Invoking BASIC-80

Once you configure RMX/SO BASIC-SO, you
will
always enter
BASIC-SO
upon
restart.
1-1