What does "bas" stand for?

[Jack Leach]

A bit of a trivia question I've been wondering about and can't seem to find
an answer (except experts exchange, which charges money to see the answers :|
).

Is it a derivative of "base"?

Just curious.


--
Jack Leach
www.tristatemachine.com

"I haven't failed, I've found ten thousand ways that don't work."
-Thomas Edison (1847-1931)

 

[John W. Vinson]

A bit of a trivia question I've been wondering about and can't seem to find
an answer (except experts exchange, which charges money to see the answers :|
).

Is it a derivative of "base"?

Just curious.

I'd assume "Basic", as in Visual Basic, the language of modules.

It's of no significance to the program (you could name modules xQJcRelink or
basRelink, and the program will work perfectly well either way), but it's a
handy mnemonic for the programmer.

 

[Tony Toews [MVP]]

A bit of a trivia question I've been wondering about and can't seem to find
an answer (except experts exchange, which charges money to see the answers :|
).

Is it a derivative of "base"?

I'm with John. It's short for Basic the precursor the VBA or Visual
Basic for Applications.

I've worked on a 32 Kb system which had Basic in the ROM. Variables
were either 1 letter or 1 letter and a digit, ie A, A0, A1, ... Z8,
Z9. 16x64 screen, 2 8" floppy drives.

Tony

 

[John W. Vinson]

I'm with John. It's short for Basic the precursor the VBA or Visual
Basic for Applications.

I've worked on a 32 Kb system which had Basic in the ROM. Variables
were either 1 letter or 1 letter and a digit, ie A, A0, A1, ... Z8,
Z9. 16x64 screen, 2 8" floppy drives.

Aw, you had it lucky. I had to make do with clay tablets, reed styluses and
cuneiform. <g>

 

[Jack Leach]

I've worked on a 32 Kb system which had Basic in the ROM. Variables

were either 1 letter or 1 letter and a digit, ie A, A0, A1, ... Z8,
Z9. 16x64 screen, 2 8" floppy drives.

I've never even heard of an 8" floppy drive before. This must have been
shortly after the time when bugs were living beings that got fried to a
circut <g>

--
Jack Leach
www.tristatemachine.com

"I haven't failed, I've found ten thousand ways that don't work."
-Thomas Edison (1847-1931)

 

[Dirk Goldgar]

I've never even heard of an 8" floppy drive before. This must have been
shortly after the time when bugs were living beings that got fried to a
circut <g>

Pretty much. 8" disks were "floppies", 5-1/4" disks were "mini-floppies",
and 3.5" disks were "micro-floppies".

 

[Bill Raterink]

Short for basic -business all-purpose symbolic instruction set
You guys are showing your age. I used dual 8" floppies on DRI's CP/M Oper
Sys.

 

[Tony Toews [MVP]]

Short for basic -business all-purpose symbolic instruction set

You guys are showing your age. I used dual 8" floppies on DRI's CP/M Oper
Sys.

This was before CPM. IBM 5110 in 1979.

Tony

 

[Tony Toews [MVP]]

Pretty much. 8" disks were "floppies", 5-1/4" disks were "mini-floppies",
and 3.5" disks were "micro-floppies".

No, back then 5 1/4 and 3.5 didn't exist yet. The Altair with the S100
bus had just come out with 4 Kb of RAM IIRC.

Tony

 

[Tony Toews [MVP]]

I've never even heard of an 8" floppy drive before.

Clients had hundreds of them. I shoulda kept a couple as we retired
systems. The 8" floppies were in regular use from 1979 to 1989
until tape drives and media dropped in price and hard drive capacities
increased. First hard drive I used was 8.6 Mb in size and was
larger than a 5 gallon drum.

This must have been

shortly after the time when bugs were living beings that got fried to a
circut <g>

Actually it was a relay in the 1944 to 1949 time frame.

Grace Hopper
Anecdotes

"While she was working on a Mark II Computer at Harvard University,
her associates discovered a moth stuck in a relay and thereby impeding
operation, whereupon she remarked that they were "debugging" the
system. Though the term computer bug cannot be definitively attributed
to Admiral Hopper, she did bring the term into popularity.[11] The
remains of the moth can be found in the group's log book at the
Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in
Washington, D.C."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper

I was privileged to hear her speak once in Edmonton. Quite the
experience. Also the only person I know of to ask David Letterman a
question on his show. But then I don't own a TV and seldom watched
his show anyhow.

Tony

 

[John W. Vinson]

This was before CPM. IBM 5110 in 1979.

DEC PDP-1, serial number 4, paper tape (mylar tape for the bootstrap program).
<g>, 1974.

(yes, it was an antique already)

 

[Jack Leach]

Apparently I need to brush up on my history some. I had no idea that Amazing
Grace had anything to do with developing the first computer languages (in
fact, I wasn't aware that COBAL was more or less the first language, and it's
pretty amazing that it's still in use).

Cool stuff.

--
Jack Leach
www.tristatemachine.com

"I haven't failed, I've found ten thousand ways that don't work."
-Thomas Edison (1847-1931)

I've never even heard of an 8" floppy drive before.

Clients had hundreds of them. I shoulda kept a couple as we retired
systems. The 8" floppies were in regular use from 1979 to 1989
until tape drives and media dropped in price and hard drive capacities
increased. First hard drive I used was 8.6 Mb in size and was
larger than a 5 gallon drum.

This must have been

shortly after the time when bugs were living beings that got fried to a
circut <g>

Actually it was a relay in the 1944 to 1949 time frame.

Grace Hopper
Anecdotes

"While she was working on a Mark II Computer at Harvard University,
her associates discovered a moth stuck in a relay and thereby impeding
operation, whereupon she remarked that they were "debugging" the
system. Though the term computer bug cannot be definitively attributed
to Admiral Hopper, she did bring the term into popularity.[11] The
remains of the moth can be found in the group's log book at the
Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in
Washington, D.C."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper

I was privileged to hear her speak once in Edmonton. Quite the
experience. Also the only person I know of to ask David Letterman a
question on his show. But then I don't own a TV and seldom watched
his show anyhow.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Tony's Main MS Access pages - http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm
Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/
Granite Fleet Manager http://www.granitefleet.com/

 

[Dirk Goldgar]

I wasn't aware that COBAL was more or less the first language

COBOL -- COmmon Business Oriented Language

 

[Dirk Goldgar]

No, back then 5 1/4 and 3.5 didn't exist yet. The Altair with the S100
bus had just come out with 4 Kb of RAM IIRC.

I was commenting on the progression of floppy-disk sizes, not on the
specific time the various sizes were introduced.

Back when I was managing an IBM 4341 (small mainframe) in the 90s, the
system still loaded its microcode from 8" floppy disks.