Commodore BASIC: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 10:32, 24 September 2010

Revision as of 18:15, 29 September 2010

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==History==

Commodore licensed BASIC from [[Microsoft]] on a "pay once, no royalties" basis for {{nowrap|25 000 US$}} (Different sources range this amount between 10 000 and 30 000 US$). [[Bill Gates]] first offered it at a {{nowrap|3 US$}} per unit royalty fee but [[Jack Tramiel]] turned it down stating "I'm already married", said he would pay no more than {{nowrap|25 000 US$}} for a perpetual license and Gates later came back and accepted the deal.<ref>Stated by [[Jack Tramiel]] at the Commodore 64 25th Anniversary Celebration at the [[Computer History Museum]] monday december 10th, 2007[http://www.computerhistory.org/events/index.php?id=1193702785][http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBvbsPNBIyk].</ref> Commodore took the source code of the flat-fee BASIC and further developed it internally for all their other 8-bit home computers. It wasn't until the Commodore 128 (with V7.0) that a Microsoft copyright notice was displayed. However, Microsoft had built an [[easter egg (media)|easter egg]] into the originalversion 2 or "upgrade" Commodore Basic that proved its provenance: typing the (obscure) command <code>WAIT 6502, 1</code> would result in <code>Microsoft!</code> appearing on the screen. (The easter egg was well concealed—the message did not show up in any [[disassembler|disassembly]] of the interpreter.)<ref>[http://www.pagetable.com/?p=43 Bill Gates' Personal Easter Eggs]</ref>

==Technical details==