Lesson plan
IBM System/36 BASIC
IBM System/36 BASIC was an interpreter for the IBM System/36 midrange computer. System/36 BASIC was first offered in 1983, and as such, contained many of the trappings that a BASIC program would have encountered in the time period of the IBM PC, the Commodore 64, the VIC-20, the TRS-80, or many other offerings of the Seventies and early Eighties. As such, S/36 BASIC uses conventions that are no longer standard in modern BASICs, such as line numbers, and does not support newer features such as , procedures, properties, and so forth. BASIC interpreters written in the Seventies tended to "do odd things odd ways". For example, on the Apple II, a programmer could embed a command into a program via PRINT, when prefaced by the character string . and could be used in various BASICs to examine memory content or change it, or even to create an ad hoc machine language program and then run it. System/36 BASIC tends to stay away from these odd conventions; however, the programmer could call for the Alarm (a buzzing sound made by the terminal) via . BASIC statements are expected to be entered in capital letters, and while the operator can press Cmd2 to use lowercase, the BASIC interpreter will convert non-comment keywords into uppercase.…
Article summary
IBM System/36 BASIC was an interpreter for the IBM System/36 midrange computer. System/36 BASIC was first offered in 1983, and as such, contained many of the trappings that a BASIC program would have encountered in the time period of the IBM PC, the Commodore 64, the VIC-20, the TRS-80, or many other offerings of the Seventies and early Eighties. As such, S/36 BASIC uses conventions that are no longer standard in modern BASICs, such as line numbers, and does not support newer features such as , procedures, properties, and so forth. BASIC interpreters written in the Seventies tended to "do odd things odd ways". For example, on the Apple II, a programmer could embed a command into a program via PRINT, when prefaced by the character string . and could be used in various BASICs to examine memory content or change it, or even to create an ad hoc machine language program and then run it. System/36 BASIC tends to stay away from these odd conventions; however, the programmer could call for the Alarm (a buzzing sound made by the terminal) via . BASIC statements are expected to be entered in capital letters, and while the operator can press Cmd2 to use lowercase, the BASIC interpreter will convert non-comment keywords into uppercase.…
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Discussion questions
- Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
- Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
- If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?
Bibliography
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Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.