Show HN: I wrote a BASIC interpreter that boots on UEFI machines

This is a great project. How do you handle saving/loading data? You mentioned file operations but you need some sort of file system - perhaps FAT32 - to support that. I'd need that to consider using it on UEFI.

One thing you could use for more test cases is the book 101 BASIC Computers Games by David Ahl. Games always encouraged people to use computers and that's as classic as it gets!

Very cool! The raw-metal boot part is impressive.

BASIC requires more support than you'd expect. Here's an interpreter, with a similarly long list of features it has to support:

https://www.moondew.com/basic/index.htm

Not FOSS? That's a real pity.

I learned to program on 8 bit micros, and created a rough boot-to-BASIC experiment ~15 years ago following the JeOS pattern. So this project sounds really exciting, but I'd be more interested if I weren't restricted to being a passive end user.

What hardware have you run the UEFI version on?

Can you assume that pretty much any computer these days provides UEFI firmware that supports ThoreauBASIC, or might some computers provide only a cut-down UEFI that doesn't provide all the functions you need?

Is there some way to investigate the UEFI implementation on any computer? Can you get to the UEFI shell on any computer somehow or is the UEFI shell a separate application you have to download from somewhere and install?

I realize these questions are getting far afield from what you wanted to tell us about, but UEFI is still kind of a mystery despite being installed almost everywhere -- it's hard to find explanations about it.

I learned to program on the Commodore 64 and in QBASIC in th 90's. I'll give it a try.

Considering how much it supports, if it could chainload a full operating system, it would make a great replacement for GRUB or rEFIt.

"The machine boots into BASIC" :-)

I was 8 or 9 years old when the ZX Spectrum +2 arrived home.

I'm seriously considering installing this on an old laptop and giving it to my son when he's 8 years old, together with a hard-copy of a BASIC reference and a few simple programs and games to type in.

Getting a FAT32 filesystem on day 1 is already a huge jump from my childhood experience (loading from tape).

I really like this! I started a personal project a long time ago to boot a Raspberry PI into an environment like this, the idea being to bring back the good old days of the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, etc. I had to abandon the project but seeing this makes me want to resurrect it.

This is great! Allowing anyone to program like it is the 1980s and bring them back to their hardware somewhat. I think it will also find it's way to the permacomputing crowd since UEFI is so ubiquitous these days it may be a good platform for that can offer modern features with a understandable interface.

Great, nice project! In the time of Electron bloat, it's really refreshing to see bare-metal UEFI stuff.

I am on a similar quest with https://hackage.haskell.org/package/spade

But it is not bare metal yet and it is not BASIC.

Very nice! I am curious how you built your BASIC as an EFI application. I didn't find any source code or build instructions in the downloads.

I am investigating whether it would be feasible to do something similar for Python.

this is actually a really cool project been thinking of something like this ever since i saw a dudes Pascal (amd64) uefi loader and OS project

looks like a lot of fun to explore and learn from thank you

I know at least old Apple systems had a full Forth interpreter in their bootloader.

You should put it on bootable USB stick.

[dead]

[flagged]

[flagged]

Off-topic, but some average AI would have made all this in 7 seconds.