> Is there a shareware or freeware version of basic for dos/windows?

QBASIC interpreter runs under DOS or in a Windows DOS box (or equivalent)
and came with various flavours of MSDOS and is arguably essentially public
domain for any application running on Windows.

Quick Basic is the compiling version which was sold by Microsoft but has not
been for many years. It makes stand alone EXE files.
It can no longer be bought new. Versionsare available for download from the
web although it is questionable whether Microsoft considers this legal.
(Remember the rule of thumb to use when wondering about such things:
Micro$oft consider they have perpetual and inalienable rights to everything
they have ever produced, much of what anyone has ever shown them, a fair bit
of what other people have produced and some of the stuff they have not yet
heard about. Their lawyers are working on redressing Micro$oft$ inequitable
position in such matters). )

FirstBASIC compiler from PowerBASIC Inc (USA) is a superset of Quick BASIC /
QBASIC.
(Also incidentally it's essentially identical to Borland's one time
TurboBASIC - they wrote it, sold it to Borland, and then bought the rights
from Borland when Borland decided not to continue it. Or, at least, that's
something like what they told me when I asked them why the code produced was
about a 90% match with Borland's product). It's actually quite reasonable
for what it's meant to do.
It is relatively cheap ($US50 - $US100?). They make many more capable and
more expensive products.

All the above are capable of manipulating hardware from a DOS environment
and may be run under Windows as well.

Visual BASIC is Microsoft's current Windows only product.

XP / WIN2000 / NT will give you hassles with direct hardware access.



        Russell McMahon

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