US EditionMicrosoft Open-Sources Bill Gates’ 6502 BASIC From 1978
Microsoft has released 6,955 lines of assembly code for version 1.1 of its 6502 BASIC interpreter under the MIT License, enabling free use and modification by the community.
- On Wednesday, Microsoft made publicly available the full source code of Microsoft BASIC 1.1 for the 6502 processor on GitHub, licensing it under the MIT License.
- This release follows the original creation of Microsoft BASIC by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975 and its 1976 port to the 6502 microprocessor, which Commodore licensed in 1977 for $25,000.
- The 1978 release of version 1.1 included garbage collector bug fixes that were collaboratively developed by a Commodore engineer and Bill Gates, and this version became the foundation for popular home computers such as the Commodore PET, VIC-20, and Commodore 64.
- The 6,955 lines of assembly code feature enhancements in memory management and support for conditional compilation across early computer systems, and include hidden references in the STORDO and STORD0 labels that Bill Gates publicly acknowledged in 2010.
- This open-source release enables exploration and modification of historically significant code that introduced programming to a generation and laid the foundation for Microsoft's early business model and later languages like Visual Basic.
15 Articles
15 Articles
Microsoft publishes source code to Microsoft BASIC Version 1.1 – OSnews
This assembly language source code represents one of the most historically significant pieces of software from the early personal computer era. It is the complete source code for Microsoft BASIC Version 1.1 for the 6502 microprocessor, originally developed and copyrighted by Microsoft in 1976-1978. ↫ Microsoft BASIC Version 1.1 GitHub page An amazing historical artifact to have, and I’m glad we now have the source code available for posterity. I…
Microsoft open-sources Bill Gates’ 6502 BASIC from 1978 – Monkey Viral
On Wednesday, Microsoft released the complete source code for Microsoft BASIC for 6502 Version 1.1, the 1978 interpreter that powered the Commodore PET, VIC-20, Commodore 64, and Apple II through custom adaptations. The company posted 6,955 lines of assembly language code to GitHub under an MIT license, allowing anyone to freely use, modify, and distribute […]
Microsoft announces the opening of a version of its Basic: version 1.1 for MOS 6502. It takes the form of a complete assembler file. It requires 8 KB of ROM. It contains the complete Basic, floating point management, support for the Array, Input and Output operations. This version dates back to 1978 and is a long 6 955 lines of code. It is thanks to BASIC that Microsoft was born with the Altair (1975) and that the publisher will become known. Th…
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