Original author(s) | Platform Atari 8-bit family | |
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Initial release December 1985; 31 years ago (1985-12) | ||
Turbo-Basic XL is an advanced version of BASIC for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers. It is a compatible superset of the more common Atari BASIC whose most important feature is the vastly improved execution speed (three times faster). A Turbo-Basic XL compiler was also made available that created binary executables, further speeding up program performance (ten times faster than Atari Basic). Turbo-Basic XL was developed by Frank Ostrowski and published in the December 1985 issue of German computer magazine Happy Computer.
Background
Since their release in 1979, the 8-bit family normally shipped with a version of Atari BASIC on cartridge or built-in to later machines. This version of BASIC had a number of custom commands that allowed partial access to the system's advanced features like graphics and sound. However, it was also notoriously slow, one of the slowest microcomputer BASICs when running the David Ahl's Creative Computing speed tests. This led to a market for 3rd party BASICs with better performance or more commands. Among them were an official port of Microsoft BASIC sold by Atari, Ken's Super BASIC and a series of BASICs from Optimized Systems Software. There were also several Atari BASIC compilers.
Turbo-Basic XL was a late entry to this list, first published in December 1985 in source code form. It was unique in that it came in both interpreter and compiler versions. It included code to take advantage of the expanded memory available on the XL series machines, and later XE series. This meant that it could not run on the original 400/800 systems, which led to a port known as Frost BASIC (or FrOst) that was tied to Atari DOS 2.0. A number of ports to different versions of DOS were available.
Among the extra features of Turbo-Basic XL, added to ATARI BASIC, are the following: