Respected BASIC compilers

How about the original intel 8051 basic? I think the exe/whatever is still out there, and may be used with modern 8051's

That's an interpreter, isn't it?

I would suggest you include DEBUG in your search.

An important aspect of teaching is the hands-on, and so you need a tool flow that includes in-circuit emulation.

Once users can single step thru their code, and examine variables, the language details become less important.

Silabs have very good on-chip debug, and VERY low cost Debug.Eval Systems, with the advantage of high performance analog.

Zilog are quite good for teaching, as they have free, unlimited compilers, and low cost emulation & simulation.

The new PIC32 also looks OK, as does Atmel AVR32

So perhaps a dual approach of Silabs for super-cheap small packages, and PIC32, or AVR32 for more horsepower ?

If you want really simple, FreeScale's RS08 has support on USBSPYDER08, their USB debug platform.

etc...

-jg

Perhaps it is less "easy to use" than modern basic dialects, but why not try the original TinyBASIC by Tom Pittman. It may well have the smallest code and data footprint of any BASIC.

If you want my refactored C sources, please let me know. My version is ported to the Intel i8096 and runs under my port of ucos-II but you can port this basic to your micro to run standalone if you wish.

Regards,

Michael

Sorry, I forgot to mention that this is an interpreter; if you are not locked in to a compiled requirement, I still recommend it.

Regards,

Michael

I have tried BASCOM for 8051 and like it

They have that.

I have not heard any major complaints and they have been around a while...

Well, you still need to know something about the processor's registers and what to initialize things to. It ain't like just takin' your GWBASIC code and goin' for it.

How about one of my boards...

And FirstBasic from Powerbasic

That's good to know. I've used it with the AVR for one project and liked it.

Basically I wanted to sound out their reputation.

Of course. In fact, what I like about it is that, since they WEREN'T trying to follow some existing language standard 100%, the designers were free to adapt the language to the things we actually do with microcontrollers. (E.g., the very handy LCD statements.) Sometimes I feel that C means pretending that every computer is a PDP-11... :)

Not what I need for *this* project, but *exactly* what I'm likely to need for something else. If it's DOS-based, I can program it all sorts of ways. Thanks!

From my fading memory, Peter Brown (University of Kent) did a Basic compiler that did incremental comopilation. I seem to recall a book about it.

Bill

Why do you care? What is the basis (IOW, what need does it address) for the requirement that the BASIC be a compiler and not an interpeter?

In the context of an embedded system with minimal resources then presumably the compiler component can be run offline producing machine instructions or some compact byte code run on a small bytecode interpretter. This means that parsing code does have to run on the embedded system (here I'm thinking of systems with only hundreds to thousands of bytes of RAM and a few tens of K of ROM/Flash), nor does the text for variable names and comments need to be present in the embedded system.

Peter

If it's an interpreter, I have to explain both compilation (the usual practice nowadays) and interpretation. If it's a compiler, I only have to explain one of them. I can present: - machine code - assembly language, literally translated into machine code - higher-level language, translated into machine code by a more complex process

It looks like BASCOM is winning. I haven't had any trouble with it, and neither has anybody else that I've heard from.

BTW, when I say "for an educational project" I should add that I'm the teacher, not the student... I already know quite a bit about microcontrollers.

them.

You may want to look at the EM202 or the EM100 from Tibbo Technology. I does appear to be an interpreter, but it is an interesting approach an since it provides an Ethernet interface, perhaps it is suitable for th project in terms of displaying the results. The DS202 and DS1000 ar packaged versions of the devices, if you want to steer away from hardware Also the BASIC is free.

I have not used the BASIC so please don't take this as an endorsement.

-Aubrey