\"Stamp out BASIC\" committee

[Dick Dunn]

[Not that much about BASIC, really...]
> ...
> >>>	Yeah!  Stamp out BASIC!  Here at Tektronix we stamp out lots of BASICs
> >>>	every day, some in ROMs and some on disks.  We sell them to
> >>>	applications programmers and make piles of money.

Yeah, and you occasionally don't hide them too well, which is good for
grins.  Some while ago I had an opportunity to poke at a gadget which Tek
makes that's used for looking at TV broadcast signal waveforms.  Although
it was really presented as a packaged tool, it was pretty evident from its
behavior that it had the standard little-BASIC system inside.  A few
attempts at commands dredged from my memory of old GE timeshare BASIC got
a (squashed) listing of the program for the sampling.  It took a total of
perhaps half an hour to have the box drawing pretty spirals and such
instead of silly-looking waveforms.  No complaints really (the original
program was still in non-volatile memory), but I don't think that a small
BASIC interpreter is the best way to build an embedded system.
-- 
Dick Dunn	{hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd		(303)444-5710 x3086
   ...Are you making this up as you go along?