GW-BASIC - A resource for GW-BASIC

A Resource for GW-BASIC

GW-BASIC

GW-BASIC IDE. The GW-BASIC IDE

Welcome to a GW-Basic resource. The aim of this website is to consolidate as much GW-Basic material as I can find on the web and, where possible, make it available here.

GW-BASIC is a dialect of the BASIC programming language developed by Microsoft from IBM BASICA in the 1980's. It was bundled with MS-DOS operating systems on IBM PC compatibles by Microsoft. The language is suitable for simple games, business programs and the like. Since it was included with most versions of MS-DOS, it was also a low-cost way for many aspiring programmers to learn the fundamentals of computer programming. (Portions from Wikipedia)

Fast forward to 2020 and there are still a few options to getting GW-BASIC on your computer. The first option is to install DOSBox, a free, cross platform MS-DOS emulator which is available for Windows, Mac, Linux and other Operating Systems. This is a MS-DOS emulator in which GW-Basic can be installed although DOSBox tends to be more used for playing DOS games.

PC-BASIC IDE. The PC-BASIC IDE

A much better proposition than the original GW-BASIC would be PC-Basic, a cross-platform emulator for the GW-BASIC family of interpreters which is in active development. This is a more up to date solution with better integration with the users Operating System. e.g., Copy and paste from the user's OS to the PC-BASIC window, which is not available with GW-BASIC.


Some GW-GWBASIC resource's


Books

Here are a selection books about BASIC rescued from web.archive.org. While some are about GW-BASIC, others are about Classic BASIC. Although the techniques explained are still relevant to GW-BASIC.


Disclaimer

Should any copyright holders find their content on this website and and do not wish to have it published here please contact me and I will remove it immediately.