Someone could take this and try to make it ROM-able in order to "complete" the BIOS:

https://github.com/microsoft/GW-BASIC

MIT license... yep, you can totally use it.

Tips on building:

https://www.os2museum.com/wp/gw-basic-source-notes/

It was common for later BIOSes to not include the BASIC ROM:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS_interrupt_call

Not ideal, but not a deal breaker. And it might go against Microsoft's IP (not sure, personally).

It's not that hard to write a BASIC interpreter.

> It's not that hard to write a BASIC interpreter.

If you are Walter Bright and write C++ compilers for fun.

If you only knew how trivial Basic looks after implementing a C++ compiler :-)

The challenges would be:

1. fitting it into 32K of ROM

2. figuring out the interface to the cassette player and the interface to other software that relies on the Basic interpeter

3. testing it

I have no idea where it was implied in that comment that it was difficult. I said that it wasn't required to be considered a valid BIOS, as commercial/alternatives did the same.

You're welcome to do it.

I've actually thought of doing it. But I'm pretty committed as CEO of the DLF.

i love people that shitpost here can be C level execs in massive corps

I suspect he's referring to the "D Language Foundation[1]"

Mr. Bright, thank you for Empire. Some of my earliest tinkering memories are of upgrading my 5150 to have a V20 CPU and being somewhat pleased that map generation took somewhat less time.

[1] https://dlang.org/foundation/

You're welcome! I enjoy hearing from people who enjoy the game!

The DLF will be breaking ground on its massive corporate HQ campus any day now.

I don't remember anybody other than IBM having ROM BASIC in their PC clones.

If one called INT-18 today, would we hit a similar stub in a modern PC BIOS?