Question: Online 8-bit emulators which accept remote BASIC code?

Discussions
#1

Some may remember from our little LIFE contest that I’ve a web console on my website to assemble links for running arbitrary BASIC programs in an emulated PET 2001.
And a similar one, quickly bolted together on that occasion, for assembling BBC BASIC links for the JSBeeb, which also supports a remote submission feature.

Compare


As it happens, I upgraded the Beeb Link console yesterday on popular request for a more appropriate handling of BASIC keywords and their respective abbreviations in upper-case, while leaving the rest alone, or, rather, leave the pasted source optionally as-is. While doing so, I came up with the idea of a unified console for sharing BASIC code, which would allow users to target various systems.

Which brings me to my question: what online 8-bit emulators are there that support uploading of a BASIC program via special links (encoded in the URL) as a feature?
Can we come up with a list?

1 Like
#2

It’s a fine thing, to be able to pass a URL into an emulator, to initialise and control it, but I’m not sure I know of any others. Here’s a big list, which might contain some surprises to delight:

1 Like
#3

Part of the, ahem, fun involved in this is the opportunity to learn about BASIC dialects and their features more thoroughly. Yesterday, I learned more about BBC BASIC than I ever knew before.

Fun fact: My tablet just auto-corrected “before” to “Belgier”. Well, there are some similarities…
BBC BASIC may expand “F.” to 'FOR", but it would never do that. :wink:

#4

A few rare terminals had BASIC as upgrade feature. https://www.curiousmarc.com/computing/hp-264x-terminals
(8080 microsoft basic)

1 Like
#5

If we’re talking BASIC code, as in … well … type-ins, then I would hope that most emulators would accept BASIC code via copy/paste from the clipboard. Although I don’t know how much support there would actually be for this. I don’t think the Canvas element typically accepts paste from clip-board like that.

#6

Sadly, clipboard isn’t an option, as we would be attempting to share and automate this across sites. And, yes, no copy and paste to or from a canvas element.
(The idea is to have a console, where you may paste code as found in a forum, or conveniently type it in on a tablet, without having to care about case, as modern devices default to lower-case and older ones, like their emulations often require upper-case, and then run and test it on various 8-bit platforms available in online emulation, and then share such a link. It would be particularly nice to add an Apple ][ emulator and an Atari 8-bit to the list, to have some of the most important BASIC dialects represented. However, I haven’t found any with a source-in-link feature, yet.)

1 Like
#7

The VMC10 Emulator for the TRS-80 MC-10 allows simply pasting text directly into the emulator and then typing RUN to see how it works. It allows for a very simple system of code development for a version of Microsoft BASIC. No fooling around with conversion of disk emulation ext. Just Word Pad, Ctrl-A Ctrl-C, switch to VMC10 Paste, RUN Enter.