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jonjacky 27 minutes ago [-]
What hardware have you run the UEFI version on?
Can you assume that pretty much any computer these days provides UEFI firmware that supports ThoreauBASIC, or might some computers provide only a cut-down UEFI that doesn't provide all the functions you need?
Is there some way to investigate the UEFI implementation on any computer? Can you get to the UEFI shell on any computer somehow or is the UEFI shell a separate application you have to download from somewhere and install?
I realize these questions are getting far afield from what you wanted to tell us about, but UEFI is still kind of a mystery despite being installed almost everywhere -- it's hard to find explanations about it.
glimshe 3 days ago [-]
This is a great project. How do you handle saving/loading data? You mentioned file operations but you need some sort of file system - perhaps FAT32 - to support that. I'd need that to consider using it on UEFI.
One thing you could use for more test cases is the book 101 BASIC Computers Games by David Ahl. Games always encouraged people to use computers and that's as classic as it gets!
WalterGR 3 days ago [-]
> How do you handle saving/loading data?
The linked page has this to say:
"Disk I/O — SAVE, LOAD, MERGE, FILES, KILL, running directly on the UEFI Simple File System."
Gorsefound 3 days ago [-]
That's right.
It uses UEFI's FAT32.
fuzzfactor 1 days ago [-]
If you have a PC mainboard whose UEFI supports NTFS, does that filesystem work too?
skrellm 1 days ago [-]
> If you have a PC mainboard whose UEFI supports NTFS, does that filesystem work too?
Yes. The UEFI Simple Filesystem Protocol is transparent to the UEFI app. The protocol gives you open/read/write/close calls, without needing to know the underlying fs.
JoeAltmaier 3 days ago [-]
Very cool! The raw-metal boot part is impressive.
BASIC requires more support than you'd expect. Here's an interpreter, with a similarly long list of features it has to support:
I learned to program on 8 bit micros, and created a rough boot-to-BASIC experiment ~15 years ago following the JeOS pattern. So this project sounds really exciting, but I'd be more interested if I weren't restricted to being a passive end user.
avadodin 9 hours ago [-]
Any BASIC is FLOSS if it provides full PEEK and POKE implementations.
> PRINT PEEK ( A )
88
> A: pop %rax
skrellm 1 days ago [-]
I agree, it's a shame it's not FOSS.
Besides UEFI, it has a Windows GDI port, but if it were FOSS one could add SDL backend for example and then one could compile it for Linux and Webassembly as well.
dlcarrier 3 days ago [-]
I learned to program on the Commodore 64 and in QBASIC in th 90's. I'll give it a try.
Considering how much it supports, if it could chainload a full operating system, it would make a great replacement for GRUB or rEFIt.
skrellm 1 days ago [-]
> it would make a great replacement for GRUB or rEFIt.
What's wrong with those bootloaders? Maybe try syslinux?
Gorsefound 3 days ago [-]
That's an interesting idea. :-)
Rygian 1 days ago [-]
"The machine boots into BASIC" :-)
I was 8 or 9 years old when the ZX Spectrum +2 arrived home.
I'm seriously considering installing this on an old laptop and giving it to my son when he's 8 years old, together with a hard-copy of a BASIC reference and a few simple programs and games to type in.
Getting a FAT32 filesystem on day 1 is already a huge jump from my childhood experience (loading from tape).
StilesCrisis 1 days ago [-]
As a parent who had a very similar experience growing up, I've tried putting BASIC in front of my young kids. It didn't work at all; the magic just isn't there anymore. If you've got an iPad, there's unfortunately no wonder in "I can make the computer do whatever I want". Also, kids know how modern computers are supposed to look and feel, and BASIC won't get them there.
Sorry.
alnwlsn 1 days ago [-]
That's a shame, I'm quite a bit younger than both of you and this is exactly how I learned to program. When I was a kid, computers were icons and a mouse, with no indication of how they worked or how you would go about making them do whatever you want. But I found a bunch of old BASIC books in my school library; the kind of computer in there had no icons, but very much encouraged you to program it. It took me a while to find one of those computers (but not as hard as it is now, they were literal trash back then), but I was hooked once I did.
Modern tech has a huge barrier to entry if you know nothing about it. I didn't even know what "install a program" was at the time, before soon learning it means "get in trouble" for messing up the (one) family computer.
raverbashing 1 days ago [-]
That sounds more like an opportunity to rethink how a new beginner language for modern computers should look like
(Maybe something more like Hypercard I guess - or something that renders to HTML)
unrented7977 1 days ago [-]
That's why they made Scratch, which seems to have been fairly successful
skrellm 1 days ago [-]
Visual programming is not for everyone. I have two kids, one loves Scratch, the other despises it.
Frankly HTML itself might be a decent introduction. There's structure, but it's wildly forgiving, and "I made my own website" can be sufficiently motivating for some.
polaris64 1 days ago [-]
I really like this! I started a personal project a long time ago to boot a Raspberry PI into an environment like this, the idea being to bring back the good old days of the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, etc. I had to abandon the project but seeing this makes me want to resurrect it.
trashb 1 days ago [-]
This is great! Allowing anyone to program like it is the 1980s and bring them back to their hardware somewhat. I think it will also find it's way to the permacomputing crowd since UEFI is so ubiquitous these days it may be a good platform for that can offer modern features with a understandable interface.
ale42 1 days ago [-]
Great, nice project! In the time of Electron bloat, it's really refreshing to see bare-metal UEFI stuff.
fuzzfactor 1 days ago [-]
Looking at the download sizes:
UEFI "native" 114kb
Windows version 1.4mb
VHD version 12.6mb
None of them are huge but it does emphasize how much difference in resource savings is available if your program can run directly on "bare metal" without even an OS at all.
ale42 1 days ago [-]
Not sure why the Windows version would be much bigger than the bare metal one. If you use native code, the code size overhead from using native GDI calls to draw the window is almost zero. Didn't check if the Windows version uses some GUI toolkit that inflates the size.
skrellm 1 days ago [-]
> Not sure why the Windows version would be much bigger than the bare metal one.
That's probably because there's a bug in the linker, which puts uninitialized variables in the data segment instead of bss. This means unlike the bare metal variant, the Windows executable is full of zeros.
UEFI supports device discovery, TCP/HTTP, transfers to raw disks, filesystems, memory management and a bunch of other facilities. while it lacks a general process model and multitasking, I'm not sure its really correct to call UEFI programs bare metal.
skrellm 24 hours ago [-]
> I'm not sure its really correct to call UEFI programs bare metal.
I think you can. UEFI is a firmware which comes with the hardware, stored on the motherboard. It's there and automatically runs when you turn on your machine.
It's okay to consider the firmware part of the "bare metal", IMHO.
Can you assume that pretty much any computer these days provides UEFI firmware that supports ThoreauBASIC, or might some computers provide only a cut-down UEFI that doesn't provide all the functions you need?
Is there some way to investigate the UEFI implementation on any computer? Can you get to the UEFI shell on any computer somehow or is the UEFI shell a separate application you have to download from somewhere and install?
I realize these questions are getting far afield from what you wanted to tell us about, but UEFI is still kind of a mystery despite being installed almost everywhere -- it's hard to find explanations about it.
One thing you could use for more test cases is the book 101 BASIC Computers Games by David Ahl. Games always encouraged people to use computers and that's as classic as it gets!
The linked page has this to say:
"Disk I/O — SAVE, LOAD, MERGE, FILES, KILL, running directly on the UEFI Simple File System."
Yes. The UEFI Simple Filesystem Protocol is transparent to the UEFI app. The protocol gives you open/read/write/close calls, without needing to know the underlying fs.
BASIC requires more support than you'd expect. Here's an interpreter, with a similarly long list of features it has to support:
https://www.moondew.com/basic/index.htm
I learned to program on 8 bit micros, and created a rough boot-to-BASIC experiment ~15 years ago following the JeOS pattern. So this project sounds really exciting, but I'd be more interested if I weren't restricted to being a passive end user.
> PRINT PEEK ( A )
88
> A: pop %rax
Besides UEFI, it has a Windows GDI port, but if it were FOSS one could add SDL backend for example and then one could compile it for Linux and Webassembly as well.
Considering how much it supports, if it could chainload a full operating system, it would make a great replacement for GRUB or rEFIt.
Try https://gitlab.com/bztsrc/easyboot
I was 8 or 9 years old when the ZX Spectrum +2 arrived home.
I'm seriously considering installing this on an old laptop and giving it to my son when he's 8 years old, together with a hard-copy of a BASIC reference and a few simple programs and games to type in.
Getting a FAT32 filesystem on day 1 is already a huge jump from my childhood experience (loading from tape).
Sorry.
Modern tech has a huge barrier to entry if you know nothing about it. I didn't even know what "install a program" was at the time, before soon learning it means "get in trouble" for messing up the (one) family computer.
(Maybe something more like Hypercard I guess - or something that renders to HTML)
Fun fact, Scratch wasn't the first iteration of visual programming, and one could argue that Lego NXT was even more successful. https://www.nxtprograms.com/help/learn.html
UEFI "native" 114kb
Windows version 1.4mb
VHD version 12.6mb
None of them are huge but it does emphasize how much difference in resource savings is available if your program can run directly on "bare metal" without even an OS at all.
That's probably because there's a bug in the linker, which puts uninitialized variables in the data segment instead of bss. This means unlike the bare metal variant, the Windows executable is full of zeros.
This is a well known bug (see https://github.com/msys2/MINGW-packages/issues/18612 for example) which also affects my projects: https://gitlab.com/bztsrc/skandi The Linux CLI version is 216K, the Windows CLI version is 5.4M and the only difference is the lack of bss.
I think you can. UEFI is a firmware which comes with the hardware, stored on the motherboard. It's there and automatically runs when you turn on your machine.
It's okay to consider the firmware part of the "bare metal", IMHO.
But it is not bare metal yet and it is not BASIC.
looks like a lot of fun to explore and learn from thank you
I am investigating whether it would be feasible to do something similar for Python.
But binding micropython and posix-uefi is a weekend project. [0]
[0] https://gitlab.com/bztsrc/posix-uefi