Altair BASIC 3.2 (4K Edition)

Altair BASIC 3.2 (4K) - Annotated Disassembly

[This is a work in progress, about 90% complete]

Here is a complete annotated disassembly of Altair BASIC 3.2 (4K). I have faithfully followed the program order, and the code naturally divides into three sections - the Interpreter, the Maths Package, and Initialisation.

Each of these sections is more-or-less logically subdivided into a number of subsections.

1. The Interpreter

Interpreter (Explanation) - Explanations and overviews of most of the internal logic used in BASIC. It describes the memory layout, key concepts, structures and variables, and you shouldn't look at a line of code until you've read through this.

Section Base Size Key Functions

1.1 Restarts 0000 61 Start, SyntaxCheck, NextChar, OutChar, CompareHLDE, FTestSign, PushNextWord

1.2

Keyword Tables

003D 189 [no code in this section]

1.3 Error Codes & Globals 00FA 152 [no code in this section]

1.4 Utility Functions 0192 101 GetFlowPtr, CopyMemoryUp, CheckEnoughVarSpace, CheckEnoughMem, OutOfMemory, SyntaxError, DivideByZero, Error

1.5 The BASIC Prompt & Program Storage 01F7 375 Stop, Main, StoreProgramLine, FindProgramLine, New, Run, ResetAll, InputLineWith'?', Tokenize, InputLine

1.6 Terminal I/O 036E 32 OutChar_tail, InputChar

1.7 LIST Handler 038E 71 List

1.8 FOR Handler 03D5 76 For

1.9 Execution 0421 61 ExecNext, Exec

1.10 More Utility Functions 045E 63 NextChar_tail, Restore, TestBreakKey, CharIsAlpha, GetSubscript

1.11 Goto, Gosub, and Return 049D 101 LineNumberFromStr, Gosub, Goto, Return, FindNextStatement

1.12 Assigning Variables 0502 20 Let, AssignVar

1.13 IF Handler 0516 63 If

1.14 Printing 0555 143 Print, NewLine, PrintString, ToNextTabBreak, Tab

1.15 INPUT & READ Handlers 05E4 101 Input, Read

1.16 NEXT Handler 0649 65 Next

1.17 Expression Evaluation 068A 135 EvalExpression, EvalTerm

1.18 Variable Management 0711 232 Dim, GetVar, GetArrayVar

Total size: 2041 bytes

2. The Math Package

Math package (explained) - All the concepts needed to understand the math package.

Section Base Size Key Functions

2.1 Utility Functions 07F9 17 FWordToFloat, FAddOneHalf

2.2

Addition & Subtraction

080A 81 FSub, FAdd

2.3 Mantissa Magic 085B 136 FNormalise, FMantissaLeft, FMantissaInc, Overflow, FAddMantissas, FNegateInt, FMantissaRtOnce, FMantissaRtMult

2.4 Multiplication & Division 08E3 247 FMul, FDiv, FDivByTen, FMulByTen, FZero, FExponentAdd

2.5 Sign Magic 09DA 40 FTestSign_tail, InvSignToInt, SignToInt, Sgn, FCharToFloat, Abs, FNegate

2.6 Moving FACCUM about 0A02 53 FPush, FLoadFromMem, FLoadFromBCDE, FCopyToBCDE, FLoadBCDE, FCopyToMem

2.7 Unpacking & Comparison 0A37 64 FUnpack, FCompare

2.8 Converting to Integers 0A77 60 FAsInteger, FMantissaDec, Int

2.9 Reading Numbers 0AB3 124 FIn

2.10 Printing Numbers 0B2F 242 PrintIN, PrintInt, FOut

2.11 SQR 0C21 62 Sqr

2.12 RND 0C5F 54 Rnd

2.13 SIN 0C95 130 Sin

Total size: 1307 bytes.

3. Initialisation

Section Base Size Key Functions

3.1 IO Detection 0D21 109 Init

3.2

Configuration

0D8E 367

Total size: 478 bytes.