Daniel Robbins hired by M$

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Christopher Browne <cbbrowne-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>

| There were, in general terms, three versions of Microsoft's BASICs,
| back in those days...  There was "Level 1", which was exceedingly
| primitive.  Level 2 was what a lot of people started programming with
| whether on TRS-80s, Apples, or IBM PCs.  Level 3 had some "holy grail"
| stuff going on, but wasn't available in time to be interesting...

Actually, for the Altair, it came in 4K and 8k versions, if my memory
isn't failing me.  8k was normal, 4k was stripped to fit in more
affordable configurations.  Remember, the Altair base memory was 128
bytes.  Memory cost a lot.  Generally static RAM, too!

My Altair has 64K (but 16K is disabled to allow some address space for
my EPROM).

I have a (legal, I think) copy of the 8k Micro Soft BASIC on paper
tape.  I've not owned a paper tape reader and an Altair
simultaneously, so I've not tried the tape.

I'm actually more impressed by the PDP-8 LISP that I have in paper
tape.  It fits runs in 4K 12-bit words, of which half are occupied by
the interpreter and the rest are available for list space.

I guess reading these tapes by eye might actually be practical.  I've
been too lazy so far.  Besides, I don't think I'd do anything with
them anyway.
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