MBASIC

MBASIC is the Microsoft BASIC implementation of BASIC for the CP/M operating system. It is a descendant of the original Altair BASIC interpreters that were among Microsoft's first products, and it was one of the two versions of BASIC bundled with the Osborne 1 computer. The name comes from the disk file name MBASIC.COM of the interpreter. Like the wider family of Microsoft 8-bit BASIC interpreters, it was heavily inspired by the BASIC-PLUS of the Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-10, though simpler and less structured, and slower because it had no partial compilation. MBASIC is an interpreter that stores program text in tokenized form. Version 5 required a CP/M system with at least 28 KB of memory and one diskette drive, and relied only on CP/M operating system calls for input and output, so in its uncustomized form it had no graphics, sound or serial communication functions.