OS2 World Community Forum

OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Programming => Topic started by: Dan Eicher on July 29, 2025, 11:30:12 pm

Title: Powerbasic for OS/2
Post by: Dan Eicher on July 29, 2025, 11:30:12 pm
Grok said it was a thing, and I did a bit of Turbo and Power Basic programming in the day.

Does anyone know where I can get a copy.

Thanks in Advance.
Title: Re: Powerbasic for OS/2
Post by: Pete on July 29, 2025, 11:57:54 pm
Hi Dan

Was there an OS/2 version? V3.5 for DOS seems to be available here  https://winworldpc.com/product/powerbasic/3x


Regards

Pete
Title: Re: Powerbasic for OS/2
Post by: JTA on July 30, 2025, 12:07:53 am
I usually start with Wikipedia ... many folks (humans) verify Wikipedia ... but, for the most part, you are on your own to verify the content of any AI tools (and you most likely might head to Wikipedia to start that process).

Wikipedia has TurboBasic/PowerBasic page(s). Nowhere in the history of TurboBasic/PowerBasic/Borland, as relayed in Wikipedia, was there an OS/2 version.

Also, nothing on archive.org ... a second place to investigate. If ever there was a version, it usually makes its way here.

Finally, the forum might be a place for further inquiry:
  forum.powerbasic.com/

Borland had a few OS/2 products, but I can't find that PowerBasic (or TurboBasic) was one of them.

Hope this helps ...
Title: Re: Powerbasic for OS/2
Post by: Dan Eicher on July 30, 2025, 01:06:43 am
If,  powerbasic doesn't exist, what is my best bet for a basic compiler for os/2?
Title: Re: Powerbasic for OS/2
Post by: JTA on July 30, 2025, 02:13:26 am
You'll want to look around for various IBM, Microsoft, and 3rd-party "basic" compilers/interpreters/etc ... if you search this forum, you'll find links where folks talk about some of these, like:

https://www.os2world.com/forum/index.php/topic,1446.0.html  (reply 23 looks interesting)

And then, various google searches for OS/2 dev tools and apps, such as:

https://www.os2site.com/sw/dev/basic/index.html

Note that many of these are for older versions of OS/2, so who knows how they'll run under ArcaOS or whatever OS/2 you've got running. Perhaps BASIC programmers who also use ArcaOS will chime in, and give their input on the best thing to run these days, on a "modern" ArcaOS.

Hope this helps ...
Title: Re: Powerbasic for OS/2
Post by: Robert Roland on July 30, 2025, 05:12:19 am
I don't know about PowerBASIC, but there's always TrueBASIC, and you can still buy it.

https://www.truebasic.com/products/p/true-basic-for-os2

The demo version is on Hobbes: https://hobbesarchive.com/?dir=%2F&stype=all&sort=type_name&search=truebasic&submit=Search
Title: Re: Powerbasic for OS/2
Post by: Doug Clark on July 30, 2025, 06:13:38 am
In addition to the ones listed on os2site.com, CA-Realizer was a basic interpreter and development package released for OS/2 and Windows, but it is hard to find. You might find one on ebay.
Title: Re: Powerbasic for OS/2
Post by: Anton Monroe on July 30, 2025, 09:57:56 am
PowerBasic for OS/2 existed, but it was never released. It was reportedly nearly finished except for some OS/2-specific features. The last I heard about it was a post in the PowerBasic Compuserve forum that it would be available "in the relatively near future". That was in October 1998.

Title: Re: Powerbasic for OS/2
Post by: Dan Eicher on July 30, 2025, 04:16:32 pm

 Hi,
  Thanks for all the feedback. I was hoping to leverage past Turbo (Power) Basic.
  Probably my best bet would be Watcom C + Blake Watson OS/2 Warp Programming for Dummies.

Thanks Again,
Dan
Title: Re: Powerbasic for OS/2
Post by: Martin Iturbide on July 30, 2025, 05:28:50 pm
Hello Dan

 Hi,
  Thanks for all the feedback. I was hoping to leverage past Turbo (Power) Basic.
  Probably my best bet would be Watcom C + Blake Watson OS/2 Warp Programming for Dummies.

Thanks Again,
Dan

Too bad EDM/2 is also down (netlabs server), it has listed some Basic tools for OS/2.

But I agree with you, that the best bet is to stick with C and C++ in OS/2.

Arca Noae has this website.
- https://www.arcanoae.com/wiki/information-for-developers/

It says that on OS/2 they prefer C with OpenWatcom, gcc and IBM VisualAge C/C++ (Close source and discontinued).

Once at Warpstock, David Azarewicz recommended me to use gcc for porting things from the linux world and OpenWatcom for PM development. He told me that OpenWatcom is optimized for PM more than gcc. This was because I compiled a lot of PM samples with gcc Even that PM with gcc worked fine for these samples, he recommended me OpenWatcom better.

Sadly I still haven't got the time to surf further into OpenWatcom. I did my little PM samples compilation with gcc and all the exercises are in this Github account (https://github.com/orgs/OS2World/repositories?q=DEV-SAMPLES-PM).

Regards
Title: Re: Powerbasic for OS/2
Post by: Michael on July 30, 2025, 05:46:55 pm
Speedsoft Sibyl might be a good alternative. It's easier to learn than C++ and more powerful than Basic.
Title: Re: Powerbasic for OS/2
Post by: Dave Yeo on July 30, 2025, 06:42:52 pm
Also don't forget REXX.
Title: Re: Powerbasic for OS/2
Post by: RTAN on July 31, 2025, 12:48:34 am
In addition to the ones listed on os2site.com, CA-Realizer was a basic interpreter and development package released for OS/2 and Windows, but it is hard to find. You might find one on ebay.

I archived and uploaded CA-Realizer to Archive.org a while ago. Jean-Yves (from these forums) was also playing around with it a while back but he had some trouble installing it on his system.

https://archive.org/details/ca-realizer-2.0-for-windows-os2

Personally I'm hoping to get into VX-REXX now that I (finally!) got hold of a boxed copy of VX-REXX v2.1 from eBay a few months back. I should really get that uploaded to Archive.org as well - I guess that's tomorrow's to-do list sorted!
Title: Re: Powerbasic for OS/2
Post by: Robert Roland on August 01, 2025, 05:20:38 am
Personally I'm hoping to get into VX-REXX now that I (finally!) got hold of a boxed copy of VX-REXX v2.1 from eBay a few months back. I should really get that uploaded to Archive.org as well - I guess that's tomorrow's to-do list sorted!

I found a copy of VX-REXX 2.1 on the Archive this week - no more save limitation! It's buried in a CD-ROM collection.

It would be great if yours could get on there though, better provenance.
Title: Re: Powerbasic for OS/2
Post by: RTAN on August 01, 2025, 05:33:50 pm
It would be great if yours could get on there though, better provenance.

Now uploaded!
https://archive.org/details/watcom-vx-rexx-standard-2.1 (https://archive.org/details/watcom-vx-rexx-standard-2.1)

Richard.
Title: Re: Powerbasic for OS/2
Post by: Mentore on August 02, 2025, 12:37:44 pm
It would be great if yours could get on there though, better provenance.

Now uploaded!
https://archive.org/details/watcom-vx-rexx-standard-2.1 (https://archive.org/details/watcom-vx-rexx-standard-2.1)

Richard.

GREAT!!!

Mentore
Title: Re: Powerbasic for OS/2
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski on August 02, 2025, 09:38:24 pm
You know (for what it's worth), IBM did release VisualAge Basic for OS/2!

Let me know if you want it, I have 1.27 release of this thing, circa 1996...but hey, nice VisualAge GUI would certainly halp.

BTW - I did actually have this installed on one of my OS/2 boxes as my son wanted to "figure out this programming thing"....lol, he was just starting up, and for those of us who similarly cut our teeth on BASIC I couldn't think of a better way to get him going...
Title: Re: Powerbasic for OS/2
Post by: RTAN on August 02, 2025, 10:20:54 pm
Hi Dariusz,

Yes please! I have PM'd you :-)

Best,
Richard.