Turbo-Basic XL

This article is about Turbo-Basic XL, a BASIC dialect for the Atari 8-bit family. There is a different article on the unrelated  Borland Turbo Basic.

Turbo-Basic XL is an advanced version of BASIC for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers. It is a compatible superset of the more common ATARI BASIC whose most important feature is the vastly improved execution speed (X3 times faster). A Turbo-Basic XL compiler was also made available that created binary executables, further speeding up program performance (X10 times faster than Atari Basic). Turbo-Basic XL was developed by Frank Ostrowski and published in the December 1985 issue of German computer magazine Happy Computer.

Among the extra features of Turbo-Basic XL, added to ATARI BASIC, are the following:

• enhanced sound and graphics commands
• more flexible I/O commands, including disk access
• structured programming constructs
• simple debugging facilities

External links

• Atari 8-bit pages – Scans of the Turbo-Basic XL listing and Turbo-Basic XL compiler listing from Happy Computer Magazine. Also lists the new commands added to the language.
• TurboTari – An extended BASIC emulator (based on Turbo-Basic XL) and 6502 emulator/Atari architecture emulator all in one. Currently unfinished.