This .readme file is a shortened version of Readme.txt in the archive. See
also the collection of ABasiC programs in dev/basic/ABasiC_progs.lha on
Aminet.

                ABasiC patch for Kickstart 2.0 (V36) and later
                ==============================================

Patch release 0.1, 2003-05-05.

This document and additional code in the patched ABasiC executable copyright
© 2002-2003 by Mark Knibbs. Please read the "HELP WANTED!" section below, and
send comments or suggestions to me at mark_ktotalise.co.uk


Version history
---------------
2003-05-05	0.1	First public release. This can be considered
			preliminary; please report any problems!


Introduction
------------
Back in 1985, the first Amiga 1000 computers came with the ABasiC programming
language by Metacomco. Unfortunately ABasiC does not work under Kickstart 2.0
(V36) and later; this patch fixes the problem.

Later, with version 1.1 of the Amiga OS, ABasiC was replaced by Microsoft's
AmigaBASIC. ABasiC and AmigaBASIC are very different. ABasiC is a more
"traditional" environment than AmigaBASIC, and seems faster and less buggy.

Apart from historical interest, David Addison wrote some excellent games in
ABasiC which are available on early Fred Fish disks. I have uploaded an
archive containing the Addison games (and various other programs) to Aminet.
Now you can take a virtual trip back to 1986 and play his versions of
Klondike, Othello and others! They are surprisingly good, considering they are
written in BASIC and run on a 256K machine.


Where to get ABasiC
-------------------
If you don't have ABasiC but would like to try it, it can be obtained from
several places:
 - On the 17-Bit Continuation CD-ROM published by Almathera (17-Bit disk 71)
 - From Rainer Benda's web page at
	http://home.t-online.de/home/r.benda/software.html
 - In various "ADF" disk images on web sites; use a search engine such as
   Google to search for "David Addison" Amiga. For example, one page that
   returns is http://amiga.emucamp.com/monopoly.htm


HELP WANTED!
------------
Is there a way to tell console.device to scroll all bitplanes, to fix the
scrolling problem mentioned above? Can I simply call SetWriteMask() for
the window's RastPort?

ABasiC runs much faster on modern accelerated Amigas. Games which use timing
which depends on the CPU speed will thus play too quickly.

I have not tested the patched version of ABasiC extensively. If you are able
to do so, please let me know of any problems.

Jim Cooper, formerly at jamiesas.com, apparently developed a similar patch
for ABasiC a few years ago but never released it. Does anyone know his current
email address?

 PERMSSN    UID  GID    PACKED    SIZE  RATIO     CRC       STAMP          NAME
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
[generic]                 1478    2811  52.6% -lh5- 1993 May  5  2003 ABasiC Patch.readme
[generic]                  251     251 100.0% -lh0- 4c98 Apr 30  2003 ABasiC Patch/ABasiC_patch.gpch
[generic]                13054   21448  60.9% -lh5- 13d1 Sep  6  2002 ABasiC Patch/GPatch
[generic]                 2920    6055  48.2% -lh5- afc4 May  5  2003 ABasiC Patch/Readme.txt
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
 Total         4 files   17703   30565  57.9%            May 11  2003