CPCBasic lets you run CPC BASIC programs in a browser. The supported BASIC style is known as Amstrad CPC 6128 Locomotive BASIC 1.1. BASIC programs are compiled to JavaScript which can be run in the browser. A library provides the functionality of the commands that are not directly available in JavaScript.

CPCBasic Links: CPCBasic Demo, Colors CPC Demo, Source code, HTML Readme,

Please note: CpcBasic gets only bug fixes. Active development goes on with CpcBasicTS, the TypeScript implementation of CPCBasic: CPCBasicTS Demo, CPCBasicTS Source

• Run old and new BASIC programs in a browser
• "Wrap factor" Speed: Frame Fly and other events in real-time, calculations as fast as possible
• CPC Basic Unchained: Less restrictions, extended by new features, breaking out of the CPC box
• BASIC compiler and not just interpreter
• Lots of memory, no memory full
• Runs locally without a server (even on mobile devices, but without input)
• HTML5 / JavaScript without external libraries

More examples are in the sample library CPCBasicApps, CPCBasicApps source. They are included in CPCBasic as apps, example: 10print.

There are several great CPC emulators which emulate a complete CPC with exact timing and allow demos to run, pushing CPC hardware to its limits.

With CPC Basic we do not get that accuracy. But if we compile it to JavaScript, can we achieve a similar or faster speed than the assembler programmed functionality that runs on a CPC or emulator?

• Just open cpcbasic.html in a browser. The user interface shows several windows, which can be reduced and expanded by pressing the green buttons.
• The Input window is used to input and modify the BASIC code.
  • Use the first selection field to select the example library: CPCBasic examples or CPCBasicApps apps.
  • Use the second selection field to select a sample program. It will reset the CPC, and run the program.
  • The Help button opens the readme file in a browser.
  • The Reload button reloads the page with the current settings. (Please note that changes to the BASIC program are not saved.)
  • The Check button checks the syntax of the program. It compiles the program to JavaScript.
  • The Renum button renumbers the line numbers starting with 10 and increasing by 10 (see also RENUM)
  • The Pretty button performs a pretty print on the input (currently it has a fixed style)
  • The Undo button reverts the last renum or pretty print
  • The Redo button activates the last renum or pretty print
• The CPC window shows the output on a CPC screen.
  • If you change the BASIC program, press the Run button to compile the BASIC program to JavaScript and run it.
  • If the focus is on the CPC screen, keystrokes will be detected by a running program. (An alternative way of input is the virtual keyboard below.)
  • The Break button halts the simulation. You can continue with the Continue button. This is an unconditional break. Pressing the ESC key once also halts the program, if not masked with ON BREAK CONT
  • The Reset button resets the CPC.
  • The Screenshot button creates a screenshot of the current CPC screen.
  • The Sound button activates or deactivates sound.
    • If you use the Reload button with sound activated, the sound needs to be activated again. Just do a user action, e.g. click somewhere. This is a browser limitation.
• The Text View window shows the text which is written in text mode.
• The Keyboard window shows a virtual keyboard which can be also used with touch devices. You can test the functionality with the test program keyboard.
• The Input window is an alternative way to send input to the CPC.
• The Console window shows the textual output. This is useful for copying and pasting the output. It is cleared when the CPC screen is cleared (MODE or CLS).
• The Variables window allows you to see the variables used by the program.
• In the JavaScript window you will see the compiled JavaScript code. It can be changed and then executed with the Run button in this window. So it is possible to program the simulated CPC directly with JavaScript.

• CPCBasic is still in progress and not complete or accurate. The goal is that most BASIC programs run without change.
• It is BASIC only and can not execute Z80 machine code
• Unimplemented commands are ignored: AUTO, PRINT #8, RESUME (partly), SPEED KEY/WRITE, WIDTH, WRITE #8, some AMDSOS commands.
• Sound: More hardware volume envelopes
• Multi-line strings containing LF (\n)
• No complete check of the BASIC program
• Incomplete type checking
• Variables typed with DEFINT, DEFREAL or DEFSTR are different from those with type extension: defint a: a=1: a%=2: ?a,a%
• Array access: Array indices are not rounded, and there is no range check.
• ON ERROR GOTO and RESUME without line number do not fully work because this would require to single step every instruction.
• Resulting JavaScript looks ugly because there is no GOTO in JavaScript. Control structures need to be converted to GOTO because for some commands and events it is necessary to jump out of a block.
• Interpreted CPC BASIC may contain lines of arbitrary content if they are not executed, e.g. comments without marking them as comments. The CPCBasic compiler does not allow this.
• Maybe something more...

• File operations work on Browser local storage memory (check in Browser: e.g. Developement tools, Application).
  • Use "storage" in the "CPC BASIC" selection field to load files.
  • Specific for RUN, LOAD, MERGE, OPENIN: If a file is not found in storage memory and an example with the name exists in the current directory, this example is loaded.
  • Use Drag & Drop on the CPC canvas or on the input drop zone to import files. An AMSDOS header is detected. File types can be normal ASCII, tokenized BASIC, protected (tokenized) BASIC, or Binary. ZIP files and DSK files can also be imported.
• Mouse clicks on CPC canvas: If the canvas is not active, click on it to activate it. The border color changes. A click on a character written in text mode puts this character in the keyboard input queue. The next INKEY$ will return it. This could be useful to select options presented on the screen. Another feature: After a MOVE 1000,1000, a mouse click does a MOVE at the click position. This can be detected by a BASIC program. Example: Mouse Painting
• MODE 3: High resolution mode with real 640x400 pixels, 16 colors and 8x8 pixels per character. This is different to the unofficial and not very useful Gate Array mode 3 on a real CPC: CPC live: Graphics. Several examples use CPCBasic mode 3, e.g. Art, Landscape, Rectangles.
• |MODE,n: Change mode without CLS, including mode 3 (experimental)
• |RENUM,...: similar to RENUM but with a 4th parameter to keep line numbers starting with this line
• Computations with numbers are not limited to 16 bit
• PEEK & POKE features:
  • Access screen memory in screen base address range, e.g. &C000-&FFFF or &4000-&7FFF
  • Access character map data starting at HIMEM+1 after SYMBOL AFTER n with n<256

• CALL &BB00: KM Initialize (KM Reset and reset also CPC key extensions)
• CALL &BB03: KM Reset (clear input and reset expansion tokens)
• CALL &BB06: KM Wait Char (CPCBasic: same as Call &BB18)
• CALL &BB0C: KM Char Return (depending on number of arguments)
• CALL &BB18: KM Wait Key
• CALL &BB4E: TXT Initialize (initialize window parameter, delete custom chars)
• CALL &BB51: TXT Reset (reset control character buffer)
• CALL &BB5A: TXT Output (PRINT text char including control codes, depending on number of arguments)
• CALL &BB5D: TXT WR Char (PRINT text char depending on number of arguments)
• CALL &BB6C: TXT Clear Window
• CALL &BB7B: TXT Cursor Enable
• CALL &BB7E: TXT Cursor Disable
• CALL &BB81: TXT Cursor On
• CALL &BB84: TXT Cursor Off
• CALL &BB8A: TXT Place Cursor
• CALL &BB8D: TXT Remove Cursor
• CALL &BB90: TXT Set Pen (set PEN depending on number of arguments)
• CALL &BB96: TXT Set Paper (set PAPER depending on number of arguments)
• CALL &BB9C: TXT Inverse (same as PRINT CHR$(24))
• CALL &BB9F: TXT Set Back (set PEN transparent mode, depending on number of arguments)
• CALL &BBDB: GRA Clear Window
• CALL &BBDE: GRA Set Pen (set GRAPHICS PEN depending on number of arguments)
• CALL &BBE4: GRA Set Paper (set GRAPHICS PAPER depending on number of arguments)
• CALL &BBFC: GRA WR Char (PRINT graphics char depending on number of arguments)
• CALL &BBFF: SCR Initialize (set MODE 1, reset inks, clear screen)
• CALL &BC02: SCR Reset
• CALL &BC06,nn: SCR SET BASE (really &BC08; set screen start high byte: &00, &40, &80 or &C0; not for CPC 664)
• CALL &BC07,nn: SCR SET BASE (really &BC08; compatible with all CPC 464/664/6128)
• CALL &BC0E: SCR Set Mode (set MODE depending on number of arguments)
• CALL &BCA7: SOUND Reset
• CALL &BCB6: SOUND Hold (TODO)
• CALL &BCB9: SOUND Continue (TODO)
• CALL &BD19: MC Wait Flyback (wait for screen beam flyback; same as FRAME)
• CALL &BD1C: MC Set Mode (set view MODE depending on number of arguments)
• CALL &BD3D: KM Flush (CLEAR INPUT; CPC 664/6128 only)
• CALL &BD49: GRA Set First (set MASK first pixel, depending on number of arguments; CPC 664/6128 only)
• CALL &BD4C: GRA Set Mask (set MASK, depending on number of arguments; CPC 664/6128 only)
• CALL &BD52: GRA Fill (FILL, depending on number of arguments; CPC 664/6128 only)
• CALL &BD5B: KL RAM SELECT (depending on number of arguments; CPC 6128 only)

• OUT &7Fxx,nn: Select RAM bank in range &4000-&7FFF; &C0=default; &C4-&FF=additional banks
• WAIT &F5xx,1: Wait for Frame Fly (same as CALL &BD19, FRAME)

• CPCBasic is BASIC with "wrap factor". However, do not use busy waiting. Put in FRAME or CALL &BD19 commands.
  • An example on how to insert a delay of one second: t!=TIME+300:WHILE TIME<t!:CALL &BD19:WEND
  • There is a special feature when using the INKEY$ function: If it returns no key more than once during a frame, a FRAME or CALL &BD19 is implicitely called.
    • An example on how to wait for 5 seconds or a keypress: t!=TIME+300*5:WHILE TIME<t! AND INKEY$="":WEND :?"Done." You may check that the CPU load stays low.
    • This is not true for the INKEY function. Use CALL &BD19 again. An example on how to wait 5 seconds or the SPACE key: t!=TIME+300*5:WHILE TIME<t! AND INKEY(47)<0:CALL &BD19:WEND :?"Done."
• Use URL parameter "tron=true" to activate line tracing mode with TRON and TROFF
• Use OPENIN and INPUT#9 to load data from a file in the current "directory" or from Browser local storage
• If the program is complete (that means, no MERGE or CHAIN MERGE inside), line number destinations are checked for existence. For example, if the line number in GOTO line does not exist, the compilation fails.
• The commands and functions are checked for number of arguments but not always for argument types.

Did you know?

• Comparison with equal in assignment, e.g. a=0: x=(a=0): ?x, returns -1 for true
• ENV: Special syntax with "=" to define hardware volume envelopes
• Mixed parentheses and brackets in arrays, e.g. a(3]=6: ?a[3)

• Use the URL parameter tron=true to compile with BASIC line number trace. The trace can be switched on and off in BASIC with TRON and TROFF. A side effect of "trace on" in CPCBasic is that the correct line number is reported in case of an error.
• For debugging in a desktop browser, you will usually use the Browser Development Tools (F12).
• You can also use a Console log window which is usually hidden. You can activate it with the URL parameters showConsole=true and debug=2. Example: CPCBasic Debug. This is especially useful on mobile devices. Clear its content manually, if needed.
• There is also an experimental parameter bench=n to time the parsing step n times. An example with a large BASIC program: sultans2 parsing (Check the console in the browser developer tools).

• bench=0 (only for debugging: number of parse bench loops)
• debug=0 (debug level)
• databaseDirs=examples (example base directories, comma separated)
• database=examples
• example=cpcbasic
• exampleIndex=0index.js (example index file in every entry of exampleDirs)
• input= (keyboard input when starting the app, use %0D for return)
• kbdLayout=alphanum (virtual keyboard layout: alphanum, alpha, num)
• showInput=true
• showInp2=false
• showCpc=true
• showKbd=false
• showKbdLayout=false
• showOutput=false
• showResult=false
• showText=false
• showVariable=false
• showConsole=false
• sound=true
• tron=false (if set to true, allows to use TRON, TROFF)

(Some URL parameters are experimental and may change.)

QUnit tests:

• BasicFormatter.qunit.html
• BasicLexer.qunit.html
• BasicParser.qunit.html
• BasicTokenizer.qunit.html
• CodeGeneratorBasic.qunit.html
• CodeGeneratorJs.qunit.html
• Diff.qunit.html
• DiskImage.qunit.html
• Model.qunit.html
• ZipFile.qunit.html
• testParseExamples.qunit.html (parse all examples)
• testsuite.qunit.html (run all tests, without server only in IE)

IFrames test:

• testIFrames.qunit.html (CPCBasic in IFrames)

• Create buttons for the keys that the BASIC program checks (useful for e.g. mobile devices)
• Save and restore snapshot of variables, also system variables
• RSX extension libraries / plugins programmed in JavaScript
• Can we detect busy loops and insert FRAME automatically?
• Shall we support hardware scrolling with OUT or is it already a hardware emulation feature?
• Extension: More colors, e.g. 256
• Optimizations of the resulting JavaScript code
• Further checks during compile time
• Smooth character map from 8x8 to 8x16

• Amstrad CPC 6128 User Instructions, or: Schneider CPC 6128 Benutzerhandbuch

• ROM-Listing CPC 464/664/6128 - German, excellent information

• Das Scheider CPC Systembuch - German, excellent information

• Locomotive BASIC - Description of the CPC Basic Dialect

• Disassembly of Locomotive BASIC v1.1 - If you do not have the ROM listing at hand

• The story of Amstrad’s amazing CPC 464

• CPCemu - CPC Emulator, since version 2.0 with very accurate emulation

• Arnold TNG - The Warp factor - Modified Arnold CPC emulator at various speed levels.

• Simple Web Basic - A link collection of basic interpreters for the Web (2010)

• qb.js: An implementation of QBASIC in Javascript

• JSBasic - A BASIC to JavaScript Compiler, with Demo: SpaceWar

• Top Down Operator Precedence - Douglas Crockford, 2007-02-21. CPCBasic uses this approach.

• BM Benchmark Suite - A collection of simple benchmarks in various programming languages

• Locomotive Software - The developer of CPCs BASIC and operating system