I love PowerBasic but...

[Brent Boshart]

I love PowerBasic and have been a long time user ever since Turbo Basic.

But now I am hitting a crossroads. I do Astronomy software and the proliferation of handheld devices has been what this field needed. (Hard drives don't enjoy the often cold temperatures of observatories). I think this is an issue everyone will face as these devices are selling like crazy lately.

I really need the ability to write good software for Windows CE. I tried a product called NSBasic (better than Visual Basic CE, I think) but it just doesn't cut it, I can't produce competitive software with it. It looks like I need to go to C and really don't want to support my different platforms with different programming languages. (I can already hear the jeers of my "C friends" who have always said "Sooner or later you will be using C")

I don't want this thread to be another "C" vs. "PowerBasic" debate but hopefully somehow, someone will come up with a solution for WindowsCE for us PowerBasic users.

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[B Hall]

How would a HP 48G, HP 48GX or a HP49 work for something like
that? They are multi-line graphing calculators, programmable, and
can load the program off a PC.

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[Chris Boss]

Brent and others;

The following is worth taking notice of :

Transmeta has produced a super chip for mobile
computing (low energy consumption) that uses
the 8086 instruction set. This means it can run
Windows.

I read about Linus Torvald (I think that is how his name is
spelled) the originator of Linux, also came onboard their
company.

Since Transmeta's super chip called "Crusoe" can run the
8086 instruction set (at a pentium level at that) and they
are targeting the "mobile" computer market, this may mean
the possibility of a new market opening up for PB. They
wouldn't have to target another CPU platfrom at all.

Imagine a super fast and light chip with low energy consumption
that could run Windows on a mobile computer !

PB would be the perfect development system for such a platform.

I haven't kept up to date to how things are going for Transmeta
but they may have hit on a winner if Crusoe is as good as they
say.

http://www.transmeta.com/crusoe/


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[Martin Francom]

Chris,
.. I think you will be seeing LINUX on many of those
devises. Some very interesting stuff is being written
in the Linux journals about this issue.
.. Now if there was only a version of PB for Linux!