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Your thoughts on Great Cow BASIC

2006-08-14
2013-05-30
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  • Nobody/Anonymous

    Hugh, Ken, and gang.

    WOW, GCBASIC is very nice.  Wrote a little batch file and assembled the alarm.txt.  Will play with it more for sure.

    I have PicBASIC (no if endif; make it junk for me), MikroBASIC (nice but 200 byte demo), mbasic (bought it, major bloatware; never used it), Proton (free limits as well). 

    Mikroe Mikrobasic demo has been my pick up to date (though I have no idea is sourceboost ever finished theirs) but looks like gcbasic might win as free and no limits.  Off to play with it today.

    I have an alarm.asm now, will test it in mplabs (hope it is compatible) and with the icd2.

    One comment or feature if it's not there.  Is there anyway I can get the GCBASIC source lines commented in the .asm file above the assembled code.  Then I can debug with MPLABs as well.  I know assembler so I can debug it if there if there is a problem in my code?

    Thanks again for a nice product.  I was about to go back to AVR assembler.

     
  • Nobody/Anonymous

    Can I do inline ASM and is there a variable naming convention?  Like to play with the on interrupt sample and make a little state machine that sleep at 32K on internal OSC of the 12F683 and run on batteries.  Fun first project.

    I found I can not use this in MPASMWIN (mplabs).  That is too bad, would make a great degugging tool.  But I can rough it I guess an burn the hex into the pic from it.

    Do you have a sleep function (using the pic real sleep mode for low power)?  I will read the new docs that came with the update.zip. 

    Thanks again for a neat product.

     
  • kent_twt4

    kent_twt4 - 2008-08-04

    Why wouldn't MPLABS work?  Just happened to try this recently on a couple of GCBasic files, and ran thru the newbie aspects of trying something new.  All answers to my questions had already been posted on the Microhip MPLAB IDE forum http://forum.microchip.com/tt.aspx?forumid=57

    My errors encountered:
    1. Processor did not match include file:  Go to config device and change processor.
    2. Whole load of syntax errors:  Path to *.asm file longer than 64 characters, so shortened up.
    3. Something about instructions being in column one:  Tab those items over to column 2.
    4. Undefined labels etc.:  Make sure both MPASM and MPLAB have case sensitive box unchecked.

    So maybe just a little house keeping at most to get a MPLAB project going.  Any other MPLAB questions could be answered in the Help forum, perhaps by someone more experienced with the MPLAB IDE.

    Inline Assembly drops thru to the assembler.  Sleep is not in help yet, but covered in forum posts.  Variables described in help file, as are interrupts in the GCBasic html help file in the GCBasic folder.

     
  • Mike Ramos

    Mike Ramos - 2008-08-06

    This weekend I will take your 1-4 and write a little post.exe to fix that part and add it to the end of my batch file that does the GC convert to ASM.  I still have not seen this HTML help file.  Is there a link to it.  I did not install the program, I just unzipped it and ran the exe as it just takes BASIC/text file and macro expands it.  Do I have to install it for the html?  I unzipped the update and the "on int" works fine now as well but I saw no html file in there.

    So next mission is to get the ASM errors gone.  But I also need the GCBASIC lines as comments in the ASM on top of the ASM code to debug in MPLAB.  I will go look and see if I had an answer to that post as well.

    I think you have a great program here, just trying to make it something that people can use with the Microchip peoples program as well.  As most people start with MPLABS these days.

    Keep up the good work.  The code looked tight as well.

     
  • Santiago

    Santiago - 2009-01-24

    Hello al...

    Is great to just write asm lines and GCBASIC do the work with variable names, and BANKSELs... i like this!!!

    Anonymous said:
    "1. I'm not aware out if we are supporting ADC operation with reference voltage. Probably easier handling of ADC input with reference voltage will help. (In fact, I'm little bit disappointed with only one command for ADC.) "

    I agree with that, indeed i wrote some functions for ADC with 16f87x, there are: adc-Init, adc-Open, adc-Read and adc-Close.

    Is not the best in my thought doing a complete init of ADC module every time you read it, i think the good way is doing the config one time, or every time you indeed want to change it; then you can open a channel, read it many times if you want; open another channel if you need, and read it... this way you have a faster operation, in the other side is a little more complex in the basic side... nothing is for free.

     
  • vitesse1508

    vitesse1508 - 2009-03-08

    Wow, excellent basic compiler, i've tried to write in asm for ages and not really had much of a clue but as I gre up on using old commodore 64's and the like a basic compiler seemed like a great idea, cant say that i've tried the others but now im using GCBasic I have no need to, it does pretty much everything I want and more, and with the great community on here its good to know that if you're stuck (like I was earlier) that several people will try and help you out.

    Only feature request I can think of right now is, maybe i missed it but adding ELSE to IF statements would be handy and the option to use ELSEIF.

    Thanks for the great software and keep up the good work :)

     
  • kent_twt4

    kent_twt4 - 2009-03-08

    The Else statement is valid in GCBasic, its only reference is in the forum tho.  So the syntax is:

    Sub NegSign
        If Minus = True Then
            Print "-"
        Else
            Print " "
        End if
    end sub

     
  • J Olson

    J Olson - 2009-03-20

    GCB Awesome compiler!

    I have been beating my head on the ground with Picbasic & MicroStudio for days. Just didn't work for me.
    Always errors, or can't do this or that.
    Very limited and cumbersome.

    After getting fed up with PBC, I searched and found the "Great Cow"!

    I took code that did not work in PBC and in hours had it complied and running with GCB. Nice to be able to define variables again and create if else statments that work.

    This is one of the best open source programs I have downloaded in years!

    I can start coding again and not use .asm anymore ah my head can heal!

    You guys ROCK!

    -Zmanta-

     
  • Nobody/Anonymous

    Just been looking at a project using USB, any chance of USB support in a future release.

    GCBASIC is excellent by the way, wont be looking at any other pic software :)

     
  • Alistair George

    Alistair George - 2009-12-01

    Due to GCB not doing some maths including bit variables/flags and bits compare, and just out of interest I switched to SourceBoost Basic. What a difference - almost NO documentation of any worth, methods are quite different. Its got more power with its handling of bits and maths, but generally GCB is better much easier to learn and documentation is great. Huge thanks for enabling faster coding.

     
  • Alistair George

    Alistair George - 2009-12-19

    Unfortunately, at a critical stage of my development, GCBasic went unstable on two computers. The instability was reported in other posts on this forum. Typically caused by bad compile errors, directory errors and so on. I was very disappointed, as GCBasic when it was working was superb. The reason for this post is not to criticise, simply to suggest that installation paths and references on the installer need to be a lot more robust. If it had been only one pc np, but I have two with different o/s so its a problem. Im now using BoostC which is also very good. Best wishes, and kind regards, Al.

     
  • Mauried

    Mauried - 2010-05-15

    GCbasic is excellent.
    Its even more excellent when you use a Chip that supports a Bootloader like a 16F88 or variant.
    Dead easy to fault find and get stuff working quickly.
    Also worth reading is this
    http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/01146B.pdf
    Gives you a lot of tips as to achieve things you wouldnt otherwise think possible.
    Especially when you dont have a lot of pins to work with, like chips such as the 12F675.

     
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