Microsoft open-sources Bill Gates’ 6502 BASIC from 1978
Text settings Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only Learn more Minimize to nav On Wednesday, Microsoft released the complete source code for Microsoft BASIC for 6502 Version 1.1, the 1978 interpreter that powered the Commodore PET, VIC-20, Commodore 64, and Apple II through custom adaptations. The company posted 6,955 lines of assembly language code to GitHub under an MIT license, allowing anyone to freely use, modify, and distribute the code that helped launch the personal computer revolution. “Rick Weiland and I (Bill Gates) wrote the 6502 BASIC,” Gates commented on the Page Table blog in 2010. “I put the WAIT command in.” For millions of people in the late 1970s and early…
