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Quick start guide
This quick start guide covers installation and elementary use of SE Basic IV. For more information refer to the SE Basic IV documentation.
If you find bugs, open an issue on GitHub. It would be most helpful if you could include a short but of BASIC code that triggers the bug.
SE Basic IV is available as a 32K ROM file (se.rom) or a firmware update (firmwa~1.bin) for the Chloe 280SE.
To update your Chloe 280SE, copy the firmware update to the root of your SD card and power cycle the computer.
SE Basic IV is provided with the Chloe virtual machine for macOS and Windows. You can update to the latest version by replacing the 32K ROM file in the package.
If you are using SE Basic IV with a Sinclair Spectrum, you must flash the 32K ROM file onto a 32K EEPROM.
SE Basic IV presents you with a command line interface to the BASIC language interpreter. The syntax is very similar to Microsoft BASIC. File commands are provided directly from BASIC and there is no separate OS shell. The OS is contained entirely in the firmware and does not require any additional files to be loaded from disk. After the system is initialized, the BASIC ROM is paged out only when calls are made to the OS. BASIC supports two video modes: 80 columns with two colors or 40 columns with 16 colors.
SE Basic IV has a 1980s-style interface operated by executing typed commands. There is no menu, nor are there any of the visual clues that we've come to expect of modern software.
A few essential commands to help you get around:
| Command | Effect |
|---|---|
LOAD "PROGRAM.BAS" |
Loads the program file named PROGRAM.BAS into memory. |
LIST |
Displays the BASIC code of the current program. |
RUN |
Starts the current program. |
RUN "APPLICATION" |
Opens an installed application named APPLICATION. |
SAVE "PROGRAM.BAS" |
Saves the current program to a file named PROGRAM.BAS. |
NEW |
Immediately deletes the current program from memory. |
OLD |
Restore the program to memory deleted by the last NEW. |
Use F0 (NMI) or ESC to interrupt a running program.
On real hardware, SE Basic IV looks for programs in the current folder.
- On Windows, this is
ChloeVM.app/Contents/Resources/chloehd/ - On macOS, right click the ChloeVM application and select Show Package Contents and navigate to
\Contents\Resources\chloehd\
See the collection of Microsoft BASIC programs and tutorials.
This documentation is copyright © 2012-2022 Source Solutions, Inc. Portions copyright © 2014-2019 Rob Hagemans.
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.