These programs were written to be run under a DOS environment but will run under Windows 9x and above. Make sure that Expanded Memory(EMS) and Extended Memory(XMS) are set to "None".

Many of the programs have music via the PC speaker. So no matter how good your sound card is, the chances are that you will hear nothing on a modern Windows 9x or above machine. If you are lucky your modern system may have a motherboard connection for a speaker (see your motherboard manual for details). It may just need connecting. If there is no speaker you could try connecting a small speaker from an old pocket transistor radio.

    Many of the programs are simply demonstration pieces. They were written just to try out certain programming features. It is recommended that the code is studied as a means of seeing the logic that is involved. Simple problems are often the worst. For example. The program asks a question to which the answer is either Yes or No but has to be expressed as a "Y" or a "N". What happens if someone answers in lower case? Or hits the wrong key? It will crash that's all. Some of these programs address these issues some do not. 

Can be run directly from gwbasic.exe, p-basic.com or qbasic.exe, especially if you wish to edit them. If you just wish to just run them then the best way is to write a bat file from edit or notepad in the format of;

gwbasic filename.bas  ,   p-basic.com filename.bas or qbasic/run filename.bas depending on which type of basic you wish to run. Then save the file in the filename.bat format. (Obviously "filename" will be replaced by the actual name of the program.)

GWBASIC

Bacterum.bas Is a number guessing game with shapes, simple graphics and sounds. I wrote it with my then 10 year old son Martin. 

Calc.bas Is a calculator program my son wrote at the age of 10.

Double.bas Was also written by Martin at the age of 10. It will greet you and offer to double any number that you enter.

Jack.bas (Martin 10) A text based "beat someone-up" type game.

Knock.bas (Martin 10) A knock-knock program.

Speak.bas (Martin & I ) An Artificial Intelligence type program. At a very early stage of development but already capable of displaying some unexpected and amusingly clever replies. 

Tables.bas First program I ever wrote. Very simple. All it does is display the times table for any number you type in. At the age of 5, Martin played it for about an hour. Surprised me as there is very little in it. Goes to show that kids make up their own minds. This led me to write the one below.

Mqz2.bas and Mqz.bas (Me) Maths quiz. Practice your times table. Defined number or random. Asks your name and keeps score. Martin (at 8) took this one to school. One of his friends said he liked it better than many of the modern programs because it didn't have all those annoying graphics and sounds. Just a black screen and white type. Version 2 overcomes the Y/N problem mentioned above. mqz.bas however is so basic it will even run on an Archimedes.

Money.zip by Peter Illing. Written by my wife's uncle about 12 years ago on an old Amstrad.  This is a collection of three BASIC programs that will run under GWBASIC or QBASIC.
Mortgage.bas Mortgage Calculator.
Sseries2.bas Savings Calculator.
Pension4.bas Pensions Calculator. The 2% yield gap was an accepted actuarial principle in the pensions business. The rest of the assumptions come out of actuarial tables. Try it out!

Spheres.bas (Me) Calculates how many times one sphere will fit volume wise into another one.

Music (PC Speaker)

Haunted.bas (Martin and I)

Music.bas ( ? )

Starwars.bas (Martin)

Digdump.bas John Bell of Saratoga Springs, NY, USA sent me this one. It's a Maths quiz in which an answer is given with a plus, minus & multiply formula. The object is to find the missing numbers to make the formula work. A dumper truck collects numbers from a falling ball............. tell you what, just run the program and find out for yourself.

QBASIC

Quid4.bas (Martin now 12)  A Harry Potter Quiddich game. A running commentary (text) of a game using a lot of  randomize functions. When a team scores the screen lights up in the house colour. If you have not read any Harry Potter books and do not know what I am talking about then shame on you. Game can last a few seconds or minutes as anyone who is familiar with Quidditch would know.

Hogwarts.bat (Martin & Simon12) Martin plotted in the back of the car with his ex-school friend Simon. (He moved away and they only see each other about once a year.) They each wrote a program then e-mailed each other the code. Martin has incorporated Simon's code into his. This is still an ongoing project that illistrates the different characters of the two boys. Both bringing their owns strengths  to create a more interesting storyline. Simon seems to go for the text based monologue with some really creative text based graphics to make a map. Martin spent a lot of time on the graphics using simple shapes. There are also two graphic arrays that are worth a note of the school emblem and the school itself. These were built up by typing in a number for each pixel to give the colour and shape.

MatrixJ My son and I saw "The Matrix" on TV last week. A few days later as we were making our way to stay with friends, we dropped in on Martin's primary school friend, Simon (they are now 14) for a couple of hours . The boys of course disappeared to play on an old 486 PC. Martin wrote this little program during our two hour stay there. If you download it you will find the original BASIC version and a compiled version using QBasic 4.5. It will run in DOS but you will need to reboot to stop it because it loops. Under BASIC the usual Ctrl-Break will stop it and under Windows 95 or above Ctrl-Alt-Del and "End Task" will get you out. Would make a good screen saver but my attempts so far have failed. If anyone out there wishes to have a go and succeeds, please send me a copy.

Downloads