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 ====== BASIC Programming Language ======
+Beginners' All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code was developed at Dartmouth College in 1964.  It is a high level programming language that was designed for ease of use and became a first programming language for many students.  Microsoft's very first product in 1975 was a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800.  In the microcomputer revolution that followed Microsoft BASIC became the built in language for many machines and saw wide use through the late 1980s.
+====== Getting BASIC started ======
+For most systems, typing **BASIC** will start an interpeter and from there you can issue BASIC commands or type in STATEMENTS.  BASICs on the various systems do have their own dialects and this page will attempt to point those out.  On the [[vm_cms_survival_guide|IBM 4361 running VM/SP5]] there is no interactive BASIC interpreter, but you can EDIT files and provide them as input to BASIC.
+^**Command**^**Description**^
+|OLD, LOAD|Loads an existing file into the memory buffer|
+|SAVE, REPLACE|Saves or replaces a file with the contents of the memory buffer|
+|NEW, SCRATCH|Clears the memory buffer|
+|RUN|Runs the program currently in the memory buffer|
+|SYSTEM, MONITOR|Returns to the Operating System|
+|BYE, LOGOUT, OFF|Quits BASIC and logs the user out of the system|