Community QBasic

Rebooting the QBasic we all know and love!

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Project maintained by Cory Smith

DosBox

Until Community QBasic is released, or as a tool to verify side-by-side feature comparison, you can execute Microsoft QBasic 1.1 on modern devices using the DosBox tool.

Download

Download DosBox.

A couple of options for where to find QBasic…

• The original MS-DOS installation diskettes, version 5.0+.
• It’s also included on the original disc of the Windows 95 installation CD-ROM.
• It may also be on later versions of Windows…

To my knowledge the “last version” is the one available on the Windows 95 installation disc under the OTHER\OLDMSDOS folder.

Setup/Install QBasic in DosBox

Windows

I typically install DosBox into C:\DosBox. In this folder, I create a C-Drive subfolder that will represent the C: drive within the DosBox environment. In this folder, like the original MS-DOS installation, I create a DOS folder where I will then place the QBASIC.EXE and QBASIC.HLP files.

C:
 : DOSBOX
   : C-Drive
     : AUTOEXEC.BAT
     : DOS
       : QBASIC.EXE
       : QBASIC.HLP

I then modify the default DosBox .conf (found by launching the DosBox Options shortcut) by adding the following to the end.

@ECHO OFF
ECHO MOUNT C C:\DOSBOX\C-DRIVE
MOUNT C C:\DosBox\C-Drive
C:
C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT

Create/modify an AUTOEXEC.BAT file (located in C:\DosBox\C-Drive):

@ECHO OFF
SET PATH=Z:\;C:\DOS;
CLS
ECHO Microsoft MS-DOS [Version 5.00 (DosBox 0.74)]
ECHO (c) 2019 DosBox. All rights reserved.

At this point you can start DosBox and should now have a C:\> prompt instead of the default of Z:.

To start QBasic, type qbasic and press enter.

If you wold like to start QBasic automatically when launching DosBox you can modify the AUTOEXEC.BAT file to add qbasic.exe as the last line.

Linux

Coming soon…

Of Interest

Serial Ports

As it turns out it does appear that it is possible to use the hosts machines real serial ports from within the DosBox instance. (Please note that I haven’t actually tested this as yet, so will update this once I do.)

The default configuration is:

serial1=dummy
serial2=dummy
serial3=disabled
serial4=disabled

To use the physical serial port, modify the configuration:

serial1=directserial realport:com1
serial2=dummy
serial3=disabled
serial4=disabled

For more information, check here.