QuickBASIC 4.5?

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darkprogrammer
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QuickBASIC 4.5?

Post by darkprogrammer »

Is QuickBASIC 4.5 still sold as a commercial product? I know this might be a stupid question what with FreeBASIC available (which I have downloaded by the way.) I'm just curious.
Pritchard
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Post by Pritchard »

QBASIC hasn't been sold for a long time . . . You're not supposed to have it any more lolz :P

They stopped selling yet continued to hold all rights and say that you can't buy it.
moneo
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Post by moneo »

Watch out because QuickBASIC 4.5 is not the same as QBasic 4.5. QuickBASIC comes with a compiler. QBasic has no compiler and only runs interpreted.

QuickBASIC was always sold as a separate product. QBasic used to come free with some early versions Windows.

When people say "QB", you never know which of the two their talking about.

When you download one of these, look for BC.EXE which is the compiler (Basic Compiler). That way you'll know which product you have. If you have BC.EXE, it should be dated September 28, 1988. If the date is earlier, then you might have QuickBASIC 4.0. If the date is later, you might have a phony version. Run a compile and see what name and version appears as a heading on the screen.

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darkprogrammer
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Post by darkprogrammer »

What is the legality of downloading QB 4.5? Has it been placed in the public domain?
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Theophage
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Post by Theophage »

From what I understand it's sort of quasi-legal. No, it is not in the public domain, but Microsoft no longer supports it nor sells it. It's sort of like "abandon-ware".

I sincerely doubt that Microsoft is not aware of its use, so even though they could bust people for hosting it for download, they simply don't seem interested in doing so.

Now, if you tried to sell it...
Daniel "Theophage" Clark
theophage (at) geocities (dot) com

"God used to be my co-pilot, but our plane crashed in the mountains and I had to eat Him..."
moneo
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Post by moneo »

darkprogrammer wrote:What is the legality of downloading QB 4.5? Has it been placed in the public domain?
If you download it from some site, or a friend gives you a copy, you have an ILLEGAL COPY. If you only use it for your own use, then nobody will bother you about it. However, if you do anything commercial with it, then you are running a risk.

There are some software sites that still sell legal copies of QB with a software license, and are not expensive.

There's more of a risk with QBasic 4.5 than with QuickBASIC 4.5. Since QBasic runs interpreted, if you made a little QBasic application for someone else, you would have to give him a copy of QBasic in order to run. Again, the risk. However, with QuickBASIC these's no risk because you would only give them the .EXE executables of the programs. The risk here is very small that someone could figure out that they were made from a QuickBASIC version. These executables could be forther disguised by renaming them from .EXE to .COM. They run the same.

QBasic used to come free with older versions of Windows. If you're using QBasic then you might have a legal copy if you purchased one of these earlier versions of Windows.

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bearded_oneder
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Buying Quick Basic

Post by bearded_oneder »

Used copies of Quick Basic can be purchased here, sometimes with original packaging and manuals, but it's expensive:
http://www.emsps.com/OLDTOOLS/msbas.htm#qb45

Of course there is e-bay:
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dl ... =&saprchi=

Finally. you could just buy Power Basic 3.5 instead which is almost completely Quick Basic compatible, but much more powerful tool, and still supported:
http://www.powerbasic.com/products/pbdos/

* They also have a true 32 bit windows version for building console (DOS box) programs that will run in windows, but not true DOS mode:
http://www.powerbasic.com/products/pbcc/

* Finally, they have a 32 bit windows GUI'd version, similar to Visual Basic 5, but without the bloat and speed problems:
http://www.powerbasic.com/products/pbdll32/
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