The Brandy Basic V Interpreter

What is it?

Brandy is an interpreter for BBC BASIC (or Basic V as it is refered to here) that runs under a variety of operating systems. Basic V is the version of Basic supplied with desktop computers running RISC OS. These were originally made by Acorn Computers but are now designed and manufactured by companies such as RiscStation, MicroDigital and Castle Technology.

What does it run on?

The interpreter runs under RISC OS, NetBSD/arm32, NetBSD/i386, Linux, DOS using the DJGPP DOS extender and Windows as a console application. The program is written in ANSI C and comes in source form so it should not be difficult to compile it to run under other operating systems.

Brandy is distributed under version 2 of the GNU General Public License.

The current version of the program is 1.13.

Downloading the Program

The program is available for download in three different archive formats:

RISC OS

This is the most complete version of the interpreter supporting most features of the Acorn interpreter. It runs under RISC OS 3 and 4.

The program is supplied in a Spark archive. It contains a RISC OS executable as well as the source code, documentation and examples.

RISC OS version:

NetBSD and Linux

The main restrictions of the versions of the program that run under these operating systems is that they do not support graphics or sound.

The program is supplied as a gzip'ed tar file that contains the source, documentation and examples. It will have to be compiled before it can be used.

NetBSD/Linux version:

Mac OS X

The Mac OS X version was developed by Crispian Daniels (no relation). He wrote the wrapper BrandyTerminal which allows Brandy to be run from the Mac OS X Finder. This version includes graphics support using the platform-independent graphics library 'JLib' written by Jonathan Griffiths. Both of the files given below must be downloaded:

Mac OS X source:

BrandyTerminal:

DOS and Windows

The DOS version uses the DJGPP DOS extender. It is the most complete version of the interpreter after the RISC OS one. The program also runs under Windows in a DOS box.

The program is supplied in a zip archive. It includes a DOS executable in addition to the source, examples and documentatiom. Note that other software will be required before the program can be compiled, namely the DJGPP DOS extender from D.J.Delorie's web site and the JLib graphics library. Unfortunately the JLib web site has disappeared but copies of the library can be found using a search engine.

DOS version:

Link for DJGPP:

DJGPP: www.delorie.com

Note: Jlib seems to be unavailable now so Brandy 1.14 will use a different graphics library

Contacting the author

Either post a message on the comp.sys.acorn.programming newsgroup or send me an email here