Can MMbasic run on Pi Zero 2 W
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Hi Trevor,
Welcome to the forum, thanks for posting! 
MMBasic is designed to run on microcontrollers not microprocessors like the Pi (a quick rundown on what that means). Good news though, seems there are quite a few options for Linux:
-James
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Many thanks for the clarification james.
Trevor
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There is an MMBASIC for the Raspberry Pi Pico, called PicoMite. I believe there are versions people have created to run on other Raspberry Pi boards. But as James points out, it was originally designed for a microcontroller. The concept is similar to several early home computers such as the Commodore 64 which has BASIC in ROM (read only memory) and jumps straight into the BASIC interpreter when turned on.
That concept doesn’t make a lot of sense with more powerful computers with access to external storage like the Pi. They have an operating system that can load a BASIC interpreter when needed.
The designers of MMBASIC claim “MMBasic is generally backwards compatible with Microsoft’s MBASIC and implements much of the ANSI Standard for Full BASIC (X3.113-1987).” so it should not be difficult to take a program written for MMBASIC and change it (if needed) for a different BASIC interpreter or compiler.
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Hi Trevor,
Paul mentioned an implementation over on his forum post here: Basic Interpreter on the Pi Pico
Liam.
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Other Basic Interpreters and Compilers are available for th Pi
basic256 - educational BASIC programming environment for children
brandy - BBC BASIC V interpreter
bwbasic - Bywater BASIC Interpreter
mono-vbnc - Mono Visual Basic Compiler (VB.NET)
sdlbasic - BASIC interpreter for game development
yabasic - Yet Another BASIC interpreter
I have used both bwbbasic and yabasic.
Both allow you to start your programs with #! followed by the path to the interpreter so you can run the programs directly from the command line.
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