(MS-BASIC) A dialect of BASIC from Microsoft, originally developed by Bill Gates in a garage back in the CP/M days.It was originally known as GWBasic, then QBASIC and finally MS-BASIC.When the MS-DOSoperating system came out, it incorporated the GWBASIC.EXE or BASICA.EXE interpreters.GWBASIC ("Gee Whiz") incorporated graphics and a screen editor and was compatible with earlier BASICs.QBASIC was more sophisticated.Version 4.5 had a full screen editor, debugger and compiler.The compiler could also produce executable files but to run these a utility program (BRUN44.EXE) had to be present.Thus source code could be kept private.From DOS 5.0 or 6.0 onward, MS-BASIC was standard.Current version: 1.1, also produces stand-alone executables and can display graphics.Usenet newsgroup: news:comp.lang.basic.misc.[Relationship to BASIC in ROM on first IBM PC?](1995-05-12)