(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)