(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)