On 1976 at the HomeBrew Computer Club (HBCC), there was a lot of whining about Bill Gates charging $150 for his Basic interpreter. Dennis Allison responded by printing a "Build Your Own [tiny] Basic" article, so I asked if anybody would buy it if it cost only $5. There seemed to be some affirmation, so I wrote my interpreter. Others jumped on the same article, and I wasn't the first done, but I wanted to be paid for my efforts. As far as I know, nobody at HBCC bought it, but I sent a freebie to Byte magazine and they printed a 1-inch announcement. The next month my mailbox was full of orders, every one with $5. I didn't get rich off it, but it did pay a lot of my expenses at grad school.

This is an archive of as many versions of TinyBasic, the documentation, the user and experimenter kits as Tom Pittman could find.