Talk:Data General Business Basic

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Although I know the B32 story well, I'm relying on memory for many details of the DG Business Basic. There was an article written for the magazine Focus in the late 1980s by George Henne on the history of Business Basic; I'll try to find it, but if anyone from Data General, Transoft or Bluebird sees this, please add material.--Gadfium 06:21, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

The origin of DG Business Basic is a bit more detailed than described above. I do not know the full history, I can give a bit more information. The language was developed by a company called TAC in Atlanta, Georgia. Data General bought TAC for the language. The owner of the company I worked for was an employee of TAC. I have contacted him for more information regarding this language. Until there is more detailed information, I am reluctant to update the main page. User aafej on 08 Sep 2006.

More on TAC and Business Basic. TAC developed a Business Fortran for Data General Computers about 1973. It has a small following. I was their Data General salesman at the time and suggested they do the same for DG's multi-user Basic. Pulling a few strings inside the plant I got TAC a papertape copy of the Source of multiuser basic. The end result became quite popular. It worked well, no bugs, hardly any support needed. It took a while for DG to acquire rights as DG has developed a competing product, ICobol, for their machines. This was a multiuser Cobol environment. However, ICobol was relatively clunky and never achieved the success of Business Basic.

DG never acquired TAC. TAC had substantial business producing inks with special isotope mixtures used to print lottery tickets . . impossible to counterfeit.

Paul Charbonnet Paul@fasttrack.net —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.248.67.198 (talk) 03:59, 5 October 2007 (UTC)