Turbo-Basic XL

Turbo-Basic XL is an advanced version of BASIC for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers. It is a compatible superset of the more common ATARI BASIC whose most important feature is the vastly improved execution speed (X3 times faster). A Turbo-Basic XL compiler was also made available that created binary executables, further speeding up program performance (X10 times faster than Atari Basic). Turbo-Basic XL was developed by Frank Ostrowski and published in the December 1985 issue of German computer magazine Happy Computer.

Among the extra features of Turbo-Basic XL, added to ATARI BASIC, are the following:

  • enhanced sound and graphics commands
  • more flexible I/O commands, including disk access
  • structured programming constructs
  • simple debugging facilities