ICL 2903 BASIC Reference Card

Shortly after our ‘O’-levels, our school’s Maths department gained a TeleType ASR 33 along with a bright red Modular Technology acoustic coupler which gave us dial-up access to Nene College’s ICL 2903E interactive BASIC system. As we were early adopters, there wasn’t much documentation around and the only information we had was a small BASIC reference card. It was enough.

The interactive BASIC system it described was developed by the North Staffordshire Polytechnic Computer Centre. This system ran as the single user program under the 2903’s executive and supported up to sixteen users.

This reference card summarises the commands and statements supported by the system. The BASIC language is not the same as that supported by the ICL 1900 BASIC compiler (#JBAS), particularly in the area of file I/O.

The individual pages: