Beginner's Programming Tutorial
                          in QBasic
          This document is meant to get you started into programming, and assumes you
          have some experience with computers and with Windows 95 (or 98, etc.).
          Since this tutorial is written for people who don't like to read a lot of text, it
          includes a number of examples. Therefore, you can do a lot of work in not much
          time.
          The more important chapters have a star (  ).
          Feel free to distribute this tutorial, upload it to your website, link to it from your site, etc.
          http://www.geocities.com/progsharehouse/qbtutor
          Mirror: http://development.freeservers.com/qbtutor
           Table of Contents
               Part I: Q-Basics
                   Chapter 1: Before you start
                   Chapter 2: Your first program
                   Chapter 3: Variables
                   Chapter 4: Retrieving keyboard input from the user
                   Chapter 5: The IF and THEN commands
                   Chapter 6: Labels and the GOTO and GOSUB commands
                   Chapter 7: Loops
                   Chapter 8: What next?
               Part II: Intermediate topics
                   Chapter 9: QBasic interface
                   Chapter 10: Adding documentation to your programs
                   Chapter 11: Reading and writing to files
                   Chapter 12: Displaying graphics
                   Chapter 13: Mathematics functions
                   Chapter 14: Getting the current date and time
               Part III: Advanced topics
                   Chapter 15: Arrays
                   Chapter 16: Variable types
                   Chapter 17: Subroutines and functions
                   Chapter 18: Numbering systems
                   Chapter 19: Memory
                                                                    Before you start
                          Before you can create a program in QBasic, you need the QBasic interpreter. It
                          is available from your Windows 95 (or 98) CD, or you can download it below.
                          To access QBasic from the Windows 95 CD:
                               1.  Insert the CD into your CD-ROM drive.
                                           "browse this CD"
                               2. Click                             (if the menu screen doesn't come up, then browse the CD from
                                    My Computer
                                                      .
                                                 \OTHER\OLDMSDOS
                               3.  Go to the                                  directory.
                               4.  Open a program called QBASIC.EXE (this is version 1.1 of the QBasic interpreter).
                          To access QBasic from the Windows 98 CD:
                               1.  Insert the CD into your CD-ROM drive.
                                           "browse this CD"
                               2. Click                             (if the menu screen doesn't come up, then browse the CD from
                                    My Computer
                                                      .
                                                 \TOOLS\OLDMSDOS
                               3.  Go to the                                  directory.
                               4.  Open a program called QBASIC.EXE (this is version 1.1 of the QBasic interpreter).
                                                      right-click                      "Save As")
                          Download it here (                           and press                         :
                                    QBASIC.ZIP
                                                      (323 KB) - QBasic 1.1 interpreter and sample programs
                                    UNZIP32.EXE
                                                       (90 KB) - Extracts the ZIP file
                          To unzip the QBASIC.ZIP file with UNZIP32.EXE:
                               a.  Go to the Start Menu
                                           Run...
                               b. Click 
                               c.   Type the following (this loads MS-DOS):
                                         command  
                                                                                                                      C:\QBASIC
                               d.  Enter the following in DOS (assuming you saved QBASIC.ZIP to                                      ):
                                         cd c:\qbasic
                                         unzip32 -n qbasic.zip
                                                     Your first program 
                      After launching the QBasic interpreter (see before you start), you might see a window requesting
                                                                                 Enter
                      a list of "parameters." If this window comes up, press the         key to continue.
                      You should now see the QBasic interpreter, which has a blue background and displays a dialog
                                                                                                              "Alt +
                      box at the center. (If the interpreter fills the entire screen, then you may want to press 
                      Enter," to make it smaller.)
                      Press the Esc key to hide the dialog box.
                                                       QBasic interpreter - main screen
                      Type the following (including the quotation marks) in the QBasic interpreter:
                          PRINT "Hello World!"  
                                 F5                                                                 Hello World
                      Now press      to run the program. You should now see a black screen, with                    at the
                               Press any key to continue
                      top, and                                     at the bottom.
                      Press a key on the keyboard to return to the main screen.