Hacking the HC-8+ in BASIC. Yes, BASIC.

[JonnyMac]

Those of you that saw our code for the Prop-SX were exposed to a language called SX/B. That was co-created by yours truly back when John and I were still at Parallax. The engineer for that project, Terry, ported his work to the Propeller chip calling it PropBASIC.

In my mind it's not as powerful as using Spin or C, but it is very good, and in most cases faster than Spin (because it compiles to native assembly code). For those that just don't want to be bothered learning Spin or C, you can program in BASIC.

That said, you cannot do it in the Propeller Tool that we normally use. What you need to install is a program called SimpleIDE which started outside Parallax, and has become an official project. Note that SimpleIDE is designed for writing programs in C for the Propeller, but it's a flexible IDE and there is a way to run compile PropBASIC programs in it.

See this thread in the Parallax Propeller forum:
-- http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php/149659-PropBasic-How-to-use-PropBasic-in-SimpleIDE-!!!

As time permits I will create a PropBASIC template or the HC-8+.

Even if you're using Spin you may want to download SimpleIDE -- it's a nice environment, is cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) and will ultimately replace the Propeller tool. I'm hoping they add color background notating as in the Propeller Tool, and  code folding (like Summary view in Propeller Tool) -- but even without, it's a really nice IDE.

[JonnyMac]

You can get the latest update of SimpleIDE here:
-- http://learn.parallax.com/propeller-c-set-simpleide

And, yes, JonnyMac will be learning C for some projects. I'm not an expert yet -- but I will be! :)

[JonnyMac]

Oh... and here's the documentation for PropBASIC. It's a tad unpolished, but serviceable.
-- http://forums.parallax.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=83709&d=1312406887