Hardware parsing of BASIC?

Josh D. wrote: here anywhere; interpreted like the parsed some The Wang 2200 executed BASIC directly, though it was a microcoded engine that did the execution. If you consider a microcoded processor that accepts BASIC statements and tokenizes them on input, and executes the tokenized code when the BASIC program is run a "hardware" implementation of BASIC, then this probably fits the criteria of the posting above. The 2200 was a descendent of the Wang 700-series advanced programmable calculators. The microcode engine in the 2200 was more streamlined and efficient than that used in the calculators (and implemented with slightly higher-levels of integration than the 700-series calculators), but the basic concepts of how the microcode engine operated was similar to that used in the calculators. The original concept that became the Wang 700 calculators was actually to be a computer that was supposed to compete with IBM, but when Dr. Wang learned of HP's 9100A calculator coming to market, and Wang's main cash cow was its 300-series calculators, Dr. Wang quickly repurposed the design of the computer to become a high-end calculator to compete with HP's amazing machine. As Dr. Wang realized that the electronic calculator marketplace would soon be owned by the chip makers, he resurrected the idea of building low-cost computer, re-using the concepts of the calculators, and that became the Wang 2200. Jim Battle has a great site outlining Wang's 2200-series "personal" computers at www.wang2200.org. He has a emulator that executes the microcode to provide a faithful emulation of the Wang 2200 computer. Rick Bensene