TSB is historically notable as the platform that released the first public versions of the game Star Trek.
HP maintained a database of contributed-programs and customers could order them on punched tape for a nominal fee.
Vendors added their own solutions; HP used a system similar to Fortran and other languages with array slicing, while DEC later introduced the MID/LEFT/RIGHT functions.
As microcomputers began to enter the market in the mid-1970s, many new BASICs appeared that based their parsers on DEC's or HP's syntax.
The usual terminal for a TSB system was a Teletype Model 33 ASR and connected directly to the I/O processor or through a modem or acoustic coupler.
During execution, user programs are swapped to a fixed head drive — physically a disk, but operating like a magnetic drum.
When not executing, user programs are stored on moving-head cartridge- or pack-loaded disk storage.
Program and file names consist of a mix of up to six alphabetic characters (A-Z) and numbers (0-9).
The language is a fairly standard implementation of BASIC, providing an integrated editing and runtime environment.
HP's notation can also be used on the destination side of a LET or INPUT statement to modify part of an existing string value, for example 100 A$[3,5]="XYZ" or 120 B$[3]="CHANGE ALL BUT FIRST TWO CHARS", which cannot be done with early implementations of LEFT/MID/RIGHT.
It was also notoriously slow, and was modified several times over its lifetime in order to improve performance or fix bugs.
[6] Later versions of Dartmouth BASIC included a suite of MAT commands that allowed operations on entire arrays (matrices) with a single statement.