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with more bells and whistles, is available for $279Us. If you have more money to burn, try the "Enterprise Edition," for
$1299US.

Don't be alarmed by the price tags. You may already have Visual Basic witho ut knowing it. The applications in the Microsoft
Office software include a limited version of Visual Basic, called Visual Basic for Applications (VBA); Word, Excel, and
Access all include VBA. In Word, for example, there's a Visual Basic Editor menu item in the Macro submenu of the Tools
menu. The examples in this chapter were developed with V BA in Microsoft Word 97, but you could just as easily use one of
th e other incarnations of VB or VBA.

E ven if you d on't have VB or VBA, you can use a very similar environment called BrickCommand. BrickCommand allows
you to program the RCX via Spirit.ocx, much the same way as you would using VB or VBA. Several similar packages are
available online; see the "Online Resources" section for details.

Ab out Spirit.ocx

Spirit.ocx is the glue that links Windows applications to the RCX. If you installed the software from the RIS kit, you already
have Spirit.ocx on your computer. In essence, Spirit.ocx is a collection of functions that send commands to the RCX, ask the
RCX for information, or create programs on the R CX. Figure 8-1 shows the software architecture, which is quite similar to
F igure 4-1 in Chapter 4. Spirit.ocx can also be used from Visual C++ (VC++). If you're familiar with VC++, you can do this
fairly easily. This chapter describes VB because it is simple and co mmonly available.

Figure 8-1.
RCX software architecture