Evan, It depends on what your ultimate goal is, the two of which seem to be opposed. On the one hand, we want to overcome the limitations of Logo, however that language is not ideal for interactive applications. On the other hand, we want to make it accessible and simple, like Logo. I'm not sure we can have both. Writing a custom Logo is a task that is beyond our grasp here. Our best best is to use basic on the IBM to see if we can accomplish the things we want and try to illustrate the programming concepts as simply as possible. The approach should become apparent as we progress.
But I want it all and I want it now! :) Kidding... I agree that BASIC is the smarter choice. Kids can still understand it and it's more likely to be hackable for the port-checking command I need. A secondary awesome thing, which might also be a tremendous learning experience for me, would be (as you and I briefly discussed on the phone tonight) to get BASIC ** on the Apple II ** working with the Lego hardware instead of just IBM/BASIC or Apple/LOGO. That would be helpful in our museum for several reasons. For example, children nowadays (and even their 30-something parents) would be more excited about using a historic Apple computer than a bland PC.