Adriaan van Os wrote:
Frank Heckenbach wrote:
I might be a little confused about the Pascal compilers by Apple and/or for Mac, since I've never used one of them myself.
Yes, it is confusing, so I have listed the Pascal compilers for Macintosh that I know of:
I miss the UCSD Pascal system that ran (very well) on the Apple ][. I believe it was based on Wirth's p-system, producing p-code. It had a text-based UI with menus. A typical prompt looked like
Program-name: C(ommand1, C(ommand2, ...:
Because almost all the system software was written in UCSD Pascal as well, the language had been extended with numerous facilities for writing efficient system software. Many of these Pascal extensions have survived in one form or another.
We had a large group here in the Netherlands that did wonderful things with this system on homemade Apple ][ clones. These had been extended with 1 MB RAM disks (lightning fast). There were no hard disks at that time; only the slow 5.25" floppies for your OS, tools, and program and data files. I still have such a machine in my attic, but I have not tried to boot it in a very long time.
Tom Verhoeff
At 10:33 AM +0100 12/3/03, Tom Verhoeff wrote:
Adriaan van Os wrote:
Frank Heckenbach wrote:
I might be a little confused about the Pascal compilers by Apple and/or for Mac, since I've never used one of them myself.
Yes, it is confusing, so I have listed the Pascal compilers for Macintosh that I know of:
I miss the UCSD Pascal system that ran (very well) on the Apple ][. I believe it was based on Wirth's p-system, producing p-code. It had a text-based UI with menus. A typical prompt looked like
Program-name: C(ommand1, C(ommand2, ...:
Because almost all the system software was written in UCSD Pascal as well, the language had been extended with numerous facilities for writing efficient system software. Many of these Pascal extensions have survived in one form or another.
We had a large group here in the Netherlands that did wonderful things with this system on homemade Apple ][ clones. These had been extended with 1 MB RAM disks (lightning fast). There were no hard disks at that time; only the slow 5.25" floppies for your OS, tools, and program and data files. I still have such a machine in my attic, but I have not tried to boot it in a very long time.
Tom Verhoeff
I remember this too; it hasn't been in mind for a long time until you mentioned it. I bought an Apple ][+ (or rather I imported a Taiwanese clone from the factory - you could do that in those days!) as an undergrad student. You mentioning the menu brings back memories... but we had better not start down that track! ;-)
I still have Randell Hyde's book p-Source which shows all the p-code instructions and what they do along with examples of compiled p-code compared to the original Pascal source. I spent some time playing with p-code. Silly kid... (me, that is) There was a book with Apple's ROM code as well if I remember right.
I wish I had never sold that machine. I don't particularly regret selling the IBM XT I bought later, but I wish I'd hung onto the ][+.
Grant
Tom Verhoeff wrote:
Adriaan van Os wrote:
Frank Heckenbach wrote:
I might be a little confused about the Pascal compilers by Apple and/or for Mac, since I've never used one of them myself.
Yes, it is confusing, so I have listed the Pascal compilers for Macintosh that I know of:
I miss the UCSD Pascal system that ran (very well) on the Apple ][. I believe it was based on Wirth's p-system, producing p-code. It had a text-based UI with menus. A typical prompt looked like
Program-name: C(ommand1, C(ommand2, ...:
Because almost all the system software was written in UCSD Pascal as well, the language had been extended with numerous facilities for writing efficient system software. Many of these Pascal extensions have survived in one form or another.
We had a large group here in the Netherlands that did wonderful things with this system on homemade Apple ][ clones. These had been extended with 1 MB RAM disks (lightning fast). There were no hard disks at that time; only the slow 5.25" floppies for your OS, tools, and program and data files. I still have such a machine in my attic, but I have not tried to boot it in a very long time.
IMO Ken Bowles and crew tried to do too much at the Pcode level, and failed miserably at the file system. The files could only be created with pre-known size, and could not adapt to the disk system. The Pcode was sensitive to the byte sex of the machine, instead of being hidden by the interpreter, and thus was no longer machine independant. They also slapped their own copyright on what was basically the P4 compiler.
However the really fatal flaw was when they sold the system (to Softech, IIRC) and pulled the licenses. The result was that development stopped, at least in my case, since I would no longer have any rights to the result without litigation.
It was a considerable achievement anyhow. I have a box full of 8 inch disks somewhere with the original system for the 8080. They originated the concept of units. Unlike Turbo Pascal, USCD Pascal was pretty well standards compliant, with many extensions. In its day the editor was a joy to use. This dates back to the mid to late '70s.
BTW, this was a system that did NOT represent NIL as 0.
CBFalconer wrote:
It was a considerable achievement anyhow. I have a box full of 8 inch disks somewhere with the original system for the 8080. They originated the concept of units. Unlike Turbo Pascal, USCD Pascal was pretty well standards compliant, with many extensions.
Also in the file I/O area?
Frank
Frank Heckenbach wrote:
CBFalconer wrote:
It was a considerable achievement anyhow. I have a box full of 8 inch disks somewhere with the original system for the 8080. They originated the concept of units. Unlike Turbo Pascal, USCD Pascal was pretty well standards compliant, with many extensions.
Also in the file I/O area?
Pretty well IIRC. They fouled up console i/o by inverting the order of get in read (i.e. read(C) = get(input); c = input^; instead of c = input^; get(input; I guess they didn't read Pascal News, so didn't know about lazy i/o.
CBFalconer wrote:
It was a considerable achievement anyhow. I have a box full of 8 inch disks somewhere with the original system for the 8080. They originated the concept of units. Unlike Turbo Pascal, USCD Pascal was pretty well standards compliant, with many extensions. In its day the editor was a joy to use. This dates back to the mid to late '70s.
... and it had an enormous influence, UCSD Pascal is more or less the mother or many later Pascal compilers.
I don't know if the Softech version is now publicly available, but Apple II UCSD Pascal can be found at ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/images/utility/programming/ apple_pascal/. An Apple II emulator for Macintosh is at http://www.bernie.gs/Bernie/. There are also Apple II emulators that run on other platforms than Macintosh, see http://devernay.free.fr/apple2/.
The UCSD P-System museum is at http://www.threedee.com/jcm/psystem/. I found it through http://www.pascaland.free.fr/pascall.htm#GPC
Regards,
Adriaan van Os
On Wed, 12 Mar 2003, Tom Verhoeff wrote:
I miss the UCSD Pascal system that ran (very well) on the Apple ][.
We had a large group here in the Netherlands that did wonderful things with this system on homemade Apple ][ clones. These had been extended
Yes, it was a lot of fun. The first time I did pixel-level graphics on a computer of any kind was with UCSD Pascal on Apple ][. It wasn't very quick about it, but the only possible alternative (for me) at the time was a huge Tektronix tube shared by dozens of people: Fortran only (at a high-level) and vector-based. And sitting in the drawer next to me is my copy of MVP Forth for Apple ][ on 5.25" diskettes :)
Tom Verhoeff
* Nick Geovanis | IT Computing Svcs | Northwestern Univ | n-geovanis@nwu.edu +------------------->
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Adriaan van Os -
CBFalconer -
Frank Heckenbach -
Grant Jacobs -
Nicholas Geovanis -
Tom Verhoeff