25 Mar
2014
25 Mar
'14
4:27 p.m.
On Mar 25, 2014 4:45 PM, "geneb" <geneb at deltasoft.com> wrote:
Weren't their BASIC interpreters written in some
cpu-agnostic code that
then got tossed into another tool that output the code for the target cpu?
On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 3:48 PM, A. P. Garcia <a.phillip.garcia at gmail.com>wrote:
I think that's right. They cross compiled using a
pdp11, I believe, using
p-code as an intermediary.
They used an intermediate code like that for Word, but not for BASIC. At
least some versions of Word were reported to be a mix of native code and
intermediate code. I think the native code was generated directly from
source rather than through an intermediate code step.
Microsoft BASIC interpreters were written in native assembly. In the early
days 8080 and 6502 BASIC interpreters were assembled on a DECsystem-10
using macro packages for MACRO-10.
I haven't heard of Microsoft ever using a PDP-11 for development of their
mainstream software. Perhaps they may have used it for Xenix development.