15 Dec
2006
15 Dec
'06
12:37 p.m.
Charles Fox wrote:
I think that they
were probably running their flavor of Basic on any
stand alone system, and certainly the keys you refer to are for the
basic 4 programming environment, and are their flavor of function
keys.
I will try to find a Basic 4 basic manual somewhere, if Al does not
have one scanned and online already.
Basic 4 / MAI's applications support was dedicated to programming
in their basic environment and not any languages or execution
environments in general use now. Pick also has its unique "virtual"
and "assembly code" programming that it uses, but it has been
ported to a lot of architectures since it was licensed, and Basic 4
never ported to any hardware it didn't build or approve of.
They started out on Microdata 1600's and later their own clone
of the 1600. Next was a custom 16 bit processor they built,
and then onto several of the early microprocessors, though I
don't recall which ones. They may well have built a small
system like the one described based on the Z80 or some
8 bit cpu. I'll be interested in which processor this has.
I'll try to contact some of my Basic 4 friends and see if any
of the current bunch can identify this terminal and report back
as well.
Jim
At 12:25 PM 12/15/2006, you wrote:
<>In article <200612151205.kBFC5291006015 at hosting.monisys.ca>,
"Dave Dunfield" <dave06a at dunfield.com> writes:
> > Does anyone have experience with this company's stuff?
> >
<><snip>
Yep, that's the puppy I saw on the net. However, this terminal looks
older than that. It has a funky keyboard with weird keys labelled I,
II, III, IV! I am not sure yet, but I think they are the function
keys that later in time would have been named F1, F2, etc.