14 Apr
2007
14 Apr
'07
8:36 p.m.
The main differece [between 9820 language and]
BASIC is hos you write
an asignment. Rather than C=A+B, you write A+B->C (wehre -> is a
right-arrow, called 'Gozinta' in some technical docs I've seen)
Well, and, this is an expression rather than a statement; you could do
things like R(X+(1->C))->A (somewhat akin to the way C lets you write
a=r[x+(c=1)]) - did any BASICs do that? And the way conditionals behaved. (Were there any
BASICs that let you
stack statements on a line and for which conditionals always controlled
the rest of the line?)
That was quite common. A lot of BASICs would take a line like
IF X=0 THEN Y=SIN(D):Z=D*D+2
and do both assingments iff X equalled 0
You may have
gatehrered I rather like this family of machines.....
I think you said as much a post or two ago. :-)
I'm tempted to try to find one purely for nostalgia reasons. (Tempted. I probably won't actually do it, unless one more
or less falls into my
lap cheap. For one thing, I've been too spoiled since then by using
much more powerful and pleasant languages.)
If you want to run the old programs and get the feel of the machine
again, I am told there's a pretty good HP98x0 emulator on the web, and I
think it's open-sourve (and maybe written in Java, but I wouldn't bet on
that). It emulates the 9810, 9820 and 9830 from what I've heard.
Having got the real macvhines, and not having got anything to run the
emulator on, I've not tried it, but it might be of interest.
-tony