Anyone off to VCF-UK?

23 May 2010

...

    > Who wrote Amiga-OS?
 IIRC it was based on Tripos, which came from Dr Martin Richards at
 Cambridge University... I really must get Tripos running on one of my
 PDP11s sometime.... 
 You are correct. Dr Richards ported Tripos into a machine-independent
 BCPL representation called Cintpos. It will run on most systems, including
 x86 and PowerPC. 
 Tripos was also written in BCPL, or at least much of it was. I have the
 sources, and the sources for the BCPL compiler (and guess what that's
 written in...) As I said, one day I must get it running on the PDP11
 again (which is one of the machines it originally ran on). 
 I think you misunderstand me. The special bit about Cintpos isn't that it's
 BCPL, it's that the BCPL compilers he maintains compile to a bytecode and
 this is machine-independent. 
Yes, I think I have the Cintcode BCPL compiler somehwere. My (obvious)
plan, when I get a tuit [1[ is to modify the sourves of the BCPL compiler
fo the PDP11 to compile under the Cintcode compiler so that I end up with
a PC-hosted cross-compiler producing PDP11 code. And then use that to
attempt to build PDP11 Tripos.
I prefer to run classic OSes on classic hardware if at all possible...
[1] Sinec I have a lathe, the shape of tuit is not inmportat, I can
easily machine one to a circuit cross-section.
-tony

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Anyone off to VCF-UK?