21 May
2020
21 May
'20
10:42 p.m.
Seems of interest.? Will be interesting to play with.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/microsoft-open-sources-gw-basic/
21 May
21 May
11:44 p.m.
Interesting. I wonder if this is similar to the qbasic code in the dos 5
(6?) source leak that's floating around. Or if Gates wrote any of it.
On Fri, May 22, 2020, 1:43 AM jim stephens via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
Seems of interest. Will be interesting to play with.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/microsoft-open-sources-gw-basic/
9:09 a.m.
On Fri, May 22, 2020, 1:43 AM jim stephens via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
> Seems of interest. Will be interesting to play
with.
> https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/microsoft-open-sources-gw-basic/
On Fri, 22 May 2020, Justin Goldberg via cctalk wrote:
Interesting. I wonder if this is similar to the qbasic
code in the dos 5
(6?) source leak that's floating around. Or if Gates wrote any of it.
The Radio Shack Model 100 is believed to be the LAST BASIC that Bill Gates
actively participated in.
"Similar"? Well, sorta.
A little historical perspective:
<Over-simplified>
1964 May : Kurtz and Kemeny (Dartmouth College) developed BASIC as a
very/over simplified system for introducing beginning students to
programming. "Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code" As
simplified as they could make it with as little overhead as they could,
intended to be easier to GET STARTED with then FORTRAN. It is unclear
whether they intended that anybody might continue using BASIC once they
had completed that beginner's introduction.
1975 January : Popular Electronics ran a cover feature story about the
Altair
1975 March : Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote a BASIC interpreter for the
MITS Altair 8800 using Harvard's PDP-10. The use was unauthorized, but
student use had not been explicitly forbidden. yet.
Allen completed the bootstrap program for it on the plane on their way to
Albuquerque, to meet with Ed Roberts (MITS)
1975 April : Gates and Allen formed Micro-Soft
1979 January : Micro-Soft moved from Albuquerque to Bellevue Washington.
(Their phone number was (206) 255-8080)
1979 November : Microsoft dropped the hyphen
Developed BASIC interpreters (usually in ROM) for TRS-80 ("Level ii
BASIC"), Commodore PET ("Commodor BASIC"), Apple ][ ("Applesoft
BASIC")
and others.
1981 : Contracted with IBM to write BASIC for 5150, and PC-DOS
(PC-DOS consisted of purchasing Seattle Computer's 86-DOS/QDOS ("Quick and
Dirty Operating System"), and enhancing it. There is extensive lore about WHY
IBM contracted with Microsoft, instead of with Digital Research, Inc. for
the operating system. THAT is a different discussion.
1981 June 25 : Microsoft Incorporated
1981 August : release of IBM 5150, with BASIC in ROM, and BASIC and BASICA
on disk that added additional features (such as DISK) to the ROM BASIC.
Becuase the minimal 5150 came with 16K of RAM (soldered, with sockets to
expand to 64K), BASIC was squeezed, and BASICA was less squeezed.
Microsoft began selling MS-DOS to OEMs. Tim Paterson, Falcon
Technologies, SCP, exclusive V non-exclusive license, etc. are another
discussion. Differences between PC-DOS and MS-DOS exist, but are mostly
few and minor (such as IBMBIO.COM/IBMDOS.COM V IO.SYS/MSDOS.SYS)
Each OEM created their own BIOS ROMs, with occasional legal scuffles when
IBM thought that they were TOO similar (IBM had PUBLISHED the source code
for their BIOS ROM in the "PC Technical Reference Manual", but did not
publish the source code of the BASIC ROM.) "Clean-room" reverse
engineering, "bug for bug compatability", etc. are other discussions.
Because other OEMs did not have legal access to the BASIC ROMs, they could
not run BASIC.COM/BASICA.COM , which relied heavily on subroutines in the
ROMs.
Microsoft created GWBASIC as a substitute. Almost the same as BASICA.COM,
but did not require the BASIC ROMs, so that companies such as Compaq could
provide BASIC. (NO! Compaq could NOT run the reaal BASICA.COM. They
RENAMED GQBASIC.COM into BASICA.COM to avoid confusion for customers
having both systems, thus creating lots of confusion for customers who had
the renamed GWBASIC file on their disks)
Originally, G W BASIC stood for "Gee Wiz BASIC". But Microsoft has
forgotten that, and now claims to have no idea what GW stood for.
(Similarly the file header flag of "MZ" that differentiated .EXE files
from .COM stood for Mark Zbikowski)
</Over-simplified>
and THAT is what is being touted here.
MUCH later, Quick-BASIC and QBASIC were created.
10:31 a.m.
Thanks for posting the timeline of various Basic interpreters. I
wasn't aware that Gates/Allen also wrote Basic for C64. Did download
the 8080 Basic source code out of interest, but in early 1980's had
very little to do with IBM PC.
As was working with PDP-11's at that time, really disliked 8080
instruction set and got a C64 instead which was considerably cheaper
than IBM PC and much easier to write assembly code for. C64 basic is
fairly ugly but bought a 6502 assembler and just used Basic to
display stuff on screen and call my work was done in assembly
language code. Had no trouble sampling switch data at 1 KHz using my
"toy" computer. A couple of guys from UBC Physiology decided to
build a programmable stimulator based on C64 which they were trying
to sell for $2K, considerably less than the ~$10 K that the dedicated
device that was commonly used then. Even though their timing
specifications matched the expensive device, a lot of researchers
back then didn't want a "toy" to be part of their lab setup so sales were
few.
Recently found a movie Pirates of Silicon Valley which had some of
early Microsoft history and, if depictions of individuals are true to
reality, explains why I far preferred Mac in comparison to ugly early
windows. It also helped that 68000 was a very easy processor to
migrate to after 8 years doing assembler/FORTRAN programming on a
PDP-11. Couldn't believe it when I had a full 512 Kb of RAM to play in.
On Fri, May 22, 2020, 1:43 AM jim stephens via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>Seems of interest. Will be interesting to
play with.
>https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/microsoft-open-sources-gw-basic/
On Fri, 22 May 2020, Justin Goldberg via cctalk wrote:
Interesting. I wonder if this is similar to the
qbasic code in the dos 5
(6?) source leak that's floating around. Or if Gates wrote any of it.
The Radio Shack Model 100 is believed to be the LAST BASIC that Bill
Gates actively participated in.
"Similar"? Well, sorta.
A little historical perspective:
<Over-simplified>
1964 May : Kurtz and Kemeny (Dartmouth College) developed BASIC as a
very/over simplified system for introducing beginning students to
programming. "Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code" As
simplified as they could make it with as little overhead as they
could, intended to be easier to GET STARTED with then FORTRAN. It
is unclear whether they intended that anybody might continue using
BASIC once they had completed that beginner's introduction.
1975 January : Popular Electronics ran a cover feature story about the Altair
1975 March : Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote a BASIC interpreter for
the MITS Altair 8800 using Harvard's PDP-10. The use was
unauthorized, but student use had not been explicitly forbidden. yet.
Allen completed the bootstrap program for it on the plane on their
way to Albuquerque, to meet with Ed Roberts (MITS)
1975 April : Gates and Allen formed Micro-Soft
1979 January : Micro-Soft moved from Albuquerque to Bellevue Washington.
(Their phone number was (206) 255-8080)
1979 November : Microsoft dropped the hyphen
Developed BASIC interpreters (usually in ROM) for TRS-80 ("Level ii
BASIC"), Commodore PET ("Commodor BASIC"), Apple ][ ("Applesoft
BASIC") and others.
1981 : Contracted with IBM to write BASIC for 5150, and PC-DOS
(PC-DOS consisted of purchasing Seattle Computer's 86-DOS/QDOS
("Quick and Dirty Operating System"), and enhancing it. There is
extensive lore about WHY IBM contracted with Microsoft, instead of
with Digital Research, Inc. for the operating system. THAT is a
different discussion.
1981 June 25 : Microsoft Incorporated
1981 August : release of IBM 5150, with BASIC in ROM, and BASIC and BASICA
on disk that added additional features (such as DISK) to the ROM BASIC.
Becuase the minimal 5150 came with 16K of RAM (soldered, with
sockets to expand to 64K), BASIC was squeezed, and BASICA was less squeezed.
Microsoft began selling MS-DOS to OEMs. Tim Paterson, Falcon
Technologies, SCP, exclusive V non-exclusive license, etc. are
another discussion. Differences between PC-DOS and MS-DOS exist,
but are mostly few and minor (such as IBMBIO.COM/IBMDOS.COM V IO.SYS/MSDOS.SYS)
Each OEM created their own BIOS ROMs, with occasional legal scuffles
when IBM thought that they were TOO similar (IBM had PUBLISHED the
source code for their BIOS ROM in the "PC Technical Reference
Manual", but did not publish the source code of the BASIC
ROM.) "Clean-room" reverse engineering, "bug for bug
compatability", etc. are other discussions.
Because other OEMs did not have legal access to the BASIC ROMs, they
could not run BASIC.COM/BASICA.COM , which relied heavily on
subroutines in the ROMs.
Microsoft created GWBASIC as a substitute. Almost the same as
BASICA.COM, but did not require the BASIC ROMs, so that companies
such as Compaq could provide BASIC. (NO! Compaq could NOT run the
reaal BASICA.COM. They RENAMED GQBASIC.COM into BASICA.COM to avoid
confusion for customers having both systems, thus creating lots of
confusion for customers who had the renamed GWBASIC file on their disks)
Originally, G W BASIC stood for "Gee Wiz BASIC". But Microsoft has
forgotten that, and now claims to have no idea what GW stood for.
(Similarly the file header flag of "MZ" that differentiated .EXE
files from .COM stood for Mark Zbikowski)
</Over-simplified>
and THAT is what is being touted here.
MUCH later, Quick-BASIC and QBASIC were created.
12:34 p.m.
On 5/22/2020 11:50 AM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:
On 5/22/20 10:31 AM, Boris Gimbarzevsky via cctalk
wrote:
Confused here. Pirates or Micosoft history?
Runs.
Ben.
Recently found a movie Pirates of Silicon Valley
which had some of
early Microsoft history
It is a work of fiction, and should be taken as such.
12:50 p.m.
>> Recently found a movie Pirates of Silicon
Valley which had some of early
>> Microsoft history
On 5/22/2020 11:50 AM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:
> It is a work of fiction, and should be taken as such.
On Fri, 22 May 2020, ben
via cctalk wrote:
Confused here. Pirates or Micosoft history?
Runs.
Ben.
BOTH. Microsoft history is "based on" a true story; and then
fictionalized. As we age, unrefreshed dynamic wetware RAM fades and
distorts, so we remember only certain parts and only in ways that our
brains come up with.
Keep in mind the "blind men and the elephant". Each of the groups
involved in creating the internet has a TOTALLY different concept of what
happened and who the major players were. For example, to what extent was
the motivation for the internet for the purpose of uninterrupted IRS tax
collection after apocalypse?
Pirates is total fantasy that might sorta claim to have been "inspired
by", by those who were not there, and with no factual nor historical
content.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
3:57 p.m.
On 5/22/20 3:34 PM, ben via cctalk wrote:
On 5/22/2020 11:50 AM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:
I would vote for Microsoft's History.
bill
On 5/22/20 10:31 AM, Boris Gimbarzevsky via
cctalk wrote:
Confused here. Pirates or Micosoft history?
Runs. Recently found a movie Pirates of Silicon Valley
which had some of
early Microsoft history
It is a work of fiction, and should be taken as such.
23 May
23 May
10:20 a.m.
On Fri, 22 May 2020 at 21:34, ben via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Confused here. Pirates or Micosoft history?
Runs.
Yes.
He meant that PoSV is a fictionalised, sanitised, MS-approved account
and not very reliable.
As is MS' own history. Written by the winners, etc.
However, I'd say PoSV will give the clueless more of a general idea
than most people have. It's 40y ago now; that means it is most people
in tech were born. Only senior managers remember that far back, and
they don't know the difference between "Windows" and "Gates" (ha
ha).
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven ? Skype: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
10:18 a.m.
On Fri, 22 May 2020 at 19:50, Al Kossow via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
You're right, but it contains the broad strokes of the story, more or
less accurately, AFAICT. This is a damned sight more than most pro/am
techies know these days.
I used to be an active user of Quora, the online crowd-sourced version
of XKCD 386, until they banned me for having a false name. ("Liam
Proven" -- FAKE!)
Many questions are FAQs, asked over and over and _over_ again, _ad
nauseam_, by people who can't spell, or who were too lazy to search.
Common ones are:
? How much of MS-DOS did Bill Gates write? (I'd answer: none)
? How much of Windows did Bill Gates write? (none)
? Why did MS save Apple? (It didn't, they were punitive damages for
stealing Quicktime code)
And so on. People have _no_ clue, this is all pre-web and therefore
ancient unknown history, the stuff of legend.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven ? Skype: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
Recently found a movie Pirates of Silicon Valley
which had some of early Microsoft history
It is a work of fiction, and should be taken as such.
12:38 p.m.
> You're right, but it contains the broad
strokes of the story
SOME of the personalities were closer than the "history".
But, the gratuitous fourth wall "Study this; because this is what really
happened" warrants a soldering iron up the nose.
(Trump inspired treatement for cocaine habit?)
On Sat, 23 May 2020, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:
So did the TV series "Silicon Valley" and
the book "Microserfs"
Or "Halt and Catch Fire"
homemade custom hardware reading in binary needed to disassemble the 5150
BIOS? and legal punishment for possession of such a listing?
(PUBLISHED by IBM in a $40 "Technical reference" with BIOS source
and schematics of almost everything (available long before any PCs being
on the shelf without prepaid order), also DEBUG.COM in DOS, and BASIC
with PEEK/POKE; although legal repercussions for infringement were real)
Was the rest of that show dead-on accurate?
So, the OFFICIAL history will be:
A few dozen room sized mainframes, each one of which consisted entirely of
reel to reel tape drives, a teletype output, and tendency to achieve
malevolent sentience.
Punch cards were invented in order to hang Chad (a major player in an
election around the time of Y2K, which caused all the computers to
self-destruct, and the airplaces to fall to earth)
There were about a dozen prehistoric cavemen hobbyists with homemade S100
machines, two or three of whom had 8" drives. Periodic danger of
triggering WWIII.
Along came the Apple2, the first computer with a TV set, instead of rows
of binary lights.
Then the PC/5150 (although the "5150" designation is redacted),
immediately replaced by the AT, the first computer with a printer and
accounting software.
Then the Mac, which invented word processing, 3.5" disks, user interface,
and pointing. And inspired the creation of Xerox PARC (note the
similarities)
Steve Jobs invented computers, and talked Shugart into 5.25" drives,
later, he invented MP3 and cellphones.
Bill Gates invented software, and cold-called IBM to tell them about the
idea of an operating system. Later, he invented monopolies.
Linus (the one in "Peanuts"?) invented unix
Al Gore invented the interwebs. (early name for World Wide Web, which is
the name of the Facebook program.
GOOGLE invented Information Retrieval (an esoteric technical term for
searching).
Amazon invented buying stuff without going to the store.
Facebook invented friends and socializing.
YouTube invented movies, and video (there are rumors of a pre-corona
venue called movie theaters!)
Wikipedia, primarily used for school term papers, invented history,
knowledge, and indisputable authority.
CP/M was an unauthorized plagiarization of a pre-release copy of MS-DOS.
TRS80, Atari, Commodore, and CP/M computers were esoteric unicorns (all
based on Apple2, PC/5150, and Mac) It is unknown whether any were
actually extant.
"Programs" is an archaic prehistoric name for Apps.
1950s FORTRAN was based on 1970s Valtrep
First email was on a mid 1990s Sun.
Gerald Ford's invention of the automocar, which ran on a tank of burning
fossils, is another discussion.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred (one of the old fart relics)
21 May
21 May
11:56 p.m.
Now that is really cool. Good old MS
In '83 I was working for DEC and had access to things like BASIC+.
I was amazed at what they could do on a micoprocessor.
On 22/05/2020 06:42, jim stephens via cctalk wrote:
Seems of interest.? Will be interesting to play with.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/microsoft-open-sources-gw-basic/
22 May
22 May
5:06 a.m.
On 5/22/20 2:56 AM, Rod Smallwood via cctalk wrote:
Now that is really cool. Good old MS
In '83 I was working for DEC and had access to things like BASIC+.
I was amazed at what they could do on a micoprocessor.
In my early days :-) I was given a project to develop programs
for an LSI-11/02 with 28KW of memory and RX02 8" floppies. I
got the project because the mainframe programmers I worked with
did not believe anything serious could be done in a machine that
small. I developed programs that later e\went production using
MACRO-11, Pascal, Fortran and COBOL. I doubt the products of
modern computer science education could duplicate what I did.
Efficiency is no longer a consideration. Just throw more hardware
at the problem.
bill
5:56 a.m.
I know where you are coming from. Starting out as an FE I was only
initially trained in assembler - specifically to trace each instruction
through the machine for troubleshooting!? My first database was written
in ART418 (Assembler for Real Time/ Univac 418 :-))Later I learned C and
used it to do any real programming.
When the 'big iron' computer industry was taken over by the peecee, I
went into teaching ECE at college.? For 25 years I was always trying to
teach my students efficiency in coding - especially important until the
latter years in embedded systems.
Now even embedded systems are running with gigahertz clock speeds!? Over
my career I have seen the change from three assembler courses in a
six-semester program to just one 'so they can get their hands wet'!
In the end, when asked 'why do we have to learn this?' I ended up just
saying "When embedded systems start displaying really weird problems in
a worldwide installed base, some knowledge of assembler may be the only
way to fix it.? People who can will be the first to be hired and the
last to go if a company down-sizes! Even when teaching C I showed them
how to get down and understand the assembler in the debugger.
I am retired from teaching now now and write in C and SQL :-) One day I
will do some PDP-11 assembler just for old time's sake on my PiDP-11!
cheers,
Nigel
On 22/05/2020 08:06, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
On 5/22/20 2:56 AM, Rod Smallwood via cctalk wrote:
--
Nigel Johnson
MSc., MIEEE, MCSE
VE3ID/G4AJQ/VA3MCU
Amateur Radio, the origin of the open-source concept!
You can reach me by voice on Skype: TILBURY2591
If time travel ever will be possible, it already is. Ask me again yesterday
This e-mail is not and cannot, by its nature, be confidential. En route from me to you, it
will pass across the public Internet, easily readable by any number of system
administrators along the way.
Nigel Johnson <nw.johnson at ieee.org>
Please consider the environment when deciding if you really need to print this message
Now that is really cool. Good old MS
In '83 I was working for DEC and had access to things like BASIC+.
I was amazed at what they could do on a micoprocessor.
In my early days :-)? I was given a project to develop programs
for an LSI-11/02 with 28KW of memory and RX02 8" floppies.? I
got the project because the mainframe programmers I worked with
did not believe anything serious could be done in a machine that
small.? I developed programs that later e\went production using
MACRO-11, Pascal, Fortran and COBOL.? I doubt the products of
modern computer science education could duplicate what I did.
Efficiency is no longer a consideration.? Just throw more hardware
at the problem.
bill
9:30 a.m.
On Fri, 22 May 2020, Nigel Johnson via cctalk wrote:
Now even embedded systems are running with gigahertz
clock speeds!? Over my
career I have seen the change from three assembler courses in a six-semester
program to just one 'so they can get their hands wet'!
In the end, when asked 'why do we have to learn this?' I ended up just saying
"When embedded systems start displaying really weird problems in a worldwide
installed base, some knowledge of assembler may be the only way to fix it.?
People who can will be the first to be hired and the last to go if a company
down-sizes! Even when teaching C I showed them how to get down and understand
the assembler in the debugger.
I am retired from teaching now now and write in C and SQL :-) One day I will
do some PDP-11 assembler just for old time's sake on my PiDP-11!
Phillipe Kahn (Borland) included assembler in "Turbo Debugger And Tools",
but said that assembler was only for debugging.
Clancy and Harvey (UC Berkeley undergad CS) said, "Nobody uses assembler
any more, nor ever will again." They taught programming with SCHEME (a
LISP variant)
They gave a demo of how wonderful their mindset and recursion are. They
gave an example of a problem "that can not be done without recursion"!
While they were balancing their parentheses, I doodled a solution in C,
BASIC, and was partway through COBOL. Recursion is wonderful for some
things; thinking that it is the only solution is demented.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
12:24 p.m.
On 5/22/2020 6:06 AM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
On 5/22/20 2:56 AM, Rod Smallwood via cctalk wrote:
Thows a PDP 8 to Bill. Batteries and BASIC not included.
Ducks.
Ben.
Now that is really cool. Good old MS
In '83 I was working for DEC and had access to things like BASIC+.
I was amazed at what they could do on a micoprocessor.
In my early days :-)? I was given a project to develop programs
for an LSI-11/02 with 28KW of memory and RX02 8" floppies.? I
got the project because the mainframe programmers I worked with
did not believe anything serious could be done in a machine that
small.? I developed programs that later e\went production using
MACRO-11, Pascal, Fortran and COBOL.? I doubt the products of
modern computer science education could duplicate what I did.
Efficiency is no longer a consideration.? Just throw more hardware
at the problem.
bill
12:38 p.m.
I remember sittig in the DEC Ealing (London) Office in 1975 watching a
programmer work on TOPS 10
That was DEC's mainframe operating system.
A foot high of printout all in assembler!!!
On 22/05/2020 20:24, ben via cctalk wrote:
On 5/22/2020 6:06 AM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk
wrote:
On 5/22/20 2:56 AM, Rod Smallwood via cctalk
wrote:
Thows a PDP 8 to Bill. Batteries and BASIC not included.
Ducks.
Ben.
Now that is really cool. Good old MS
In '83 I was working for DEC and had access to things like BASIC+.
I was amazed at what they could do on a micoprocessor.
In my early days :-)? I was given a project to develop programs
for an LSI-11/02 with 28KW of memory and RX02 8" floppies.? I
got the project because the mainframe programmers I worked with
did not believe anything serious could be done in a machine that
small.? I developed programs that later e\went production using
MACRO-11, Pascal, Fortran and COBOL.? I doubt the products of
modern computer science education could duplicate what I did.
Efficiency is no longer a consideration.? Just throw more hardware
at the problem.
bill
12:53 p.m.
On 5/22/2020 1:38 PM, Rod Smallwood via cctalk wrote:
I remember sittig in the DEC Ealing (London) Office in
1975 watching a
programmer work on TOPS 10
That was DEC's mainframe operating system.
A foot high of printout all in assembler!!!
But remember mainframes after 1960
(compared to the 50's)
where a joy to use with assembly.
Only afer 1975 came out did you have the extra memory
(4K drams) and languages like C with structures did O/S's
change.Ben.
26 May
26 May
12:35 p.m.
On Fri, May 22, 2020 at 1:54 PM ben via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
On 5/22/2020 1:38 PM, Rod Smallwood via cctalk wrote:
"did O/S's change" in what way?
The IBM PL/I F compiler was available in 1966 and PL/I has structures. It
was usable on all "real" System/360 machines configured with 64KB or more
of memory, so even a 360/30 could be used, but not a 360/20, which isn't
actually a 360.
There was a PL/I D compiler that would run under DOS/360 with only 16KB of
memory, but it was a very restricted subset of PL/I; I dodn't know whether
it had structures.
ALGOL W also appeared in 1966 and had structures, known as records.
Of course, COBOL is even older and also had structures.
Most sensible people did not wait until 1975 to start using high-level
languages, unless they had either tiny machines or real-time requirements
that couldn't be met with a high-level language.
I remember sittig in the DEC Ealing (London)
Office in 1975 watching a
programmer work on TOPS 10
That was DEC's mainframe operating system.
A foot high of printout all in assembler!!!
But remember mainframes after 1960
(compared to the 50's)
where a joy to use with assembly.
Only afer 1975 came out did you have the extra memory
(4K drams) and languages like C with structures did O/S's
change.Ben.
6:24 p.m.
On 5/26/2020 1:35 PM, Eric Smith via cctalk wrote:
"did O/S's change" in what way?
You had ample memory to run your programs without swapping
providing only a few users were online.
The IBM PL/I F compiler was available in 1966 and PL/I
has structures. It
was usable on all "real" System/360 machines configured with 64KB or more
of memory, so even a 360/30 could be used, but not a 360/20, which isn't
actually a 360.
There was a PL/I D compiler that would run under DOS/360 with only 16KB of
memory, but it was a very restricted subset of PL/I; I dodn't know whether
it had structures.
ALGOL W also appeared in 1966 and had structures, known as records.
Algol W was from Eroupe?
Of course, COBOL is even older and also had
structures.
Not everybody had access to power computing, some had to make do with
a PDP 7 and write Unix.
Most sensible people did not wait until 1975 to start
using high-level
languages, unless they had either tiny machines or real-time requirements
that couldn't be met with a high-level language.
Basic fit on the TINY MACHINES, and few made $$$
selling BASIC. You still can't get a free copy of BASIC for your 8080.
Ben.
Ps Writing my own language Bengol, a boot strap language written in C .
I expect it to be about 32KB with a 16Kb O/S. The FPGA card
gives me 256KB ram so I feel the homebrew cpu can compete with a basic
PDP-11 in 1976. (.7 us (300 ns dram) memory cycle, 2 8" DSSD
floppies, 2400 baud terminal +48KB memory.
6:44 p.m.
On 5/26/20 6:39 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:
Actually, by Dick Sites
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/stanford/cs_techReports/STAN-CS-71-230_Algol_W_Ref…
Algol W was from Eroupe?
Algol W was from Stanford, written by Wirth when he was there
27 May
27 May
7:02 a.m.
On 5/26/20 9:24 PM, ben via cctalk wrote:
On 5/26/2020 1:35 PM, Eric Smith via cctalk wrote:
You seem to place very high needs on COBOL. Most early mainframes had
less memory than the home computers mentioned here. I developed COBOL
programs on an LSI-11/02 with 28KW of memory and 4 RX02 8" floppies.
bill
Of course, COBOL is even older and also had
structures.
Not everybody had access to power computing, some had to make do with
a PDP 7 and write Unix.
22 May
22 May
2:07 p.m.
On 5/22/2020 12:38 PM, Rod Smallwood via cctalk wrote:
I remember sittig in the DEC Ealing (London) Office in
1975 watching a
programmer work on TOPS 10
That was DEC's mainframe operating system.
A foot high of printout all in assembler!!!
HASP on the hoof, or MVT when I was
around the 360/50 was about 3 or 4
inches for the fun parts of MVT, and about half a case for HASP,
depending on whether it was an IEBGENR copy or a generation.? I only had
hands on the generated listing when the site needed to work on the
system, as it took to much space to be online.
Thanks
3:56 p.m.
On 5/22/20 3:24 PM, ben via cctalk wrote:
On 5/22/2020 6:06 AM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk
wrote:
I would gladly catch it and put it to good use. I still have
PDP-11's, VAX, TRS-80's and Apple ]['s in my house. I have
had an Apollo, a Prime, a couple 3B2's, several 3B1's and other
systems I can barely remember. All were and still remain more
interesting and more fun that today's PC's.
bill
On 5/22/20 2:56 AM, Rod Smallwood via cctalk
wrote:
Thows a PDP 8 to Bill. Batteries and BASIC not included.
Ducks. Now that is really cool. Good old MS
In '83 I was working for DEC and had access to things like BASIC+.
I was amazed at what they could do on a micoprocessor.
In my early days :-)? I was given a project to develop programs
for an LSI-11/02 with 28KW of memory and RX02 8" floppies.? I
got the project because the mainframe programmers I worked with
did not believe anything serious could be done in a machine that
small.? I developed programs that later e\went production using
MACRO-11, Pascal, Fortran and COBOL.? I doubt the products of
modern computer science education could duplicate what I did.
Efficiency is no longer a consideration.? Just throw more hardware
at the problem.
bill
1:34 a.m.
cool, but...
these are "translated" sources (presumably from some generic source that is
run through a tool that generates x86 asm). I just wish they had also
released the "source of the source" and the translation tool. Because that
was the interesting part of it.
On Thu, May 21, 2020 at 10:43 PM jim stephens via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Seems of interest. Will be interesting to play with.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/microsoft-open-sources-gw-basic/
7:41 a.m.
On 5/22/2020 3:34 AM, Rico Pajarola via cctalk wrote:
cool, but...
these are "translated" sources (presumably from some generic source that is
run through a tool that generates x86 asm). I just wish they had also
released the "source of the source" and the translation tool. Because that
was the interesting part of it.
The page notes they tried:
"Each of the assembly source files contains a header stating
|Thistranslation created 10-Feb-83byVersion4.3|
Since the Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) of the early processors
used in home and personal computers weren?t spectacularly different from
one another, Microsoft was able to generate a substantial amount of the
code for a port from the sources of a master implementation. (Alas,
sorry, we?re unable to open-source the ISA translator.)"
I'm assuming it's a language thing, but your comments seem overly
dismissive.? You're essentially saying that the resulting generated ASM
is of no interest (the tool was the interesting part, you note) and
devoid of value.? The comments I am sure are verbatim from the meta
source, and by investigating the source, I think folks could gain key
insights into what the tool did.
Yes, we can lament the inability to gain access to the meta-source, but
I don't think the resulting source code is uninteresting.? And, if
comments like these get back to MS (some folks on this list work there),
how will the folks within the company feel about it?? "Yeah, we worked
for months with Legal to cut through the red tape and get GW-BASIC
source online, but folks were dismissive we didn't give them everything,
so I'm not sure it's worth the effort to open anything else up...."
How we appreciate what is given probably dictates if we receive anything
more.
Jim
7:53 a.m.
I really appreciate that MS is doing this. For me, I like seeing the progressing of the
code over time...like comparing QDOS to MSDOS 1.0 to 1.1 to 2.0. The release of WinWord
1.1 was interesting but not as much to me as DOS or even the early BASICS for the 6502/Z80
which I think used the same kind of translation tool as they may have used for GWBasic.
For me, the next big thing to see would be Windows 1.0. That would be awesome to see.
I've never really tried to recompile any of the released code. The Seattle Gazelle has
a tool to rebuild MS-DOS 2.0, but it functions more like an OEM Adaptation Kit. I suppose
that with enough free memory it should work. I remember reading somewhere that Microsoft
used a special SCP machine with 768k of RAM to assemble and link certain programs.
Rich
?On 5/22/20, 10:41 AM, "cctalk on behalf of Jim Brain via cctalk"
<cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org on behalf of cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On 5/22/2020 3:34 AM, Rico Pajarola via cctalk wrote:
cool, but...
these are "translated" sources (presumably from some generic source that is
run through a tool that generates x86 asm). I just wish they had also
released the "source of the source" and the translation tool. Because that
was the interesting part of it.
The page notes they tried:
"Each of the assembly source files contains a header stating
|Thistranslation created 10-Feb-83byVersion4.3|
Since the Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) of the early processors
used in home and personal computers weren?t spectacularly different from
one another, Microsoft was able to generate a substantial amount of the
code for a port from the sources of a master implementation. (Alas,
sorry, we?re unable to open-source the ISA translator.)"
I'm assuming it's a language thing, but your comments seem overly
dismissive. You're essentially saying that the resulting generated ASM
is of no interest (the tool was the interesting part, you note) and
devoid of value. The comments I am sure are verbatim from the meta
source, and by investigating the source, I think folks could gain key
insights into what the tool did.
Yes, we can lament the inability to gain access to the meta-source, but
I don't think the resulting source code is uninteresting. And, if
comments like these get back to MS (some folks on this list work there),
how will the folks within the company feel about it? "Yeah, we worked
for months with Legal to cut through the red tape and get GW-BASIC
source online, but folks were dismissive we didn't give them everything,
so I'm not sure it's worth the effort to open anything else up...."
How we appreciate what is given probably dictates if we receive anything
more.
Jim
8:34 a.m.
A quick look at the code indicates to me that the Intel translator
CONV86 may well have done the translation in "strict" mode. Of course,
there were other translators, but some of the stuff rings a bell.
For example, the 8080 instruction
INX B
gets translated to
SAHF
INC BX
LAHF
all done because the 8080 16-bit instruction does not affect the zero
and carry flags, but the 8086 instruction INC, does. So there's very
likely a large amount (my experience was at least >30%) of cruft in the
code.
--Chuck
23 May
23 May
2:33 a.m.
On Fri, May 22, 2020 at 7:41 AM Jim Brain via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
I'm assuming it's a language thing, but your
comments seem overly
dismissive. You're essentially saying that the resulting generated ASM
is of no interest (the tool was the interesting part, you note) and
devoid of value.
That didn't come across right. It was not my intention to make it sound
like the ASM files have no value. I think it's great that they are doing
this, and I'm sure somebody at MS spent a lot of (personal and probably
unfunded) effort into making it happen.
When I saw the announcement, I was hoping to see the machinery that made
this code so portable, and I was disappointed that it's not the entire
thing.
22 May
22 May
6:20 a.m.
On Thu, May 21, 2020 at 10:42:54PM -0700, jim stephens via cctalk wrote:
Seems of interest.? Will be interesting to play with.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/microsoft-open-sources-gw-basic/
Around 1992 I tried to use Basic on my Amiga to compute some stuff
from the physics lab. As a student, I was to learn few
things - laser
and mirrors, spectroscope etc, each exercise was to be summed up,
measurents given, plots plotted, means, standard deviations and
measurement errors and whatever I forgot, too. So I thought, here is
this shiny computer of mine, I will make good use of it.
The Basic had Microsoft printed on it.
The bloody code delivered nonsense. Every time I tried to fix it,
nonsense again.
I finished writing the report with good old calculator.
My contempt (if not hate) of Microsoft started on that day, I
think. My huge reservation towards Basic-the-language, probably too.
Of course, chance was, I might have been this much
inexperienced. Albeit I wrote my first programs six years earlier,
but, sure, might have been not my day.
Oh, they open sourced. If you ever watched Spaceballs, you will know
what I mean: "Oh shit, here goes the planet"...
:-)
--
Regards,
Tomasz Rola
--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... **
** **
** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com **
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