PC Fortran (Was: Microsoft open sources GWBASIC

[Boris Gimbarzevsky]

Had to fire up BasiliskII to find out what kind of Fortran I used on 
Mac in 1988.  Turned out it was Absoft Fortran 2.4 and seemed a bit 
strange as I recall M$ was written on floppies that I got for 
it.  Did a bit of digging on internet today and, surprisingly, Absoft 
still exists and continues to produce Fortran compilers.  What I had 
in 1988 was a Fortran 77 implementation.

Liked the Absoft Fortran, but it definitely wasn't PDP-11 
Fortran.  Had no trouble porting my old code which primarily did 
graphics on a printer (also wrote a huge amount of code to use an HP 
plotter a few years before but didn't have one around then).  Looked 
at some of the Fortran code to create windows, scroll bars and other 
controls and decided that QuickBasic was easier.  Main thing I used 
Absoft Fortran for was to learn 68000 assembler as could get it to 
dump out assembler for each statement.  Main failing of Absoft Fortan 
on Mac was that one had to write ones own graphics routines as well 
as deal with the idiosyncracies of Mac files with data and resource 
forks.  There was a TOOLBOX command but remember doing anything 
required sitting down with Inside Macintosh books to debug errors.

There was a debugger in later versions but at that point had switched 
to VB for when I needed to quickly create windows and controls.  Main 
failing of Absoft Fortan on Mac was that one had to write ones own 
graphics routines as well as deal with the idiosyncracies of Mac 
files with data and resource forks.  There was a TOOLBOX command but 
remember doing anything required sitting down with Inside Macintosh 
books to debug errors.

Also weird that M$ licensed Mac Fortran from Absoft.  Looked at 
Absoft's latest versions of Fortran and whole development system 
weighs in at 400+ Mb whereas the version I had was about 400 Kb.

Boris Gimbarzevsky


>Exactly.
>
>Microsoft Fortran for the PC, written in Pascal, was not related to 
>Microsoft FORTRAN-80 for CP/M, which was written in 8080 assembly.
>
>Microsoft Fortran for the PC was not related to Microsoft FORTRAN-80 
>for TRS80, which was a derivative of Microsoft FORTRAN-80 for CP/M, 
>which was written in 8080 assembly.  Because the TRS80 was Z80, I 
>would not be surprised if some of the TRS80 specific code in 
>Microsoft FORTRAN-80 for TRS80 might have used some Z80.
>
>
>Microsoft Fortran for the PC was written in Pascal.
>It was an unrelated product.
>
>I don't think that any of the Microsoft Fortran products were 
>related to the Intel FORTRAN-80.  Did Microsoft ever develop anything in PL/M?
>Did Microsoft ever develop anything for ISIS-II?