Another weekend haul story

From: Glenn Roberts <groberts_at_mitre.org>
Date: Tue May 27 16:21:03 1997

At 05:20 PM 5/27/97 GMT, you wrote:
>>- TI 99/4A "P-Code Module", whatever the heck that is
>
>The P-Code card allows you to run "universal" software. It never
>really caught on. I have the software, UCSD Pascal stuff mainly.

UCSD Pascal system compiled to an intermediate "P-Code" which required a
virtual machine (p-code interpreter) to run. this gives you platform
independence. it seems all good ideas come back to haunt us - this is
exactly how Java works of course (except we have Java virtual machines
instead of p-code interpreters). Since there were performance concerns
there actually was a "Pascal engine" which executed native P-code (again
like Sun's java-based processors of today). Now a pascal engine would seem
to be a real collectible! - i don't think many were sold.

unfortunately UCSD Pascal was wiped out along with CP/M and a lot of other
good stuff when DOS swept the world.

I used to run UCSD Pascal on a system called a "Terak" - anyone ever see
one of these? they were pretty cool (wish i had one now). It was LSI-11
based and could run DEC real time OSes as well (can't remember which ones).
 I used to have 8" floppies for this with all the source code for UCSD
pascal and tools (it was all originally in the public domain I think since
it was university based). unfortunately i didn't have the foresight to
transfer to a more modern media and I have no idea where this all is now.

- glenn


+=========================================================+
| Glenn F. Roberts, Falls Church, VA
| Comments are my own and not the opinion of my employer
| groberts_at_mitre.org
Received on Tue May 27 1997 - 16:21:03 BST