Lisp, the machine language. Was Re: Hallelujah!

From: Huw Davies <H.Davies_at_latrobe.edu.au>
Date: Mon Apr 5 07:28:28 1999

At 11:47 04/04/99 -0400, Max Eskin wrote:

>And same with Pascal? But why would anyone
>want something that was microcoded to run Pascal? Are there any other
>languages that have gotten microcoded into a processor?

Us Pascal freaks, that's who :-)

The Pascal Microengine was a hardware implementation of P-code a stack
based instruction set that was designed to make compilation from Pascal
into it easy. The original compiler (P4) was written by Urs Amman (sp?) at
ETH. I believe that this compiler formed the basis of the UCSD Pascal
environment which was Java '70s style :-) One of the more seminal articles
I remember reading in Byte was by Carl Helmers discussing how he'd just
spent $5K on an Apple II to run UCSD Pascal. It was then I realized that
micros would one day do the same amount of work that "real" computers did.

One of my (non-existent) spare time projects is to get the Apple II in the
cupboard up and running UCSD Pascal. All I need is the Language Card and
the software (I think).

Talking about Pascal compilers I seem to recall a multi (10?) pass Pascal
compiler for (probably) RT-11. Anyone else recall this?

 Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies_at_latrobe.edu.au
 Information Technology Services | Phone: +61 3 9479 1550 Fax: +61 3 9479
1999
 La Trobe University | "If God had wanted soccer played in the
 Melbourne Australia 3083 | air, the sky would be painted green"
Received on Mon Apr 05 1999 - 07:28:28 BST