UCSD PASCAL (P-system) P-code

From: Mike Ford <mikeford_at_socal.rr.com>
Date: Wed Nov 29 15:17:30 2000

>> >
>> > So UCSD PASCAL (P-system) P-code ran on the Apple //? I'm guessing this
>> > means it'll run on a //e or //gs? If so is there anywhere the software

Ah, memories of my ill spent youth. Back around 1977 I was still a physics
major wasting too much time on the math departments computers at UC
Riverside, and then this computer lab of Teraks shows up. Pardon my aging
memory and bias, but the "deal" as I remember it was that UC San Diego, and
UC Riverside were to "co-develope" Pascal on the Teraks. Obviously the deal
broke, and in more ways than one. UCSD never let go of the source code so
that UCR could do much of anything, but I did make a few trips down to pick
up current versions which we "tested" running various student applications.

I wrote a few programs, and mostly played around with "optimizing" the code
in a couple of UCSD programs like Tank Battle. The Terak muscle and bit
mapped graphics worked very well with Pascal, but the end result was a
machine that nobody was buying outside academia (that I knew of). Next
thing you know the professor from UCSD and one of his students (Roger
Sumner I think) had ported the Pascal to the Apple II, and despite the
original Pascal being done at UCSD, and IMHO by a LOT of student work, they
set up a business with the "new" product.

You had to have a Language Card to run it, and it took 2 floppy discs, a
boot disc and a runtime/program disc. This was murder on a single floppy
Apple II, but not bad if you had a A80 floppy drive or a pair of drives,
and downright friendly once you had a hard drive or larger capacity (2
floppies left little space for any application).

I have a bunch of books, discs, etc for the Apple II, and I "may" still
have UCSD Pascal on some 8" Terak floppies. Pascal was the language of
choice for Mac work for a number of years, then C and C+ etc. kind of
dropped on everybody. Messy at first as all the header files were setup as
calls to Pascal programs in the early Mac software developer stuff. IIRC it
was AlSoft that had a program/patch etc. that allowed MIDI support on a Mac
that was all in Pascal. I talked my wife into reworking the headers for use
with C programs, and sent it back to AlSoft and they used it, but I never
heard anything back from them about it. Really POed me at the time.
Received on Wed Nov 29 2000 - 15:17:30 GMT