UCSD P-Code and Pick for IBM PC/XT/AT

From: jim stephens <jwstephens_2000_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Tue Sep 2 20:04:24 2003

Ibm had a distribution of the Pcode and UCSD pascal
that came in the same beige / pink boxes that Dos was
in. I have that set.

Pick started out with support on the PC for the XT
and followed with their "classic" virtual port thru
a release called R-83M.

Licenses are not transferable, but if you find a site
with the disks, you may be able to reinstall if you
get all their notes. They may not be sold directly,
so you should doubt authenticity of sale of anything
but current product.

Pick is now "Raining Data" and was merged with a rinky
dink company that made a Mac database called Omnus.

The current powers that are there are trying to get
the most from the Omnus side of the business, which
has been turned into yet another company that ran
amuck and decided to put out the end all "4th gl"
development package other than do their original
product.

Pick / Raining data support a release which predates
the merger called D3.

Concurrent with the R83 Pick Pc releases, there was
a lot of work on another system by Pick which was
called Open Architechure, and later Advanced Pick,
and finally after porting from a standalone install
to a release that runs on top of various host Unix
type OS/s now D3. I think there is a standalone
D3 available with limited driver support.

the hosted version also runs on most Server type
windows systems as well. I am sure someone from
the pick community can correct this posting if need
be.


It became an impossible task to support all the
hardware
variants that exist as a standalone bootable system
since driver code is never been designed to be OS
independent. So the OS that dominates (now MS, in
the past Unix and MS) gets the support from the
hardware people and all the Pick / Beos / whatever
OS's get screwed unless they are very limited to the
generic support.

for more Pick info or questions better answered by
current players, please see usenet group
comp.databases.pick
which is inhabited by a nice group of developers
and users most of the time.

I know there are UCSD pascal usenet groups, but I
don't know the current state of the groups, they
may be zombies, dead, or taken over by weirdos.

Jim
Received on Tue Sep 02 2003 - 20:04:24 BST