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- Xref: sparky comp.arch:11023 alt.folklore.computers:16647
- Path: sparky!uunet!olivea!sgigate!rutgers!spcvxb!terry
- From: terry@spcvxb.spc.edu (Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr.)
- Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
- Subject: Re: What happened to the UCSD p-System?
- Message-ID: <1992Nov23.023516.4500@spcvxb.spc.edu>
- Date: 23 Nov 92 07:35:16 GMT
- References: <1992Nov17.162428.15881@coe.montana.edu> <8qmiuB1w164w@hub.parallan.com> <51781@drilex.dri.mgh.com> <By54pz.9x2@wimsey.bc.ca>
- Organization: St. Peter's College, US
- Lines: 42
-
- In article <By54pz.9x2@wimsey.bc.ca>, sl@wimsey.bc.ca (Stuart Lynne) writes:
- > I remember hearing about this in the early 80's. Rumour had it that they
- > did cross development on larger systems (DEC 10's??).
-
- I don't have the full text of the parent articles available. However, it
- looks like at least 2 threads here.
-
- First, yes, early Microsoft software was cross-assembled on a DECsystem.
- At least Microsoft BASIC and Fortran (CP/M versions) were. I'm sure the
- assembler (M-80) was. I'm not sure about the Cobol, or any of the "appli-
- cation" stuff. They used a version of the DEC assembler and a custom macro
- library. With a few (very few) changes, they could assemble either an 8080
- version or an 8086 version from the same source file. This is probably due
- to the original "gang of three" - Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Monty David-
- off - who did the original BASIC-80 on the Harvard DECsystem while Bill was
- in school.
-
- As far as the UCSD P-system, well, several things went wrong there. One
- was that it wasn't supposed to be a "business" and some folks got very
- upset when it grew to the size it did, being from a school and all that.
- Second, Western Digital did a version of the WD-16 (the same chipset as is
- used in the DEC LSI-11 and the Alpha Micro systems) which directly executed
- UCSD P-system code. All of the other systems at the time had an emulator
- which ran P-system code on the native hardware. Unfortunately, right after
- Western Digital built the chipset (the "Pascal Microengine"), the UCSD folks
- decided to rearrange the P-code into some incompatible format. This caused
- at least one company that was trying to build machines based on the WD-16
- to fold. Of course, there wasn't much market for obsoleted WD-16's at that
- point. Everybody sort of crawled away from the wreckage saying that they'd
- never do anything with UCSD again (except for UCSD, of course, who had the
- ego to think that they still had a major market).
-
- As far as "P-code", I think the term was used by the original poster as
- sort of a generic term for common code emulated on diverse hardware plat-
- forms. I don't think anyone would actually use UCSD P-system code for such
- products as Multiplan - it would make a lot more sense to develop a code
- set suited for the particular application. Probably something like Forth
- or STOIC, in this case.
-
- Terry Kennedy Operations Manager, Academic Computing
- terry@spcvxa.bitnet St. Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ USA
- terry@spcvxa.spc.edu +1 201 915 9381
-