NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/comp/lang/pascal/6746

Text File | 1992-11-19 | 1.8 KB | 45 lines

Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal
Path: sparky!uunet!sun-barr!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!batcomputer!cornell!rochester!rocksanne!news
From: [e-mail] (David E. Damouth)
Subject: Re: Who's still using Turbo Pascal 5.5 ?
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Organization: Xerox Webster Research Center
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Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 20:27:19 GMT
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>>running out of memory .....

Ah yes - the good old days.  When I would sit there watching the
"available memory" indicator in the IDE bounce up and down just above
zero during compile and link, knowing my chances were about 50-50 as to
whether the latest set of changes would  make it all the way through.

So of course when I got TPW, I immediately started wondering where the
"available memory" indicator was.  I eventually found a little memory
indicator I could put up on the screen. But it's kind of useless - it
starts out showing 10 MB,  and trickles slowly down to maybe 9 as I
build bigger programs.  These new-fangled inventions like virtual
memory may take all the fun out of programming.  Yeah - I know, one of
these days my disk will start thrashing.  But then I'll just plug in
another 4 MB of real memory for $140 or so.

Remember your first Pascal compiler?  Mine was the UCSD system on an
Apple 2.  The whole compiler fit into 32k or so ( plus a floppy or two),
and with a little luck and care there was a whole 32k available for
programs.  And we wrote useful programs.  I remember agonizing over
whether to declare a variable as "byte" instead of "word" in order to
save a byte of memory.

---
/Dave
David E. Damouth
Xerox Webster Research Center
[e-mail]
voice: 716-422-3186
fax: [phone]