[author : Steve Wozniak] #Listing #Assembly #Prommaging

Extract : «  The laws of entropy insure that the line numbers of a debugged and operational BASIC program give the appearance of having been selected by a KENO machine. In fact, while several texts detail how the boundary conditions of a KENO game lead to predictable outcomes, finished programs seldom exhibit this property. Many a time I have spent an extra hour retyping a finished program while spacing the line numbers evenly just to make it “look good”.

Another difficulty which I have experienced is joining two BASIC programs into a single, larger one. This ‘append’ operation is easier to accomplish by hand than renumbering. The sophistocated user can examine the BASIC memory map and perform some manual manipulations to join the programs providing that the line numbers do not overlap. Still, the manual append operation is highly prone to error.

The APPLE-II BASIC user now has a solution to these needs in the form of a hand- or tape-loadable program RENUM/APPEND, described herein. [...]  »

[author : Robert Grappel] #Languages #BASIC #Programming

Extract : «  [...] To show what I feel a good microcomputer language should look like, I enclosed a listing of the same program, coded in my partner (Jack Hemenway) and my new language: STRUBAL. (STRUctured BAsic Language™) This langauge is implemented as a full compiler which runs on 6800 processors with 16K of memory. [...]  »

[author : Arthur W. Cline] #Listing #Assembly #Diagnostic

Extract : «  [...] This program is a valuable debugging tool. It will move a breakpoint through the object program while executing it. The breakpoint is a restart 070 8 [note : 8 means octal] that jumps to a register dump routine. The dump routine will jump to TRACER after displaying the registers. TRACER will then restore the object program op code at the location of the breakpoint. [...]  »

[author : John Eaton] #Listing #Assembly #Mathematics #Encoding

Extract : «  [...] The program will work with binary numbers up to 16 bits. They can be inputted to the program in decimal, hexadecimal, octal, binary or as an ASCII literal character. The user may specify whether the results are displayed in decimal, hexadecimal, octal or binary. With these features the program is able to convert numbers between different bases.

Several logic functions are available. The program will take any two 16 bit numbers and perform the operations of AND, OR, NOR, EOR and NAND. You may also perform the arithmetic operations of addition and subtraction. The inverse and two’s complement of any 16 bit number can be found.

There are two rotate commands available. The rotate commands treat two 16 bit numbers as a single 32 bit number and can shift it left or right up to 16 bits. [...]  »

[author : Kenneth Bowles] #Pascal #OperatingSystem #Book

Extract : «  [...] Since the PASCAL based software system was developed with the intent of supporting long term instructional projects, we have placed very high emphasis on machine independence. We expect the repertoire of instructional software developed to use the underlying system to grow very large. The development costs for the instructional software will eventually dwarf the costs of the hardware on which it operates. Since the industry is introducing new microcomputer designs at a rapid rate, we wanted to be able to move the entire software repertoire to new machines with a minimum of effort. As will be detailed in later sections of this note, our system is now running on 5 dis-similar processors, with more planned in the relatively near future. We are using the Digital Equipment LSI-11 for teaching. Versions for the 8080 and Z80 microprocessors are operational and will be ready to distribute on or about 1 January, 1978.

We intend to continue promoting the use of our PASCAL-based system on as many popular microprocessors as practical for two reasons. First, this should provide IIS [note : Institute for Information Systems] with a source of continuing income to pay for student projects. Second, PASCAL with extensions is a superior language for system programming, and we believe that it is in the public interest to assist in the current effort of many people and institutions to promote wider use of PASCAL in place of some of the earlier high level languages. Though PASCAL may have some shortcomings for specific applications when compared to specific proprietary languages, we regard it as by far the best general purpose language now in the public domain. [...]

Many of those inquiring about our system have heard about it through having seen the textbook “Microcomputer Problem Solving Using PASCAL” by the author of this note, published this fall by Springer Verlag. If you haven’t seen a copy, they may be obtained from Springer at 175 Fifth Ave., New York City, NY 10010. [...]  »

[author : Alex Cecil] #Listing #Programming #Book

Extract : «  ACT is a macro text interpreter which runs under the CP/M operating system on an Intel 8080 compatable microcomputer. More than 16K bytes of RAM are needed. ACT uses the same algorithm as TRAC [2] (“TRAC” is a registered trademark of Rockford Research Institute) and a set of primitive functions which are similar to those in the TRIX interpreter [1]. ACT also uses the special characters @{ | } in place of TRAC’s #( , ). ACT has been used to control jobs on a large time sharing system and to format diskette files; it is generally too slow for efficient human interaction. Logically (but not necessarily psychologically), the syntax is very simple. Program and data are character strings which are handled by the same rules. [...]

References

1. Moll, H., "TRIX — An interactive, interpretive language for manipulating strings of characters." Lawrence Livermore Lab Report UCID-30100.

2. Moors, C. N., "TRAC, a Procedure describing Language for the Reactive Typewriter." Comm. ACM9, 3 (March, 1966)

3. Moors, C. N., "TRAC, A Text Handling Language." Proc. ACM 20th Nat. Conf., Cleveland, August, 1965.

4. Wegner, Peter, Programming Languages, Information Structures, and Machine Organization. McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1968. [...]

[+ 23 pages of PL/M listing]  »

[author : Ancelme Roichel] #Languages