On Monday, January 7, 2002 at 5:25:12 PM UTC-8, Jerry Hudgins wrote:
> Bob Schor wrote:
> >
> > I know about OMSI. The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry supported a
> > group that made an EXCELLENT Pascal (ISO-compliant) Pascal compiler that
> > ran on RT-11, RSX, VMS, and (I think) IAS. The group later changed its
> > name to Oregon Software, and came out with Pascal-2, an optimizing version
> > of their compiler.
> I used Pascal-2 on RSX, and agree that it was excellent. It was vastly
> better than the RSX Pascal product being marketed by Digital at the
> time.
> > At one point in the late 70's or early 80's, DEC came out with a product
> > called MicroPower Pascal. It is my understanding that this is essentially
> > Oregon Software's Pascal-2, with some "hooks" and additions to extend the
> > language in certain ways.
> Having used both products, I can assure you that they were very
> different
> indeed (at least from the user's standpoint). The MPP compiler supplied
> along with the MicroPower embedded kernel probably had its origins in
> the
> VMS and PRO Pascal families, if memory is serving me correctly. It had
> numerous extensions to allow practical realtime coding, but otherwise
> more closely resembled PRO Pascal than Pascal-2.
> I liked the MicroPower product, though I did most of my MPP coding in
> MACRO-11 rather than Pascal. It performed well, produced ROMable code,
> and had a decent debugger (compared to what was available for RSX,
> anyway).
> Conceptually, it was to RSX what VAXELN was to VMS. Indeed, I ended up
> porting most of my MPP stuff to ELN eventually.
> -jch

20 years later ... I was a co-founder of Oregon Software and the primary author of our Pascal-2 compiler (and co-author of the earlier Pascal-1 compiler).

MicroPower Pascal was indeed based on Pascal-2, and I consulted with the group within DEC for about a year as part of the deal between the two companies. I had nothing to do with the design of MicroPower Pascal but did help with implementation of various aspects of it.

Ironic to read the comment that DEC's RSX Pascal product was inferior to Pascal-2 because it was based on Pascal-2 (part of the same deal with DEC). When the product team told me some of the changes they were making I bit my tongue and shut up.

After all these years I don't expect a response but if by any chance anyone does, I have a lot more information I can share ...

On 2022-01-17 22:22, Don Baccus wrote:
> On Monday, January 7, 2002 at 5:25:12 PM UTC-8, Jerry Hudgins wrote:
>> Bob Schor wrote:
>>>
>>> I know about OMSI. The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry supported a
>>> group that made an EXCELLENT Pascal (ISO-compliant) Pascal compiler that
>>> ran on RT-11, RSX, VMS, and (I think) IAS. The group later changed its
>>> name to Oregon Software, and came out with Pascal-2, an optimizing version
>>> of their compiler.
>> I used Pascal-2 on RSX, and agree that it was excellent. It was vastly
>> better than the RSX Pascal product being marketed by Digital at the
>> time.
>>> At one point in the late 70's or early 80's, DEC came out with a product
>>> called MicroPower Pascal. It is my understanding that this is essentially
>>> Oregon Software's Pascal-2, with some "hooks" and additions to extend the
>>> language in certain ways.
>> Having used both products, I can assure you that they were very
>> different
>> indeed (at least from the user's standpoint). The MPP compiler supplied
>> along with the MicroPower embedded kernel probably had its origins in
>> the
>> VMS and PRO Pascal families, if memory is serving me correctly. It had
>> numerous extensions to allow practical realtime coding, but otherwise
>> more closely resembled PRO Pascal than Pascal-2.
>> I liked the MicroPower product, though I did most of my MPP coding in
>> MACRO-11 rather than Pascal. It performed well, produced ROMable code,
>> and had a decent debugger (compared to what was available for RSX,
>> anyway).
>> Conceptually, it was to RSX what VAXELN was to VMS. Indeed, I ended up
>> porting most of my MPP stuff to ELN eventually.
>> -jch
>
> 20 years later ... I was a co-founder of Oregon Software and the primary author of our Pascal-2 compiler (and co-author of the earlier Pascal-1 compiler).
>
> MicroPower Pascal was indeed based on Pascal-2, and I consulted with the group within DEC for about a year as part of the deal between the two companies. I had nothing to do with the design of MicroPower Pascal but did help with implementation of various aspects of it.
>
> Ironic to read the comment that DEC's RSX Pascal product was inferior to Pascal-2 because it was based on Pascal-2 (part of the same deal with DEC). When the product team told me some of the changes they were making I bit my tongue and shut up.
>
> After all these years I don't expect a response but if by any chance anyone does, I have a lot more information I can share ...

Don, this is interesting indeed. First of all, I might have the last
release done of OMSI Pascal-2 for RSX (version 2.1E). I needed to patch
one thing, since it didn't work out of the box on newer versions of RSX.
The problem is just a change of attributes and size of a psect, so it
wasn't too difficult to fix.

Anyway, I also did look at DEC's own Pascal for RSX, which was
discontinued long before the demise of RSX, and at least from a user
point of view, they are very different. Both in capabilities, syntax of
things, what options you can control, and how code it generates. So it
does really surprise me to hear that they were supposed to be related.
Are you sure about this? DEC did have several Pascal compilers... MPP
was not the same as the RSX Pascal at least. The RSX Pascal compiler
distribution tapes are available online if anyone wants to look at that.

Anyway, one question is obviously if you know if any sources are still
around somewhere? I'm trying to preserve RSX software as much as I can,
but in general sources for layered software have turned out to be a
difficult problem.

Johnny

On Monday, January 17, 2022 at 4:33:59 PM UTC-8, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2022-01-17 22:22, Don Baccus wrote:
> > On Monday, January 7, 2002 at 5:25:12 PM UTC-8, Jerry Hudgins wrote:
> >> Bob Schor wrote:
> >>>
> >>> I know about OMSI. The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry supported a
> >>> group that made an EXCELLENT Pascal (ISO-compliant) Pascal compiler that
> >>> ran on RT-11, RSX, VMS, and (I think) IAS. The group later changed its
> >>> name to Oregon Software, and came out with Pascal-2, an optimizing version
> >>> of their compiler.
> >> I used Pascal-2 on RSX, and agree that it was excellent. It was vastly
> >> better than the RSX Pascal product being marketed by Digital at the
> >> time.
> >>> At one point in the late 70's or early 80's, DEC came out with a product
> >>> called MicroPower Pascal. It is my understanding that this is essentially
> >>> Oregon Software's Pascal-2, with some "hooks" and additions to extend the
> >>> language in certain ways.
> >> Having used both products, I can assure you that they were very
> >> different
> >> indeed (at least from the user's standpoint). The MPP compiler supplied
> >> along with the MicroPower embedded kernel probably had its origins in
> >> the
> >> VMS and PRO Pascal families, if memory is serving me correctly. It had
> >> numerous extensions to allow practical realtime coding, but otherwise
> >> more closely resembled PRO Pascal than Pascal-2.
> >> I liked the MicroPower product, though I did most of my MPP coding in
> >> MACRO-11 rather than Pascal. It performed well, produced ROMable code,
> >> and had a decent debugger (compared to what was available for RSX,
> >> anyway).
> >> Conceptually, it was to RSX what VAXELN was to VMS. Indeed, I ended up
> >> porting most of my MPP stuff to ELN eventually.
> >> -jch
> >
> > 20 years later ... I was a co-founder of Oregon Software and the primary author of our Pascal-2 compiler (and co-author of the earlier Pascal-1 compiler).
> >
> > MicroPower Pascal was indeed based on Pascal-2, and I consulted with the group within DEC for about a year as part of the deal between the two companies. I had nothing to do with the design of MicroPower Pascal but did help with implementation of various aspects of it.
> >
> > Ironic to read the comment that DEC's RSX Pascal product was inferior to Pascal-2 because it was based on Pascal-2 (part of the same deal with DEC). When the product team told me some of the changes they were making I bit my tongue and shut up.
> >
> > After all these years I don't expect a response but if by any chance anyone does, I have a lot more information I can share ...
> Don, this is interesting indeed. First of all, I might have the last
> release done of OMSI Pascal-2 for RSX (version 2.1E). I needed to patch
> one thing, since it didn't work out of the box on newer versions of RSX.
> The problem is just a change of attributes and size of a psect, so it
> wasn't too difficult to fix.
>
> Anyway, I also did look at DEC's own Pascal for RSX, which was
> discontinued long before the demise of RSX, and at least from a user
> point of view, they are very different. Both in capabilities, syntax of
> things, what options you can control, and how code it generates. So it
> does really surprise me to hear that they were supposed to be related.
> Are you sure about this? DEC did have several Pascal compilers... MPP
> was not the same as the RSX Pascal at least. The RSX Pascal compiler
> distribution tapes are available online if anyone wants to look at that.
>
> Anyway, one question is obviously if you know if any sources are still
> around somewhere? I'm trying to preserve RSX software as much as I can,
> but in general sources for layered software have turned out to be a
> difficult problem.
>
> Johnny

"Are you sure about this?"

Yes, I am sure. I was one of three negotiators for Oregon Software for the deal, and DEC looked at RSX Pascal as being more important than MicroPower Pascal. They modified the compiler heavily for RSX Pascal, though, as I said earlier, when they told me some of the stuff they were doing I bit my tongue.

I'll write something longer tomorrow ...

On 2022-01-18 03:34, Don Baccus wrote:

> "Are you sure about this?"
>
> Yes, I am sure. I was one of three negotiators for Oregon Software for the deal, and DEC looked at RSX Pascal as being more important than MicroPower Pascal. They modified the compiler heavily for RSX Pascal, though, as I said earlier, when they told me some of the stuff they were doing I bit my tongue.
>
> I'll write something longer tomorrow ...

Thanks. Looking forward to whatever you can tell.

Anyway, I just went through the release notes for PDP-11 PASCAL/RSX-11
(V1.3, which was the last release) right now, just to remind myself how
different it was/is. I can share that file, if you are interested.

But it's really very VAX PASCAL compatible, with a completely different
syntax than OMSI Pascal for lots of rather core things. I'm amazed that
it's the same codebase. Not to mention that it's pretty bad. I don't
even install it usually. Just have OMSI Pascal installed, which is way
better (even if it is the same codebase :-D ).

Johnny

On Monday, January 17, 2022 at 6:41:53 PM UTC-8, Johnny Billquist wrote:

> Anyway, I just went through the release notes for PDP-11 PASCAL/RSX-11
> (V1.3, which was the last release) right now, just to remind myself how
> different it was/is. I can share that file, if you are interested.

I would love to see that. To be honest, I don't think I ever bothered to read it.
>
> But it's really very VAX PASCAL compatible, with a completely different
> syntax than OMSI Pascal for lots of rather core things.

That is something I do remember, that they wanted compatibility with VAX Pascal. That made sense from their POV to make it simple to write programs to work with both.

Of course, same was true with our Pascal-2 on the PDP-11, VAX, MC68000, NS32000, MIPS, Sparc, x86 as time went by. We looked at compatibility differently than DEC did, spanning manufacturers and operating systems. DEC's insistence on trying to shoehorn everything into their worldview of a DEC ecosystem was a major reason for their collapse IMO.

> I'm amazed that
> it's the same codebase. Not to mention that it's pretty bad.

I think they just modified the front end. So did we as we went on to support Modula-2, C, and C++.

The compiler technology was designed to support multiple languages and multiple targets, with an optimizer that worked on an abstract model of the program that applied to a wide variety of machine architectures.

This is common now (i.e. the GNU suite of compilers and others) but wasn't when I started designing the system in 1976, especially in the realm of commercial language processing products.

> even install it usually. Just have OMSI Pascal installed, which is way
> better (even if it is the same codebase :-D ).

It pleases me to hear this :) Thank you.

On Monday, January 17, 2022 at 4:33:59 PM UTC-8, Johnny Billquist wrote:

> Anyway, one question is obviously if you know if any sources are still
> around somewhere? I'm trying to preserve RSX software as much as I can,
> but in general sources for layered software have turned out to be a
> difficult problem.

Unfortunately I don't know of any sources being available for this. It didn't dawn on me to keep a copy for my personal archives. Oregon Software died in 1991 and time had passed us by. The compiler technology had, after all, been developed for the itty-bitty PDP-11 and this was reflected in its structure, the optimizations performed, etc. It was a four-pass compiler (lexical processor, syntax/semantic analyzer, optimizer, code generator) on the PDP-11 and I did have the foresight to write the intermediate language passed from pass to pass in such a way that on the VAX and other machines with amount of memory I was able to reconfigure it as a two-pass compiler (lexical processor+syntax/semantic analyzer and optimizer/code generator) but the overall structure was such that it was kinda difficult to build on and improve.

So by then I had moved on. Did some compiler work for another decade or so but not using the Oregon Software compiler technology other than a couple of projects porting the TauMetric C++ front end to integrate with backends developed by other companies.

Probably too much information ...

On 2022-01-18 16:45, Don Baccus wrote:
> On Monday, January 17, 2022 at 6:41:53 PM UTC-8, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>
>> Anyway, I just went through the release notes for PDP-11 PASCAL/RSX-11
>> (V1.3, which was the last release) right now, just to remind myself how
>> different it was/is. I can share that file, if you are interested.
>
> I would love to see that. To be honest, I don't think I ever bothered to read it.

Trying to attach it to this post.

>> But it's really very VAX PASCAL compatible, with a completely different
>> syntax than OMSI Pascal for lots of rather core things.
>
> That is something I do remember, that they wanted compatibility with VAX Pascal. That made sense from their POV to make it simple to write programs to work with both.

Definitely makes sense, yes. The ability to move the code from one
machine to another, recompile, and off you go certainly is an advantage.

> Of course, same was true with our Pascal-2 on the PDP-11, VAX, MC68000, NS32000, MIPS, Sparc, x86 as time went by. We looked at compatibility differently than DEC did, spanning manufacturers and operating systems. DEC's insistence on trying to shoehorn everything into their worldview of a DEC ecosystem was a major reason for their collapse IMO.

There were many reasons why DEC collapsed. I'm sure this was one.

>> I'm amazed that
>> it's the same codebase. Not to mention that it's pretty bad.
>
> I think they just modified the front end. So did we as we went on to support Modula-2, C, and C++.

Possible. I guess I would need to see more of the internals to tell. The
feeling of PDP-11 Pascal, and OMSI Pascal-2 is definitely very different
at least.

> The compiler technology was designed to support multiple languages and multiple targets, with an optimizer that worked on an abstract model of the program that applied to a wide variety of machine architectures.
>
> This is common now (i.e. the GNU suite of compilers and others) but wasn't when I started designing the system in 1976, especially in the realm of commercial language processing products.
>
>> even install it usually. Just have OMSI Pascal installed, which is way
>> better (even if it is the same codebase :-D ).
>
> It pleases me to hear this :) Thank you.

I'm happy you made the product. I've even had to support a customer who
made extensive use of Pascal-2 under RSX, and it was working fine. They
might still be running the stuff, but it might also be that it's being
decommissioned as we speak. The main responsible person retired last
year... That is commonly a time when people start changing things around.

Johnny

(And I need to paste the release notes below, stupid software nowadays
thinks something like this is a dangerous binary attachment if I try to
attach it... Sigh...)

=========snip=========

Introduction

This document contains descriptions of all the corrections to PDP-11
Pascal Version 1.3 since the release of Version 1.2. You'll find that
most of the corrections will be fixes to previous restrictions. At
the end of the document under the heading of restrictions you may find
new restrictions.

PDP-11 PASCAL Version 1.3 Release Notes

Installation Differences between PDP-11 PASCAL Version 1.2 and Version
1.3

An entire new installation procedure has been adopted for this release
of PDP-11 Pascal. This procedure will greatly simplify the
installation process. See Installation Guide for details.

Disk Data Caching and PDP-11 Pascal.

Disk data caching is a feature on RSX-11M-PLUS and Micro/RSX Version
3.0. This feature enhances I/O operations by reducing the number of
physical I/O requests directed to a disk. (See chapter 19 of the
System Manager's Guide for more information.) Because the performance
of PDP-11 Pascal is directly related to the performance of the device
on which it is running, typically the system disk. Enabling disk data
caching can dramatically increase the speed of the compiler.

NOTE

Disk data caching is a SYSGEN option on RSX-11M-PLUS;
while on Micro/RSX you must enable the option in the
SYSPARAM.DAT file and reboot the system. If you're
not sure whether this option exists on your system you
should see the system manager.

To enable disk data caching the following DCL command should be
issued:

$ SET DEVICE Dnx:/CACHE:(CREATE,OVERLAY:8)

Where Dnx: is the device on which the compiler task is located. On
RSX-11M-PLUS systems see your system manager and on Micro/RSX systems
the task is located on DU0:

Tests indicate that when disk data caching is enabled with the above
command line, compiler performance has in most cases doubled.

1

Compiler and OTS Corrections for Version 1.3

This section lists the corrections to the PDP-11 PASCAL compiler and
OTS for Version 1.3.

1. Within certain restrictions, routines can now be declared both
EXTERNAL and GLOBAL within the same compilation unit. The EXTERNAL
declaration must appear first with a complete parameter list and
function result type, if applicable. The parameter list or
function result type do not have to appear on the subsequent GLOBAL
declaration. If the parameter list or result type are included on
the GLOBAL declaration, they are ignored.

This feature applies only to procedures and functions. It allows
all common EXTERNAL routine declarations to be placed in a single
%INCLUDE file for use by several modules.

2. The superset operator now works properly. In previous releases
the results were unpredictable so the subset operator had to be
used in place of the superset operator with the operands reversed.
This is no longer the case.

3. The predeclared function ORD now works correctly when its argument
is the result of a relational operation. For example:

a := a + ORD ( a > b );

4. Using pointers with a file no longer generates bad code when the
file is tested for end of file. For example:
PROGRAM t (OUTPUT, f);

TYPE
file__of__text : TEXT;

VAR
f : _^file__of__text;

BEGIN
NEW (f);
RESET (f_^);
WHILE NOT EOF (f_^) DO
BEGIN
WRITELN (f_^);
READLN (f_^);
END;
END.

5. The compiler now performs the correct initialization when array
constructors are used to initialize multidimensional arrays with
base type, CHAR. For example:

VAR

2

arr : PACKED ARRAY [1..4,1..3] OF CHAR
:= ('abc','def','ghi','jkl');

6. For loop control variables at the program level may be updated
only in a temporary stack location. Attempts to access the value
of the variable used to control the for loop within routines called
directly or indirectly from within the for loop cause a reference
to memory which has not been updated, thus giving incorrect
results.

The recommended wokaround for this problem is to declare the for
loop variable as having the AUTOMATIC attribute. With the
AUTOMATIC attribute no static storage is allocated to the variable
and the variable will be bound to a register thus rendering its
value accesible from anywhere within the program.

As an example

var
i : [automatic] integer;
begin { main program }
.
.
.
for i := 1 to finalvalueofforloop do
begin
.
.
.
end;
.
.
.
end. { main program }

7. The calling mechanism for SEQ11 routines has changed. In Chapter
3 of the PDP-11 Pascal User's Guide and in Chapter 6 of the
Language Reference Manual, reference is made to the calling
mechanism invoked when the SEQ11 directive is used. In the past
all parameters passed to a system directive were forced to be by
reference, i.e. equivalent to a VAR parameter. This meant that it
was not possible to pass a null argument to a system directive.
Now no parameter will be forced to be by reference, the calling
mechanism typically required by SEQ11 calls. The programmer will
be required to pass parameters as explicitly VAR if the calling
mechanism is by reference.

Formerly, the AST mechanism could not be turned off without
altering variables at TKB time. With the above change this has
been corrected. You can, if you wish, declare a SEQ11 routine with
value parameters. You use a value parameter when specifying a null

3

parameter for an AST routine. The use of AST routines is not
supported under Pascal. The following example program shows the
use of the directives SPAWN and WAITFR.

Thanks! Many of these are obviously due to extensions/changes they made to the compiler.

One hint it is based on Pascal-2 is where they comment on a problem that "appears to be caused by blah blah in the optimizer", i.e. they didn't understand the cause, because the optimizer was quite complex and a bit tricky.

Some of the bugs that are listed were probably ours (OK, mine :) ) in the relatively early version they built their product on. Oddly, they never sought any consulting help with us in identifying or fixing bugs so we went off independently finding and fixing them. Unlike the MicroPower Pascal group.

I see one "bug" they list that really isn't and which I guess helps to underscore our differing philosophy. We treated char as being an unsigned value (they are not, in Pascal, simply baby integers). They "fixed" that if I read correctly.

If I had infinite time it might be interesting to see which of the crashing and looping examples exist in the later version of Pascal-2 you have available. Then again, it might be embarrassing if they still exist :)

On 2022-01-18 20:34, Don Baccus wrote:
>
> Thanks! Many of these are obviously due to extensions/changes they made to the compiler.

My pleasure. Always nice to able to provide some info.

> One hint it is based on Pascal-2 is where they comment on a problem that "appears to be caused by blah blah in the optimizer", i.e. they didn't understand the cause, because the optimizer was quite complex and a bit tricky.
>
> Some of the bugs that are listed were probably ours (OK, mine :) ) in the relatively early version they built their product on. Oddly, they never sought any consulting help with us in identifying or fixing bugs so we went off independently finding and fixing them. Unlike the MicroPower Pascal group.

That is an interesting observation. I wonder why they never came back to
you.
And also, DEC retired PDP-11 PASCAL/RSX after release 1.3 which came out
Oct 1990.

On that, MicroPower Pascal was also retired after version 2.5, which
came out Sep 1989.

> I see one "bug" they list that really isn't and which I guess helps to underscore our differing philosophy. We treated char as being an unsigned value (they are not, in Pascal, simply baby integers). They "fixed" that if I read correctly.
>
> If I had infinite time it might be interesting to see which of the crashing and looping examples exist in the later version of Pascal-2 you have available. Then again, it might be embarrassing if they still exist :)

Well, just in case you want to play, you can telnet to mim.stupi.net,
and login as guest with password guest. Pascal-2 is installed as PAS,
and you can play around as much as you want...

Johnny

On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 2:31:38 PM UTC-8, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2022-01-18 20:34, Don Baccus wrote:
> >
> > Thanks! Many of these are obviously due to extensions/changes they made to the compiler.
> My pleasure. Always nice to able to provide some info.
> > One hint it is based on Pascal-2 is where they comment on a problem that "appears to be caused by blah blah in the optimizer", i.e. they didn't understand the cause, because the optimizer was quite complex and a bit tricky.
> >
> > Some of the bugs that are listed were probably ours (OK, mine :) ) in the relatively early version they built their product on. Oddly, they never sought any consulting help with us in identifying or fixing bugs so we went off independently finding and fixing them. Unlike the MicroPower Pascal group.
> That is an interesting observation. I wonder why they never came back to
> you.
> And also, DEC retired PDP-11 PASCAL/RSX after release 1.3 which came out
> Oct 1990.
>
> On that, MicroPower Pascal was also retired after version 2.5, which
> came out Sep 1989.
> > I see one "bug" they list that really isn't and which I guess helps to underscore our differing philosophy. We treated char as being an unsigned value (they are not, in Pascal, simply baby integers). They "fixed" that if I read correctly.
> >
> > If I had infinite time it might be interesting to see which of the crashing and looping examples exist in the later version of Pascal-2 you have available. Then again, it might be embarrassing if they still exist :)
> Well, just in case you want to play, you can telnet to mim.stupi.net,
> and login as guest with password guest. Pascal-2 is installed as PAS,
> and you can play around as much as you want...
>
> Johnny

Could move this to private e-mail I suppose but it only allows "reply to all" not "reply to author" here ...

Anyway

tkb hello=hello:[1,1]paslib/lb

Fails with paslib.olb not found

so I've got the command wrong ...

hint?

On 2022-01-19 00:34, Don Baccus wrote:
> On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 2:31:38 PM UTC-8, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>> On 2022-01-18 20:34, Don Baccus wrote:
>>>
>>> Thanks! Many of these are obviously due to extensions/changes they made to the compiler.
>> My pleasure. Always nice to able to provide some info.
>>> One hint it is based on Pascal-2 is where they comment on a problem that "appears to be caused by blah blah in the optimizer", i.e. they didn't understand the cause, because the optimizer was quite complex and a bit tricky.
>>>
>>> Some of the bugs that are listed were probably ours (OK, mine :) ) in the relatively early version they built their product on. Oddly, they never sought any consulting help with us in identifying or fixing bugs so we went off independently finding and fixing them. Unlike the MicroPower Pascal group.
>> That is an interesting observation. I wonder why they never came back to
>> you.
>> And also, DEC retired PDP-11 PASCAL/RSX after release 1.3 which came out
>> Oct 1990.
>>
>> On that, MicroPower Pascal was also retired after version 2.5, which
>> came out Sep 1989.
>>> I see one "bug" they list that really isn't and which I guess helps to underscore our differing philosophy. We treated char as being an unsigned value (they are not, in Pascal, simply baby integers). They "fixed" that if I read correctly.
>>>
>>> If I had infinite time it might be interesting to see which of the crashing and looping examples exist in the later version of Pascal-2 you have available. Then again, it might be embarrassing if they still exist :)
>> Well, just in case you want to play, you can telnet to mim.stupi.net,
>> and login as guest with password guest. Pascal-2 is installed as PAS,
>> and you can play around as much as you want...
>>
>> Johnny
>
> Could move this to private e-mail I suppose but it only allows "reply to all" not "reply to author" here ...
>
> Anyway
>
> tkb hello=hello:[1,1]paslib/lb
>
> Fails with paslib.olb not found
>
> so I've got the command wrong ...
>
> hint?

tkb hello=hello,lb:[1,1]paslib/lb

but the paslib.olb in lb:[1,1] is probably not what you should use.

See HELP LOCAL PASCAL LINK

but in short, there is a logical name for the pascal library, which is
just paslib, so even simpler:

tkb hello=hello,paslib/lb

should make you happy...

(I'm trying to remember what the lb:[1,1]paslib.olb is from. Might be
similar/same to PAS:PASLIB.OLB, which is where PASLIB points to.)

Johnny

On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 4:14:04 PM UTC-8, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2022-01-19 00:34, Don Baccus wrote:
> > On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 2:31:38 PM UTC-8, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> >> On 2022-01-18 20:34, Don Baccus wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Thanks! Many of these are obviously due to extensions/changes they made to the compiler.
> >> My pleasure. Always nice to able to provide some info.
> >>> One hint it is based on Pascal-2 is where they comment on a problem that "appears to be caused by blah blah in the optimizer", i.e. they didn't understand the cause, because the optimizer was quite complex and a bit tricky.
> >>>
> >>> Some of the bugs that are listed were probably ours (OK, mine :) ) in the relatively early version they built their product on. Oddly, they never sought any consulting help with us in identifying or fixing bugs so we went off independently finding and fixing them. Unlike the MicroPower Pascal group.
> >> That is an interesting observation. I wonder why they never came back to
> >> you.
> >> And also, DEC retired PDP-11 PASCAL/RSX after release 1.3 which came out
> >> Oct 1990.
> >>
> >> On that, MicroPower Pascal was also retired after version 2.5, which
> >> came out Sep 1989.
> >>> I see one "bug" they list that really isn't and which I guess helps to underscore our differing philosophy. We treated char as being an unsigned value (they are not, in Pascal, simply baby integers). They "fixed" that if I read correctly.
> >>>
> >>> If I had infinite time it might be interesting to see which of the crashing and looping examples exist in the later version of Pascal-2 you have available. Then again, it might be embarrassing if they still exist :)
> >> Well, just in case you want to play, you can telnet to mim.stupi.net,
> >> and login as guest with password guest. Pascal-2 is installed as PAS,
> >> and you can play around as much as you want...
> >>
> >> Johnny
> >
> > Could move this to private e-mail I suppose but it only allows "reply to all" not "reply to author" here ...
> >
> > Anyway
> >
> > tkb hello=hello:[1,1]paslib/lb
> >
> > Fails with paslib.olb not found
> >
> > so I've got the command wrong ...
> >
> > hint?
> tkb hello=hello,lb:[1,1]paslib/lb
>
> but the paslib.olb in lb:[1,1] is probably not what you should use.
>
> See HELP LOCAL PASCAL LINK
>
> but in short, there is a logical name for the pascal library, which is
> just paslib, so even simpler:
>
> tkb hello=hello,paslib/lb
>
> should make you happy...
>
> (I'm trying to remember what the lb:[1,1]paslib.olb is from. Might be
> similar/same to PAS:PASLIB.OLB, which is where PASLIB points to.)
>
> Johnny

OK that works I copied the command line wrong from our manual, sigh. Well, I did my best to stay away from RSX-11M, preferring RT-11 as my work environment using our RT-11 RTS under RSTS/E (later we might've switched to DEC's).

Is this a simulated box???

On 2022-01-19 16:31, Don Baccus wrote:
> OK that works I copied the command line wrong from our manual, sigh. Well, I did my best to stay away from RSX-11M, preferring RT-11 as my work environment using our RT-11 RTS under RSTS/E (later we might've switched to DEC's).

RSX is a blast if you ask me, but everyone have their own preferences. :-)

> Is this a simulated box???

Yes. In fact it's a simulated PDP-11/74 (the multiprocessor PDP-11 that
never was, officially).

Johnny

On Wednesday, January 19, 2022 at 1:59:04 PM UTC-8, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2022-01-19 16:31, Don Baccus wrote:
> > OK that works I copied the command line wrong from our manual, sigh. Well, I did my best to stay away from RSX-11M, preferring RT-11 as my work environment using our RT-11 RTS under RSTS/E (later we might've switched to DEC's).
> RSX is a blast if you ask me, but everyone have their own preferences. :-)
> > Is this a simulated box???
> Yes. In fact it's a simulated PDP-11/74 (the multiprocessor PDP-11 that
> never was, officially).
>
> Johnny

After I wrote that I saw the reference to dbit. Cool.

RSX-11M was a very good real time system and a huge improvement over RSX-11D. I hadn't realized that RSX-11M had file versioning, I thought that came in with VMS. That's a cool discovery.

Pascal-1 was written on an 11/05 so RT-11 was the only real choice. And I came from a background of using OS/8. As I mentioned above we wrote an RT-11 RTS for RSTS/E and RSTS/E was a fine straightforward timesharing system. We didn't do an RTS for RSX. Of course later DEC provided RT-11 and RSX-11 RTS's for RSTS. Our products had to support RT-11 with no memory management hardware so it made a certain amount of sense to develop them for that minimal system. If Pascal-2 ran on that it wasn't a problem to get it to run on RSX-11 with its fancy overlay capabilities etc.

Anyway E11 looks like a cool piece of software and I'm enjoying playing with Pascal-2 and ... TECO ... amazing how quickly TECO has come back to me after decades. Looking at macro output I remember that I never put effort into optimizing conformant arrays which brings back memories of how the code generator just barely fit into the available memory space and how crunched and hacked it was because of this. When we moved on to 32-bit machines the code generator design was kept but the data structures were made much more programmer-friendly as there wasn't the same need to squeeze every byte possible out of the memory footprint.

Thanks for all this, dude. I haven't really thought of Pascal-2 often for many, many years. I'd forgotten what a complete suite of tools we supplied with the product, some developed in-house (I wrote the string package), others derived from open source code (before that term had been invented) provided by friends in the Pascal development community.

I'm curious as to where you managed to find the Pascal-2 release. It was not one sold to a customer (note it identifies it as being license to Oregon Software, license #1-1). I'm guessing one of our employees had more sense than me and built and saved a release disk :)

On 2022-01-19 23:43, Don Baccus wrote:
> On Wednesday, January 19, 2022 at 1:59:04 PM UTC-8, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>> On 2022-01-19 16:31, Don Baccus wrote:
>>> OK that works I copied the command line wrong from our manual, sigh. Well, I did my best to stay away from RSX-11M, preferring RT-11 as my work environment using our RT-11 RTS under RSTS/E (later we might've switched to DEC's).
>> RSX is a blast if you ask me, but everyone have their own preferences. :-)
>>> Is this a simulated box???
>> Yes. In fact it's a simulated PDP-11/74 (the multiprocessor PDP-11 that
>> never was, officially).
>>
>> Johnny
>
> After I wrote that I saw the reference to dbit. Cool.

Yeah. I've been talking (and sometimes working) a lot with John Wilson,
who is responsible for e11.

> RSX-11M was a very good real time system and a huge improvement over RSX-11D. I hadn't realized that RSX-11M had file versioning, I thought that came in with VMS. That's a cool discovery.

I believe even -11D had that. It inherent in the ODS-1 file structure,
which I think all of them used. But RSX-11M-Plus is a pretty big step
from -11D or -11M. Very fancy...

> Pascal-1 was written on an 11/05 so RT-11 was the only real choice. And I came from a background of using OS/8. As I mentioned above we wrote an RT-11 RTS for RSTS/E and RSTS/E was a fine straightforward timesharing system. We didn't do an RTS for RSX. Of course later DEC provided RT-11 and RSX-11 RTS's for RSTS. Our products had to support RT-11 with no memory management hardware so it made a certain amount of sense to develop them for that minimal system. If Pascal-2 ran on that it wasn't a problem to get it to run on RSX-11 with its fancy overlay capabilities etc.

Totally understandable. I'm actually a bit surprised/impressed that you
got it all working under RT-11 with no MMU. That's a very limited
environment.

> Anyway E11 looks like a cool piece of software and I'm enjoying playing with Pascal-2 and ... TECO ... amazing how quickly TECO has come back to me after decades. Looking at macro output I remember that I never put effort into optimizing conformant arrays which brings back memories of how the code generator just barely fit into the available memory space and how crunched and hacked it was because of this. When we moved on to 32-bit machines the code generator design was kept but the data structures were made much more programmer-friendly as there wasn't the same need to squeeze every byte possible out of the memory footprint.

Well, with "modern" RSX-11M-Plus, not only do you have split I/D-space,
giving you a lot more memory, but also supervisor mode libraries,
meaning even more stuff gets out of the way, and you end up with quite a
lot of memory for whatever you want to do.

> Thanks for all this, dude. I haven't really thought of Pascal-2 often for many, many years. I'd forgotten what a complete suite of tools we supplied with the product, some developed in-house (I wrote the string package), others derived from open source code (before that term had been invented) provided by friends in the Pascal development community.

My pleasure.

> I'm curious as to where you managed to find the Pascal-2 release. It was not one sold to a customer (note it identifies it as being license to Oregon Software, license #1-1). I'm guessing one of our employees had more sense than me and built and saved a release disk :)

As far as I know, it was sold. It was (and possibly still is) running at
a company in Sweden that have the distribution, manuals, and all. I
could ask them in case you really want to know, but I've had my hands on
the official distribution tape that the company have.

But I don't know the back history. I know some bits and pieces, which I
can share direct with you, but if you say that normally a distribution
would be cut with license information built into the binaries, then it
appears that someone skipped that along the way.

But there is nothing about licenses anywhere during the generation or
installation.

You can see a bit of stuff at MIM::DU:[ORPAS]

Johnny

On 2022-01-20 00:26, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2022-01-19 23:43, Don Baccus wrote:
>> I'm curious as to where you managed to find the Pascal-2 release.  It
>> was not one sold to a customer (note it identifies it as being license
>> to Oregon Software, license #1-1).  I'm guessing one of our employees
>> had more sense than me and built and saved a release disk :)
>
> As far as I know, it was sold. It was (and possibly still is) running at
> a company in Sweden that have the distribution, manuals, and all. I
> could ask them in case you really want to know, but I've had my hands on
> the official distribution tape that the company have.
>
> But I don't know the back history. I know some bits and pieces, which I
> can share direct with you, but if you say that normally a distribution
> would be cut with license information built into the binaries, then it
> appears that someone skipped that along the way.
>
> But there is nothing about licenses anywhere during the generation or
> installation.
>
> You can see a bit of stuff at MIM::DU:[ORPAS]

Almost forgot. You can also see some of the documentation at
http://mim.update.uu.se/manuals/layered/

Johnny

On Wednesday, January 19, 2022 at 3:34:20 PM UTC-8, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2022-01-20 00:26, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> > On 2022-01-19 23:43, Don Baccus wrote:
> >> I'm curious as to where you managed to find the Pascal-2 release. It
> >> was not one sold to a customer (note it identifies it as being license
> >> to Oregon Software, license #1-1). I'm guessing one of our employees
> >> had more sense than me and built and saved a release disk :)
> >
> > As far as I know, it was sold. It was (and possibly still is) running at
> > a company in Sweden that have the distribution, manuals, and all. I
> > could ask them in case you really want to know, but I've had my hands on
> > the official distribution tape that the company have.
> >
> > But I don't know the back history. I know some bits and pieces, which I
> > can share direct with you, but if you say that normally a distribution
> > would be cut with license information built into the binaries, then it
> > appears that someone skipped that along the way.
> >
> > But there is nothing about licenses anywhere during the generation or
> > installation.
> >
> > You can see a bit of stuff at MIM::DU:[ORPAS]
> Almost forgot. You can also see some of the documentation at
> http://mim.update.uu.se/manuals/layered/
>
> Johnny

On Wednesday, January 19, 2022 at 3:34:20 PM UTC-8, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2022-01-20 00:26, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> > On 2022-01-19 23:43, Don Baccus wrote:
> >> I'm curious as to where you managed to find the Pascal-2 release. It
> >> was not one sold to a customer (note it identifies it as being license
> >> to Oregon Software, license #1-1). I'm guessing one of our employees
> >> had more sense than me and built and saved a release disk :)
> >
> > As far as I know, it was sold. It was (and possibly still is) running at
> > a company in Sweden that have the distribution, manuals, and all. I
> > could ask them in case you really want to know, but I've had my hands on
> > the official distribution tape that the company have.
> >
> > But I don't know the back history. I know some bits and pieces, which I
> > can share direct with you, but if you say that normally a distribution
> > would be cut with license information built into the binaries, then it
> > appears that someone skipped that along the way.
> >
> > But there is nothing about licenses anywhere during the generation or
> > installation.
> >
> > You can see a bit of stuff at MIM::DU:[ORPAS]
> Almost forgot. You can also see some of the documentation at
> http://mim.update.uu.se/manuals/layered/
>
> Johnny

I found an rsx-11 pascal-2 manual online. Now I need to look at an example using the debugger, gets "too many files" open, need to tell tkb to allow more files :) Not many language processing systems that were true compilers had source-level debuggers or profilers back then.

I don't think the installation process would've mentioned licensing. Users signed a license agreement before shipping, this was before shrink wrap licenses were used (and their legality established). We'd then build the customer media.

As far as the RT-11 goes, our contract required that the compiler be able to compile itself on an RT-11 with 56KB and ... and ... two floppy disks for disk storage. No hard disk. Seriously. I was almost surprised that the floppies didn't wear out by the time the compiler was done doing so, it took hours.

I think they actually tried to support that configuration for MicroPower Pascal at first but I think they dropped that eventually. I sure lobbied for them to do so every month when I went to the Mill to spend a week with the MPP development group.

On Wednesday, January 19, 2022 at 3:55:16 PM UTC-8, Don Baccus wrote:
> On Wednesday, January 19, 2022 at 3:34:20 PM UTC-8, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> > On 2022-01-20 00:26, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> > > On 2022-01-19 23:43, Don Baccus wrote:
> > >> I'm curious as to where you managed to find the Pascal-2 release. It
> > >> was not one sold to a customer (note it identifies it as being license
> > >> to Oregon Software, license #1-1). I'm guessing one of our employees
> > >> had more sense than me and built and saved a release disk :)
> > >
> > > As far as I know, it was sold. It was (and possibly still is) running at
> > > a company in Sweden that have the distribution, manuals, and all. I
> > > could ask them in case you really want to know, but I've had my hands on
> > > the official distribution tape that the company have.
> > >
> > > But I don't know the back history. I know some bits and pieces, which I
> > > can share direct with you, but if you say that normally a distribution
> > > would be cut with license information built into the binaries, then it
> > > appears that someone skipped that along the way.
> > >
> > > But there is nothing about licenses anywhere during the generation or
> > > installation.
> > >
> > > You can see a bit of stuff at MIM::DU:[ORPAS]
> > Almost forgot. You can also see some of the documentation at
> > http://mim.update.uu.se/manuals/layered/
> >
> > Johnny
> I found an rsx-11 pascal-2 manual online. Now I need to look at an example using the debugger, gets "too many files" open, need to tell tkb to allow more files :) Not many language processing systems that were true compilers had source-level debuggers or profilers back then.
>
> I don't think the installation process would've mentioned licensing. Users signed a license agreement before shipping, this was before shrink wrap licenses were used (and their legality established). We'd then build the customer media.
>
> As far as the RT-11 goes, our contract required that the compiler be able to compile itself on an RT-11 with 56KB and ... and ... two floppy disks for disk storage. No hard disk. Seriously. I was almost surprised that the floppies didn't wear out by the time the compiler was done doing so, it took hours.
>
> I think they actually tried to support that configuration for MicroPower Pascal at first but I think they dropped that eventually. I sure lobbied for them to do so every month when I went to the Mill to spend a week with the MPP development group.

So I went to the layered software documentation page you shared and the checklist for the distribution has everything checked except the license agreement, which was not included.

There was a company in Sweden that sold our software there, I would guess that this was a copy that originally was sent to them for their own use in demoing it etc.

On Wednesday, January 19, 2022 at 3:55:16 PM UTC-8, Don Baccus wrote:
> On Wednesday, January 19, 2022 at 3:34:20 PM UTC-8, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> > On 2022-01-20 00:26, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> > > On 2022-01-19 23:43, Don Baccus wrote:
> > >> I'm curious as to where you managed to find the Pascal-2 release. It
> > >> was not one sold to a customer (note it identifies it as being license
> > >> to Oregon Software, license #1-1). I'm guessing one of our employees
> > >> had more sense than me and built and saved a release disk :)
> > >
> > > As far as I know, it was sold. It was (and possibly still is) running at
> > > a company in Sweden that have the distribution, manuals, and all. I
> > > could ask them in case you really want to know, but I've had my hands on
> > > the official distribution tape that the company have.
> > >
> > > But I don't know the back history. I know some bits and pieces, which I
> > > can share direct with you, but if you say that normally a distribution
> > > would be cut with license information built into the binaries, then it
> > > appears that someone skipped that along the way.
> > >
> > > But there is nothing about licenses anywhere during the generation or
> > > installation.
> > >
> > > You can see a bit of stuff at MIM::DU:[ORPAS]
> > Almost forgot. You can also see some of the documentation at
> > http://mim.update.uu.se/manuals/layered/
> >
> > Johnny
> I found an rsx-11 pascal-2 manual online. Now I need to look at an example using the debugger, gets "too many files" open, need to tell tkb to allow more files :) Not many language processing systems that were true compilers had source-level debuggers or profilers back then.
>
> I don't think the installation process would've mentioned licensing. Users signed a license agreement before shipping, this was before shrink wrap licenses were used (and their legality established). We'd then build the customer media.
>
> As far as the RT-11 goes, our contract required that the compiler be able to compile itself on an RT-11 with 56KB and ... and ... two floppy disks for disk storage. No hard disk. Seriously. I was almost surprised that the floppies didn't wear out by the time the compiler was done doing so, it took hours.
>
> I think they actually tried to support that configuration for MicroPower Pascal at first but I think they dropped that eventually. I sure lobbied for them to do so every month when I went to the Mill to spend a week with the MPP development group.

Ah, the installation guide says that the software is preliminary in nature.

A beta release, in today's terminology. So perhaps it was a customer that was doing testing for us.

On 2022-01-20 01:00, Don Baccus wrote:
> On Wednesday, January 19, 2022 at 3:55:16 PM UTC-8, Don Baccus wrote:
>> On Wednesday, January 19, 2022 at 3:34:20 PM UTC-8, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>>> On 2022-01-20 00:26, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>>>> But there is nothing about licenses anywhere during the generation or
>>>> installation.
>>>>
>>>> You can see a bit of stuff at MIM::DU:[ORPAS]
>>> Almost forgot. You can also see some of the documentation at
>>> http://mim.update.uu.se/manuals/layered/
>>>
>>> Johnny
>> I found an rsx-11 pascal-2 manual online. Now I need to look at an example using the debugger, gets "too many files" open, need to tell tkb to allow more files :) Not many language processing systems that were true compilers had source-level debuggers or profilers back then.
>>
>> I don't think the installation process would've mentioned licensing. Users signed a license agreement before shipping, this was before shrink wrap licenses were used (and their legality established). We'd then build the customer media.
>>
>> As far as the RT-11 goes, our contract required that the compiler be able to compile itself on an RT-11 with 56KB and ... and ... two floppy disks for disk storage. No hard disk. Seriously. I was almost surprised that the floppies didn't wear out by the time the compiler was done doing so, it took hours.
>>
>> I think they actually tried to support that configuration for MicroPower Pascal at first but I think they dropped that eventually. I sure lobbied for them to do so every month when I went to the Mill to spend a week with the MPP development group.
>
> So I went to the layered software documentation page you shared and the checklist for the distribution has everything checked except the license agreement, which was not included.

Right. I also noticed that now that I was looking.

> There was a company in Sweden that sold our software there, I would guess that this was a copy that originally was sent to them for their own use in demoing it etc.

And funnily enough, this is in Sweden. :-)
So I guess that company was involved.

Johnny

On 2022-01-20 01:01, Don Baccus wrote:
> Ah, the installation guide says that the software is preliminary in nature.
>
> A beta release, in today's terminology. So perhaps it was a customer that was doing testing for us.

A beta that have been in production for the last 30 years or so. :-)

Johnny

On Thursday, 20 January 2022 at 00:12:15 UTC, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2022-01-20 01:01, Don Baccus wrote:
> > Ah, the installation guide says that the software is preliminary in nature.
> >
> > A beta release, in today's terminology. So perhaps it was a customer that was doing testing for us.
> A beta that have been in production for the last 30 years or so. :-)
>
> Johnny

It is very interesting to hear about the history of Oregon Pascal-2. I used it for many years (68000 cross-compiler variant) at a previous employer.
Does anyone have any source code? Does anyone know the current state of ownership/licensing?

Regards,
Richard.

On Tuesday, March 15, 2022 at 6:46:02 AM UTC-7, richar...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Thursday, 20 January 2022 at 00:12:15 UTC, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> > On 2022-01-20 01:01, Don Baccus wrote:
> > > Ah, the installation guide says that the software is preliminary in nature.
> > >
> > > A beta release, in today's terminology. So perhaps it was a customer that was doing testing for us.
> > A beta that have been in production for the last 30 years or so. :-)
> >
> > Johnny
> It is very interesting to hear about the history of Oregon Pascal-2. I used it for many years (68000 cross-compiler variant) at a previous employer.
> Does anyone have any source code? Does anyone know the current state of ownership/licensing?
>
> Regards,
> Richard.

Ownership/licensing ... none of the ownership entities legally exist any more. As the principle author and co-founder (and for several years COO) of Oregon Software, if I had sources I'd release them.

But none exist. Not only for the PDP-11 native version, but none of the others AFAIK. I'm trying to find them but I'm not optimistic. We had front ends for Modula-2 and C/C++ and backends for the PDP-11 (Pascal only), a 16-bit Honeywell minicomputer (done under contract with Honeywell), MC68000 (my favorite microprocessor for a long time), VAX, NS32000, and x86 (my least favorite microprocessor for ever and ever and ever ...). I wrote the Pascal and Modula-2 front ends and all of the code generators other than the X86 though I ended up helping out with some optimization schemes.

All gone AFAIK.

The PDP-11 version was the least capable of the various backends, which I forked early on. Pascal-2 was required to self-compile on flat memory machines with no I/D separation and barely fit. As mentioned above, our contract with DEC required this to work on a machine with just two floppies though once it passed that test, I doubt that anyone ran the software in that environment. Every improvement in code generation had to pay off with the new code resulting in a compiled code generator no longer than the version without the improvement, a bit of a catch-22. On bigger machines the code generator could be larger and therefore more improvements could be implemented..

But looking at the code it generates, compiling examples on the pubic simulated RSX system discussed by Johnny above ... it wasn't bad. Not bad at all ...

Motorola was a fun company to work with and the MC68000 an amazing microprocessor when it was introduced.

I really wish I had sources to just one of these old Oregon Software products ...

> a 16-bit Honeywell minicomputer (done under contract with Honeywell)

Would this have been the 316/516/et al family?

De