Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!sdd.hp.com!hplabs!hpda!hpcupt1!hpindwa!tribby From: tribby@hpindwa.cup.hp.com (David Tribby) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2 Subject: Re: two questions... Message-ID: <54240020@hpindwa.cup.hp.com> Date: 5 Nov 90 21:51:16 GMT References: Organization: HP Info Networks Div/Cupertino CA Lines: 36 toddpw@nntp-server.caltech.edu (Todd P. Whitesel) writes: >unknown@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (The Unknown User) writes: > >>I doubt Pascal makes a "SYSTEM"-ish file though) Jeez, that seems to be > >It doesn't. Apple Pascal has no knowledge of Prodos. It might be possible >to write a prodos application that acted as a front end to pascal created >code. To my knowledge, no one has attempted this yet. 6 or so years ago, Apple sold a software unit to give Apple Pascal programs access to ProDOS disks. I bought it and was able to read and write ProDOS volumes from a Pascal program. I, too, never heard of any p-code interpreter running under ProDOS (but it would be just a simple matter of programming!). >My first experiences with Apple Pascal were horrible. I kept overflowing >the stack while COMPILING (!!) for no apparent reason (i.e. really small >programs). Maybe you had the original version (1.0?) which I understand was pretty bad. You should have gotten the 128K version, which had p-code in aux memory and left a lot more main memory available for stack/heap and assembly code. >Yep... Apple Pascal was very well designed, but it was truly annoying to work >with when you wanted to get down and dirty... this trait is embedded into the >Mac O/S and it's the main reason I prefer GS/OS. I got as dirty as I wanted with Apple Pascal, particularly after I disassembled APPLE.SYSTEM (the BIOS and p-code interpreter). With assembler, you could write relocatable routines that interacted easily with Pascal programs. They provided support for writing your own drivers. Randal Hyde wrote a book showing how to patch the p-code interpreter to speed up performance and implement the TIME intrinsic. That was fun hacking... -- Dave Tribby