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From: kissell@spar.UUCP (Kevin Kissell)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k
Subject: Re: 68000 Cross Development Tools
Message-ID: <118@spar.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 1-Mar-85 21:54:22 EST
Article-I.D.: spar.118
Posted: Fri Mar  1 21:54:22 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 2-Mar-85 00:41:09 EST
References: <602@mako.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, CA
Lines: 30

> Try Microtec Research, 505 West Olive St. #325, Sunnyvale, CA 94086,
> (408)733-2919.  They have a complete line of 68000 cross development tools
> written in portable FORTRAN.  I have used only the 68000 simulator on an
> IBM/370 under VM/CMS and found it very good -- you could even simulate
> I/O and instruciton timings were given.  I would expect their other tools
> to be of similar quality.
> 
> -- 
> :::::: Jan Steinman		Box 1000, MS 61-161	(w)503/685-2843 ::::::
> :::::: tektronix!tekecs!jans	Wilsonville, OR 97070	(h)503/657-7703 ::::::

I had the "pleasure" of bringing up Microtec's Z80 cross-development package
under 4.1 BSD a couple of years ago, and would warn prospective buyers of
a couple of things.

Microtec's portable FORTRAN is amazing lowest-common-denominator, portable-
to-electric-toasters stuff, crawling with arithmetic if's.  Relocatable 
addresses were carried around in floating-point variables, presumably because 
integers might not have enough bits.  Even the input character set was "soft", 
so each input character was used as an array index into the internal 
representation table, presumably so it can run on machines that handle 
strings in Baudot code.  I ran into a number of bugs, all of which I found and 
fixed before their "support" staff.  And it ran slow as molases on Callisto.  
Be careful.  It's nice to have the sources, but not always worth it.

Kevin D. Kissell
Fairchild Advanced Processor Development
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