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From: sd@erc3ba.UUCP (S.Davidson)
Newsgroups: net.arch
Subject: Re: Using C as an aid to hand writing assembler
Message-ID: <193@erc3ba.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 16-May-86 14:07:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: erc3ba.193
Posted: Fri May 16 14:07:49 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 19-May-86 01:34:04 EDT
References: <817@harvard.UUCP> <Navajo.494> <460@cubsvax.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Engineering Research Center   Princeton, NJ
Lines: 30

> In article <201@pyuxv.UUCP> sr@pyuxv.UUCP (25220-S Radtke) writes:
> >
>  
>   As a minor addition to the technique (and to show that you're not
> forced to expose yourself to possible chromosome damage by using C)
> I wrote the Navy's standard executive for their 16-bit line of computers
> (AN/UYK-20, -44, AN/AYK-14) first in Ada (as it existed in 1979).  Of
> course, there were no Ada compilers then, so I hand-translated some of
> the important algorithms -- task scheduling, memory allocation -- into
> Pascal that I could compile and run.  This was used to debug and tune
> them for speed.  Finally, I wrote some assembler macros supporting
> IF-THEN-ELSE, looping, and subroutine invocation and hand-translated
> the Ada/Pascal into assembler/macros.
> 
Ada was used as a high level specification of microcode for the Intel 432.
At that time they also didn't have a compiler, so hand translated and
optimized it.  They even had to use an enhanced version of Ada to handle all
the things they wanted to do in microcode.  (Source - talk by Dan
Hammerstrom at the 14th Microprogramming Workshop).

I think this is a good technique for microprogramming where no compilers are
available.  Has anyone else used it?

-- 
Scott Davidson
AT&T Engineering Research Center
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