Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!watdragon!violet!kgschlueter
From: kgschlueter@violet.waterloo.edu (Kevin Schlueter)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: OS/9 (Re: IRQ virus (and a personal note to Steve))
Message-ID: <10894@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Date: 20 Jan 89 04:32:38 GMT
References: <2141@van-bc.UUCP> <764@sas.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@watdragon.waterloo.edu
Reply-To: kgschlueter@violet.waterloo.edu (Kevin Schlueter)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 36

In article <764@sas.UUCP> toebes@sas.UUCP (John Toebes) writes:
>
>All in all, the machine was an excellent concept:  Provide all
>the languages for free with a bit of hardware including a decent serial
>port that could run 19.2K as well as all that memory.  It even had builtin
>floating point routines in the rom as well as somewhat of an operating
>system. 

Basically, all the languages were written in a C-like language called
WSL (an acronym for Waterloo Systems Language).  The ROM stuff was the
WSL run time library.

>The biggest problem with it all was that it was never improved
>or developed past the initial stages.  Much of the code for the languages
>and rom was written by Waterloo with clear evidence of a quick development.

I'm not sure quick is the right word.  There was extensive testing (I was
one of the testers), however I don't think many users ever got the 
maintenance release of the languages (version 1.1).  I really don't
know what happenned beyond 1.1, but I suspect that the IBM PC's increasing
market presence had something to do with it.

There was an honest effort to produce reliable interpreters.  I think
the machine suffered a bit because many of the educators weren't ready
for the new languages (my highschool computer teacher at the time had enough
trouble with BASIC) and tried to do bizarre things with them.

The original plan was to release compilers for all the languages.  This 
would have allowed you to debug on an interpreter and then compile for
speed.  I guess the SuperPet will join the likes of the Tandy 2000, and
several early 68K unix boxes in the "it was a good idea, but it wasn't
PC compatible" corner of the micro graveyard.

It's interesting to note that many of the developers of the SuperPet
languages had a hand in Watcom C (the up and coming C compiler for 
the MSDOS world).