Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!bbn!apple!casseres From: casseres@Apple.COM (David Casseres) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: New Mac Rumours Message-ID: <755@internal.Apple.COM> Date: 23 Feb 89 18:04:38 GMT References: <41a0e08a.a590@mag.engin.umich.edu> <752@internal.Apple.COM> Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA Lines: 25 In article <752@internal.Apple.COM> lsr@Apple.COM (Larry Rosenstein) writes: >In article <41a0e08a.a590@mag.engin.umich.edu> billkatt@caen.engin.umich.edu (billkatt) writes: >> >>Some of the Mac OS routines were written in Pascal. The 64K ROM contained the >>compiled object code for many routines. Because of time constraints. But > >I don't think so. Most of the Lisa libraries were written in Pascal, and >some of these formed the basis of the Mac ROM routines, but I think to >squeeze everything into a 64K ROM, they had to go to 100% assembler. Yes indeed! I distinctly recall that the slogan of Mac system programmers at the time was "real programmers only write assembly language," and they weren't joking. >>they were re-written in 68000 Assembly language in the 128K ROM. Thats why >>QuickDraw got about 60% quicker on the Mac Plus (check Tech Note 56, the old > >It got faster because with 2x ROM space you could gain speed for space by >unrolling loops and adding more special cases. Yes indeed again. When you rewrite something in a different language and see a big performance increase, the increase is usually due to the rewriting, not the change of language (not counting interpreted languages, of course). David Casseres