Pascal for ZX81

[mrtinb]

The catch here is, that the implementation of Pascal for ZX81, only works inside a programming environment for Pascal. And the only storage medium is tape. No emulator emulates this, as it has it's own routines to save files to tape, so we are not talking ".p"-files. (If you save to wave files from EO, it can be emulated.)

Again the programs in p-code format, does only run inside the pascal environment.

I believe the friends in ZX-Team has created a patch for Pascal, so it will run on their MSFISDOS.

The caveat is that for others to use your program, which is programmed in Pascal, they need:

1. To load the Pascal environment,
2. and from there load the binary p-code in one of these ways:
   • From physical tape drive
   • From special hardware that runs MEFISDOS

[Vorticon]

I see... Definitely limits the dissemination of Pascal programs.
Nonetheless, it's still very cool to see a Pascal implementation on the Zeddy.

[Vorticon]

Working my way through the pascal package. I still think it's an impressive feat to have Pascal on the Zeddy

[mrtinb]

I agree

[Vorticon]

That said, this implementation is significantly crippled given that record and set structures, along with pointers, were omitted which puts into doubt the practicality of using it for real world development as compared to Basic for example, particularly since the development environment is required to run the compiled programs. On the other hand, the full screen editor is very nice and a welcome change to the Basic editing process.
I'm working my way through the package documentation and I'll have a better idea of how this all works out in terms of execution speed and usability later on.

N.B.: I giggle a little when I talk about real world practicality of this package while sitting in front of a 40+ year old machine hooked up to a B&W television and a tape recorder

[mrtinb]

Unfortunately it does not produce machine code, but p-code, which is more like Java, that produces byte-code, and need the JVM. Here we need the pascal-"virtual-machine".

[timsenecal]

...
N.B.: I giggle a little when I talk about real world practicality of this package while sitting in front of a 40+ year old machine hooked up to a B&W television and a tape recorder

I used this package in 1984 to complete a pascal course i took in high school... the class ended prematurely, i only had the timex sinclair 1000 at home, and discovered this existed, so i bought it, and used it to work through the rest of the text book... the hardest part of the whole endeavour was the 16 minute load times before i could start working. I will have to look and see if i kept any of this from 40 years ago, and if any of it works.

[mrtinb]

Wow cool to hear from someone who actually worked with this software back in the day.

[Vorticon]

The fact that one could do pascal using a sub $200 computer system (computer, 16K expansion, tape recorder) was unheard of back in the day. I had a TI 99/4A at the time and it would have cost me close to an additional $2000 to upgrade to the point of being able to use pascal on it (32K card, disk controller, 2 disk drives, pcode card and peripheral expansion box). So yeah, as I stated earlier, an impressive feat..

[Lardo Boffin]

...
N.B.: I giggle a little when I talk about real world practicality of this package while sitting in front of a 40+ year old machine hooked up to a B&W television and a tape recorder

I used this package in 1984 to complete a pascal course i took in high school... the class ended prematurely, i only had the timex sinclair 1000 at home, and discovered this existed, so i bought it, and used it to work through the rest of the text book... the hardest part of the whole endeavour was the 16 minute load times before i could start working. I will have to look and see if i kept any of this from 40 years ago, and if any of it works.

Fit a Wespi - the load times will be significantly lower! The save times won’t be any better but i suspect that the load times are the worst part?