Source code for the Lilith's single pass Modula-2 compiler has been recovered.

Jos Dreesen

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Nov 12, 2021, 12:43:12 PM11/12/21

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Subject already tells it all : I managed to extract the sourcecode for the Lilith's single pass Modula-2 compiler from the harddisk of the Lilith on display in the Museum of Kommunikation in Berne / Switzerland.

This singlepass compiler was used as the basis for many followups : the IBM RT port, Macintosh port and and...

Thanks to Chris Burrows forrecognizing that it was a complete set, not a very partial one as I suspected at first.

Jos

Martin Brown

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Nov 12, 2021, 4:36:30 PM11/12/21

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Well done!

Is there any surviving Lilith hardware in full working condition?
I recall seeing a couple in the computing department at ETH Zurich.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

Brian Knoblauch

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Nov 13, 2021, 10:37:20 AM11/13/21

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Very nice! Congrats!

nemo

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Nov 13, 2021, 12:49:03 PM11/13/21

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Congratulations, Jos, and many kudos!

May I ask whether the source is? (I could not find in on your ftp site.)

N.

Chris Burrows

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Nov 17, 2021, 4:14:12 AM11/17/21

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A big thank you to Jos for his efforts in tracking this down. There is a link for you to download a copy of the source code under the heading:

Single-Pass Modula-2 Compiler Source Code (Lilith M-code)
https://www.cfbsoftware.com/modula2/

Chris

Guido

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Mar 3, 2022, 7:26:28 PM3/3/22

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On Friday, 12 November 2021 at 18:43:12 UTC+1, Jos Dreesen wrote:
> Subject already tells it all : I managed to extract the sourcecode for the Lilith's single pass Modula-2 compiler from the harddisk of the Lilith on display in the Museum of Kommunikation in Berne / Switzerland.

Great work! Two questions come to mind:

1) Do you know anything about copyright/permissions regarding the set of Lilith harddisk images you published on your FTP site? There's tons of amazing data in there (such as the diploma thesis works of colleagues I studied with at the time as well as CS lecture notes which I remember more or less fondly…). I thought about exposing and adding some context to individual file sets for the interested public, but I'm unsure if this would pose any intellectual property and/or privacy concerns. Under which conditions did the Museum resp. ETHZ allow you to make the disk images publicly available?

2) Your Emulith binary no longer seems to work with recent MacOS versions (X11/FLTK issues). I managed to get it up and running again though by recompiling with a few tweaks and changes. If anyone else is interested in this, please let me know.

Best,
Guido

nemo

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Mar 4, 2022, 10:05:44 AM3/4/22

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On 2022-03-03 19:26, Guido wrote:
> On Friday, 12 November 2021 at 18:43:12 UTC+1, Jos Dreesen wrote:
>> Subject already tells it all : I managed to extract the sourcecode for the Lilith's single pass Modula-2 compiler from the harddisk of the Lilith on display in the Museum of Kommunikation in Berne / Switzerland.
>

> [...]

>
> 2) Your Emulith binary no longer seems to work with recent MacOS versions (X11/FLTK issues). I managed to get it up and running again though by recompiling with a few tweaks and changes. If anyone else is interested in this, please let me know.

Thank you, Guido, I would be most interested. Could you place your
changes in a public repository?

(Emulith never ran on my old PPC Mac because of the NUXI problem.)

N.

>
> Best,
> Guido
>

nemo

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Mar 4, 2022, 10:10:09 AM3/4/22

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On 2022-03-03 19:26, Guido wrote:

> On Friday, 12 November 2021 at 18:43:12 UTC+1, Jos Dreesen wrote:
>> Subject already tells it all : I managed to extract the sourcecode for the Lilith's single pass Modula-2 compiler from the harddisk of the Lilith on display in the Museum of Kommunikation in Berne / Switzerland.

> [...]

>
> 2) Your Emulith binary no longer seems to work with recent MacOS versions (X11/FLTK issues). I managed to get it up and running again though by recompiling with a few tweaks and changes. If anyone else is interested in this, please let me know.

Thank you, Guido, I am most interested. Could you possibly post it on a
public repository?

(I was never able to run Emulith on my old PPC Mac due to a NUXI problem.)

Sincerely,
N.

>
> Best,
> Guido
>

nemo

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Mar 4, 2022, 1:00:07 PM3/4/22

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On 2022-03-04 10:10, nemo wrote (twice):
[...]

Apologies for the double post. My ISP reported that the attempt failed.

N.

Guido

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Mar 4, 2022, 5:36:29 PM3/4/22

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On Friday, 4 March 2022 at 16:05:44 UTC+1, nemo wrote:
> Thank you, Guido, I would be most interested. Could you place your
> changes in a public repository?
>
> (Emulith never ran on my old PPC Mac because of the NUXI problem.)

I've uploaded the modified Makefile and my build instructions to

https://github.com/good-sushi/Emulith-BuildOSX

Enjoy!
Guido