Development Tools

[David Rosengrant]

Hi, 

I've been lingering here for a bit. I have both the pidp 8 and the 11/70 kits. The pdp8 is built. I'd like to know the best recommendation for compilers, development platform UI etc.

Thanks in advance,

Dave R.

[David Johnson]

A lot depends on your interests and a bit on your existing knowledge.  I have no experience with the pdp-8, but I cut my teeth on an 11/70. Mostly RSTS/E, but a bit of rsx11 and rt11.  Spent some time with VAX/VMS before going headfirst into the BSD 4.x Unix world. So when I built my PiDP,

I booted up rsts/e mode for old times sake, tried a few old games, but the lure of the dark side was too strong, and so the machine has been running 2.9 BSD for 99% of the time since then.  

I use the free VNC client/server to access the Pi screen, and terminal windows connected to the emulated system. Vi for the editor, command line tools, stock compilers. Makefile based build environment. So no platform UI to speak of. 

The 16 bit address space is just too limited to allow modern GUI/IDE environments to operate. 

  -- ddj

Dave Johnson

On Oct 11, 2023, at 4:18 PM, David Rosengrant <daved...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi, 

I've been lingering here for a bit. I have both the pidp 8 and the 11/70 kits. The pdp8 is built. I'd like to know the best recommendation for compilers, development platform UI etc.

Thanks in advance,

Dave R.

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[Mike Katz]

The PDP-8 has a 12 bit word and a 32K address space.

The following languages are available for the PDP-8 (that I know of)
     Fortran Compiler
     Basic Interpreter (many)
     Basic Compiler
     Focal Interpreter
     Lisp
     Algol
     C (very small C)
     Assembler

The PDP-11/70 has a 16 bit address word and a 22 bit physical address space.

The PDP-11/70 has a 22 bit address space with the following restrictions:
Program Virtual Space:     65,536 bytes
UNIBUS Space:                    262,144 bytes
Physical Memory Space:    4, 194,304 bytes

With overlays and paging programs could be very very long.

As for available languages between the DEC operating systems and the versions of Unix available on it they are too numerous to mention.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pidp-11/A81BAA34-195B-47C2-A857-CA5B32C95DDD%40brown.edu.

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2023-10-12 01:52, Mike Katz wrote:
>
> The PDP-8 has a 12 bit word and a 32K address space.
>
> The following languages are available for the PDP-8 (that I know of)
>      Fortran Compiler
>      Basic Interpreter (many)
>      Basic Compiler

I didn't know of any Basic compiler. Have any more info?
I've just used an interpreter or two.

>      Focal Interpreter
>      Lisp
>      Algol
>      C (very small C)

It's even more limited than that, I'd say. But even a shadow of a C is
pretty impressive.

>      Assembler

There is an excellent Pascal. I've also played with Snobol. And there is
TECO. Probably a few others as well.

> The PDP-11/70 has a 16 bit address word and a 22 bit physical address space.
>
> The PDP-11/70 has a 22 bit address space with the following restrictions:
> Program Virtual Space:     65,536 bytes
> UNIBUS Space:                    262,144 bytes
> Physical Memory Space:    4, 194,304 bytes
>
> With overlays and paging programs could be very very long.
>
> As for available languages between the DEC operating systems and the
> versions of Unix available on it they are too numerous to mention.

Indeed.

Johnny

--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: b...@softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

[Mike Katz]

The basic compiler is standard with OS/8 I believe.  It was called BCOMP.

[Mike Katz]

Look in the OS/8 Language Reference Guide for BCOMP.  It's in Chapter 2.

I vaguely remember a Pascal for it, I didn't know Snobal was available
for it.  Reading a Teco program is like looking at a baud rate glitch
but I guess it does deserve mentioning.

I believe DEC also had a business oriented basic that went with their
COS-300 systems but for the life of me I can't remember it's name.

On 10/11/2023 7:21 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:

[Johnny Billquist]

Oh! That one. Hmm. Ok, fair enough. You could call it a compiler.

Whenever you use the OS/8 BASIC, BCOMP is invoked every time you type
"RUN" inside. It transforms the source into pseudo insutrctions which
are processed by BRTS. Normally it does this on a temporary file created
inside the interactive environment. But yes, you can also use BCOMP to
create a core image that you save, which also includes BRTS, so then you
have something that stands alone.

But BCOMP do not create PDP-8 code as such from the BASIC source.

Johnny

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2023-10-12 02:56, Mike Katz wrote:
> Look in the OS/8 Language Reference Guide for BCOMP.  It's in Chapter 2.

It's also in the OS/8 Handbook.

> I vaguely remember a Pascal for it, I didn't know Snobal was available
> for it.  Reading a Teco program is like looking at a baud rate glitch
> but I guess it does deserve mentioning.

Pascal was available from DECUS. It comes with the P-system, and the
Pascal compiler is written in Pascal. However, the DECUS distribution
did not include the Pascal compiler itself. But note that the Pascal
compiler then generates P-code, and you always need to run your Pascal
binaries in the P-code interpreter.
SNOBOL was also from DECUS, if I remember right. I know I have it
somewhere, and did play around some. Just like with the LISP.

Fair enough comment about TECO, but it is a programming language all the
same. I wrote en Emacs clone in TECO-8, which is what I then usually
used to edit stuff.

> I believe DEC also had a business oriented basic that went with their
> COS-300 systems but for the life of me I can't remember it's name.

DIBOL, if I remember right.

Johnny

[Mike Katz]

Johnny,

Fair enough.  It is technically a pseudo code compiler.  Just like the
Pascal P System.

TBH I was unaware that BASIC called BCOMP when a program was run.

Thanks,

            Mike

[Johnny Billquist]

I guess it's fair to say it is a compiler. Just not to PDP-8 code. But
that then leaves us with no actual interactive BASIC, because BASIC is
just going through the same hoop whenever you type RUN inside it. :-)
And there is no immediate mode execution of expressions.

Johnny

On 2023-10-12 15:21, Mike Katz wrote:
> Johnny,
>

> Fair enough.  It is technically a pseudo code compiler.  Justlike the