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Turbo Pascal is great and I love the fact that it uses the Wordstar key combinations. I wish that there was a version for 8080 but I understand why they went w

Turbo Pascal is great and I love the fact that it uses the Wordstar key combinations. I wish that there was a version for 8080 but I understand why they went with the Z80. Borland went on to create Turbo Modula-2 for CP/M which was very similar to TP but with lots of language enhancements and faster execution time of the resulting binaries. However, it was released quite late in 1986 and quickly withdrawn.

billforsternz 6y ago
It's been a long long long time since I heard anyone opining one way or the other on the classic 1970s dilemma of whether to stay compatible to the 8080 or use all those cool new Z80 instructions considering that the Z80 was kicking Intel's butt in the 8 bit CPU market!
- LawrenceWoodman 6y ago
  It's mainly that I just prefer programming in assembler on the 8080/8085 - it's easier to fit the instruction set neatly in my head. The 8085 is also much easier to emulate and I like the ease of interfacing it with hardware. This preference tends to colour everything I do on CP/M.
  - billforsternz 6y ago
    I understand. So many years ago I built a fast CP/M emulator using a novel scheme. How did it go now, I remember; lodsb mov ah,al jmp ax. So just three instructions none of which affected the flags. So no need for lahf/sahf. The downside was that I needed 64K to sparsely store my opcode emulations. Opcode 0x00 at 0x0000. 0x01 at 0x0101. 0x02 at 0x0202 etc. In each case the code would just be the direct emulation of the 8080 opcode followed by lodsb mov ah,al jmp ax. Opcode 0xff was a manageable problem. But yes, I just did the 8080 instructions, and I remember now that most CP/M software was fine with that, the Turbo Pascal software was an exception.
odersky 6y ago
I was the co-author of Turbo Modula-2 for CP/M. It was quite a capable system to fit in less than 64K. Great memories. At the time Borland intended to develop their own version of Modula-2 for IBM PC, so they bought ours as a complement for the CP/M versions they were still covering. But the in-house version got delayed a lot. It was eventually released as Topspeed Modula-2 several years later, from a spinoff. If Borland had let us also do the IBM-PC version in around 1984, maybe history would have changed and Modula-2 would have become more popular.
- protomyth 6y ago
  University of North Dakota used Modula-2 as its language for CompSci starting in Summer 88 (not sure when they switched away from it). I get the feeling some of the decision was because they had a version running on the IBM 370 under CMS. XEDIT was an interesting editor. I liked it but remember the I/O commands were frustrating as heck. It would be interesting to C-syntax it and see what the reaction is.
- jksmith 6y ago
  Kudos. I loved M2. I haven't replicated the sublime satisfaction I enjoyed from writing M2 since, in any other language. I felt like I could produce most any business solution with it, one module at a time.

billforsternz 6y ago

It's been a long long long time since I heard anyone opining one way or the other on the classic 1970s dilemma of whether to stay compatible to the 8080 or use all those cool new Z80 instructions considering that the Z80 was kicking Intel's butt in the 8 bit CPU market!

LawrenceWoodman 6y ago
It's mainly that I just prefer programming in assembler on the 8080/8085 - it's easier to fit the instruction set neatly in my head. The 8085 is also much easier to emulate and I like the ease of interfacing it with hardware. This preference tends to colour everything I do on CP/M.
- billforsternz 6y ago
  I understand. So many years ago I built a fast CP/M emulator using a novel scheme. How did it go now, I remember; lodsb mov ah,al jmp ax. So just three instructions none of which affected the flags. So no need for lahf/sahf. The downside was that I needed 64K to sparsely store my opcode emulations. Opcode 0x00 at 0x0000. 0x01 at 0x0101. 0x02 at 0x0202 etc. In each case the code would just be the direct emulation of the 8080 opcode followed by lodsb mov ah,al jmp ax. Opcode 0xff was a manageable problem. But yes, I just did the 8080 instructions, and I remember now that most CP/M software was fine with that, the Turbo Pascal software was an exception.

odersky 6y ago

I was the co-author of Turbo Modula-2 for CP/M. It was quite a capable system to fit in less than 64K. Great memories. At the time Borland intended to develop their own version of Modula-2 for IBM PC, so they bought ours as a complement for the CP/M versions they were still covering. But the in-house version got delayed a lot. It was eventually released as Topspeed Modula-2 several years later, from a spinoff. If Borland had let us also do the IBM-PC version in around 1984, maybe history would have changed and Modula-2 would have become more popular.

protomyth 6y ago
University of North Dakota used Modula-2 as its language for CompSci starting in Summer 88 (not sure when they switched away from it). I get the feeling some of the decision was because they had a version running on the IBM 370 under CMS. XEDIT was an interesting editor. I liked it but remember the I/O commands were frustrating as heck. It would be interesting to C-syntax it and see what the reaction is.
jksmith 6y ago
Kudos. I loved M2. I haven't replicated the sublime satisfaction I enjoyed from writing M2 since, in any other language. I felt like I could produce most any business solution with it, one module at a time.