4 ms·

I had a copy of this in the early 80's, but after reading the documentation, I decided that it was almost useless so I never actually used it. Microsoft FORTRA

I had a copy of this in the early 80's, but after reading the documentation, I decided that it was almost useless so I never actually used it. Microsoft FORTRAN 80 was a limited subset of FORTRAN IV and not even close to FORTRAN 77.

throwaway81523 5y ago
You could spend 3 more quatloos to upgrade your F80 to F83: https://github.com/uho/F83 https://github.com/uho/F83
- anonymousiam 5y ago
  I suppose that would be fine on planet Triskelion, but the thread is about FORTRAN and not Forth.
adrian_b 5y ago
FORTRAN 77 (approved in 1978-04) has appeared after Intel 8080 (1974) and Zilog Z80 (1976). It would have made very little sense for a company willing to make a FORTRAN 77 compiler to target already obsolete microprocessors, instead of targetting the state-of-the-art Intel 8086/8088 or Motorola MC68000. The Microsoft F80 compiler would have indeed been useless for anyone having unlimited access to a CPU more powerful than a Z80. Nevertheless there were many who had to be content with an 8080/8085/Z80. For them, there was nothing better than Microsoft F80 for serious numeric computation. FORTRAN IV was the language in which a huge amount of high quality numeric computation libraries were easily available. No library was available in Fortran 77 at that time. The language implemented by F80 was pretty standard. It lacked many extensions frequently provided by other compilers, but that did not matter much, because the libraries that you would want to use were written to use only strictly standard features, and not vendor extensions. Before using MS F80, I had used IBM mainframes and DEC PDP-11 minicomputers. I do not remember any special difficulty in porting the IBM/DEC Fortran programs to MS F80. Obviously, an 8080/Z80, when doing floating-point computations, was between 10 times and 1000 times slower than an IBM or DEC computer with hardware FPU. Even so, for me, passing to MS F80, where I had exclusive access to the computer 24/7, was a huge progress in comparison to using a shared mainframe or minicomputer, and I could be much more productive, despite the slow computer.
- anonymousiam 5y ago
  All of your facts are correct, but I do not agree with your opinion about the "sense" of providing a compiler for "obsolete" microprocessors. The IBM PC came out mid 1981 and CP/M dominated the market for several years after that. Also, Borland produced an excellent version of (Turbo) Pascal for CP/M. (UCSD also had a CP/M version of Pascal.) FORTRAN IV debuted in 1962, which was eight years before Pascal. I'm glad that you were able to port your code from DEC FORTRAN IV. I may be younger than you because I learned FORTRAN 77 first, but IIRC Microsoft's F80 had some serious shortcomings and was not a "full" implementation of FORTRAN IV. That's probably why they called it "FORTRAN 80" instead.
  - ratboy666 5y ago
    Microsoft FORTRAN-80 is an implementation of FORTRAN 66. The "shortcomings" are: - No COMPLEX type - Specification statements must be ordered FUNCTION/type/COMMON/EQUIVALENCE/DATA/statement functions - differing storage requirement for types then again, even MATLAB (for example) doesn't need COMPLEX

throwaway81523 5y ago

You could spend 3 more quatloos to upgrade your F80 to F83: https://github.com/uho/F83 https://github.com/uho/F83

anonymousiam 5y ago
I suppose that would be fine on planet Triskelion, but the thread is about FORTRAN and not Forth.

adrian_b 5y ago

FORTRAN 77 (approved in 1978-04) has appeared after Intel 8080 (1974) and Zilog Z80 (1976). It would have made very little sense for a company willing to make a FORTRAN 77 compiler to target already obsolete microprocessors, instead of targetting the state-of-the-art Intel 8086/8088 or Motorola MC68000. The Microsoft F80 compiler would have indeed been useless for anyone having unlimited access to a CPU more powerful than a Z80. Nevertheless there were many who had to be content with an 8080/8085/Z80. For them, there was nothing better than Microsoft F80 for serious numeric computation. FORTRAN IV was the language in which a huge amount of high quality numeric computation libraries were easily available. No library was available in Fortran 77 at that time. The language implemented by F80 was pretty standard. It lacked many extensions frequently provided by other compilers, but that did not matter much, because the libraries that you would want to use were written to use only strictly standard features, and not vendor extensions. Before using MS F80, I had used IBM mainframes and DEC PDP-11 minicomputers. I do not remember any special difficulty in porting the IBM/DEC Fortran programs to MS F80. Obviously, an 8080/Z80, when doing floating-point computations, was between 10 times and 1000 times slower than an IBM or DEC computer with hardware FPU. Even so, for me, passing to MS F80, where I had exclusive access to the computer 24/7, was a huge progress in comparison to using a shared mainframe or minicomputer, and I could be much more productive, despite the slow computer.

anonymousiam 5y ago
All of your facts are correct, but I do not agree with your opinion about the "sense" of providing a compiler for "obsolete" microprocessors. The IBM PC came out mid 1981 and CP/M dominated the market for several years after that. Also, Borland produced an excellent version of (Turbo) Pascal for CP/M. (UCSD also had a CP/M version of Pascal.) FORTRAN IV debuted in 1962, which was eight years before Pascal. I'm glad that you were able to port your code from DEC FORTRAN IV. I may be younger than you because I learned FORTRAN 77 first, but IIRC Microsoft's F80 had some serious shortcomings and was not a "full" implementation of FORTRAN IV. That's probably why they called it "FORTRAN 80" instead.
- ratboy666 5y ago
  Microsoft FORTRAN-80 is an implementation of FORTRAN 66. The "shortcomings" are: - No COMPLEX type - Specification statements must be ordered FUNCTION/type/COMMON/EQUIVALENCE/DATA/statement functions - differing storage requirement for types then again, even MATLAB (for example) doesn't need COMPLEX