Archive for the ‘History’ Category
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/03/15
The BitSavers /pdf/apple/apple_I directory now contains a PDF of the Apple I Cassette Interface Documentation.
Awesome history (:
It even has this very old Apple address on it:
APPLE COMPUTER COMPANY
770 Welch Road,
Suite 154
Palo Alto, California 94304
Phone: (415) 326-4248
(both the address and phone now have different owners now).
–jeroen
Posted in Apple, BitSavers.org, History, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/02/25
This post lists a lot of links related to the history of Pascal / Object Pascal / Delphi Language / FreePascal / etc.
No mentioning of Pascal should start without Niklaus Wirth. At the time of writing he is still alive, hopefully he still is a the time of publication.
Link clearance.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Apple Pascal, BitSavers.org, Borland Pascal, DEC Pascal, Delphi, Development, FreePascal, History, Object Pascal, Pascal, Software Development, Think Pascal, Turbo Pascal, UCSD Pascal | 7 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/01/02
I forgot who pointed me at this, but recently I came across a reference to the Good Ideas, Through the Looking Glass paper by Niklaus Wirth (by many known as the “father” of Pascal, though he has done a lot more – for instance the WSN – , still is involved with the ETH in Zürich, and turns 80 on February 15h).
Back when it appeared in the 2005/2006 timeframe I missed it, and I’m glad to have bumped into just for the historic perspective he offers. I can understand some will disagree with parts of his conclusions and observations, that’s why I like that MetaFilter has a nice page with discussion about it and a link to the PDF version of the paper.
I also like that Niklaus kept active in the field of computer science for so long, similar to Donald Knuth. There is a lot to having a great historic perspective to things.
–jeroen
via: Good Ideas, Through the Looking Glass | MetaFilter.
Posted in Delphi, Development, History, Pascal, Software Development | 3 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/20
1983 Apple IIe ad (thanks Apple2History.org) click to enlarge
Some of you might remember that Apple ][ plus and Apple IIe was part of my early programming days.
I vividly remember the Vlasveld Computers shop in Leiden (back then at Morsweg 21 in Leiden), then ran by Aad Vlasveld as one of the first Apple dealers in The Netherlands. Back then I barely could afford floppy disks, but a few months ago I was able to buy the hardware we used at high school.
Well, I bought an Apple IIe from (from a private person as ClassicComputerShop.eu failed to react in time), so here are some links to stuff I’ve used: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in //e, About, Apple, Apple ][, BitSavers.org, History, Personal, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/19
Almost a year ago, a thread on “premature Delphi optimization” came by on G+ about this code:
procedure ExchangeInteger(var AValue1, AValue2: Integer);
begin
AValue1 := AValue1 xor AValue2;
AValue2 := AValue1 xor AValue2;
AValue1 := AValue1 xor AValue2;
end;
I don’t think that was premature optimization, just some code from an old fart that had already been programming in the era where processors had reasons to use it:
Back then, the only efficient way to exchange two variables of the same data type was using the XOR swap algorithm.
Nowadays you have more options, and this is where the fun in that thread began, which I will show in a minute.
First a bit of history
The XOR swap algorithm was widely known in the 80s of last century and before, especially because the 6502 processor (oh the days of LISA Assembler) was vastly popular, as was the Z80. Together, they powered the majority of the home computers in the 70s and 80s.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Borland Pascal, Delphi, Delphi 1, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi 3, Delphi 4, Delphi 5, Delphi 6, Delphi 7, Delphi 8, Delphi x64, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Development, History, Pascal, Software Development, Turbo Pascal, UCSD Pascal | 7 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/07/20
Bitsavers published 2 new Logitech PDFs:
Who didn’t have a Logitech mouse back then?
I had the C7, various MouseMans, and a few more modern mice. Why not all mice? I developed RSI in the DOS era, ending up with TrackPoints and more recently Apple touchpads)
I remember the Logimouse C7, not because it was from Logitech, but because it was available from so may OEMs. Long before Logitech built OEM mice for Apple, they were founded in Apples, Swizerland.
The cool thing: the Programmers Toolkit had examples in Modula-2. I used that as a base to write quite some Turbo Pascal code for mouse handing.
Oh: Bitsavers does have a Logitech Modula-2 PDF online too for quite some time. I mentioned that in More Old Micro Cornucopia issues on BitSavers from 1987 and 1988.
–jeroen
via: Bitsavers’ Index of /pdf/logitech.
Posted in BitSavers.org, Development, History, Pascal, Power User, RSI, Software Development, Turbo Pascal | Tagged: c7, cornucopia, logitech mouse, modula 2 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/07/17
2 more issues got on-line both close to a 100 pages each:
So the only issues missing are #28, #30 and #31.
–jeroen
via: More Old Micro Cornucopia issues on BitSavers from 1987 and 1988 « The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff.
Posted in Assembly Language, BitSavers.org, C, C++, Development, History, Pascal, Software Development, Turbo Pascal, Turbo Prolog, x86 | Tagged: Media, technology | 1 Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/07/10
Just found out that the kind people at BitSavers added some scanned USCD Pascal documentation in PDF format:
It reminds me of my early Pascal days on Apple ][. UCSD Pascal was so slow that I was glad to discover Turbo Pascal 1.0, which lacked some of the UCSD Pascal features (for instance cross platform – including Mac, almost 30 years ago! – and Turtle graphics), but was blazingly fast.
Trade offs indeed (:
–jeroen
Posted in BitSavers.org, Delphi, Development, History, Pascal, Software Development, Turbo Pascal, UCSD Pascal | 10 Comments »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 