lucretia wrote:
This is not (currently) GNAT. Currently using Greenhills Ada for some
projects and some older projects are using VADS (End-of-life compiler
from the 90's).

In message <C43E763A.E7690%yaldnif.w@blueyonder.co.uk>, "(see below)"
<yaldnif.w@blueyonder.co.uk> writes
Really? I thought Occam was designed for parallel & distributed
processing?


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\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills Staffs England /\/\/\/\/
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

linnix <me@linnix.info-for.us> writes:

The original Apple Lisa and Macintosh used Pascal, and Pascal calling
convention and Pascal strings in the ToolBox. 68K assembly language
was also used.

Petter

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On 30/04/2008 21:59, in article hotOMad42NGIFANS@phaedsys.demon.co.uk,
"Chris H" <chris@phaedsys.org> wrote:

It was, but it was very limited (to disjoint communicating processes).

The tasking features of Ada were loosely based on CSP (the ancestor of
occam) but go far beyond occam in generality and power, even in Ada 83.
Ada 95 and then Ada 2005 added a slew of additional concurrency and
real-time capabilities.

--
Bill Findlay
<surname><forename> chez blueyonder.co.uk

On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:46:52 GMT, "Ed Falis" <falis@verizon.net>
wrote:

I would love to agree, but never having been able to cure myself
of writing bugs, who am I not to accept one of life's small
realities?

Thinking is certainly the way to go, but belief in perfection?
Perfection as a goal, certainly.

Stephen


--
Stephen Pelc, stephenXXX@mpeforth.com
MicroProcessor Engineering Ltd - More Real, Less Time
133 Hill Lane, Southampton SO15 5AF, England
tel: +44 (0)23 8063 1441, fax: +44 (0)23 8033 9691
web: http://www.mpeforth.com - free VFX Forth downloads

On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 09:20:55 -0700, linnix wrote:

Besides the Mac and Lisa (pointed out by Petter), a lot of early DOS-
vintage PC software was written in TurboPascal. In that era, most
applications carried all of their device drivers around with them,
because DOS was mostly used as a program loader. So yes, applications
and devices, both.

Modula-3, which is another Pascal derivative, also had explicit support
for low-level programming and device-driver writing. Operating systems
were written in it.

Cheers,

--
Andrew

On 2008-04-30, linnix <me@linnix.info-for.us> wrote:
I did. I used Pascal for a real-time kernel and various
associated hardware drivers that were written in Pascal back
around 84-85. Pascal (with just a couple extensions) worked
brilliantly for low-level hardware stuff.

--
Grant Edwards grante Yow! Vote for ME
at -- I'm well-tapered,
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and TAX-DEFERRED!

On Apr 30, 4:20*pm, linnix <m...@linnix.info-for.us> wrote:
I've done CS8900 Ethernet device drivers (including the interrupt
routine) using Borland Pascal 7. I would use Pascal for everything
except that C is the lowest common denominator and is available for
just about every chip.

John McCabe wrote:
Hi John,

I use Ada on a daily basis at work (not on the MIPS, however). We use it on
many of our projects. I also use it on robotics hobby projects at home and do
a lot of Windows GUI-based hardware simulators using Ada.


--
Jerry

On 30 Apr, 21:15, Jeffrey Creem <j...@thecreems.com> wrote:
Yes, heard of both. Maybe you should consider looking into GNAT and
publicly documenting any process regarding porting to another piece of
hardware, with(out) runtime. This is something I intend to do as it's
not my job, just an interest but I'm lazy

Luke.

On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 09:20:55 -0700 (PDT), linnix
<me@linnix.info-for.us> wrote:

At least prior to 1980, I would't even think about writing an ISR in
_any_ high level language.

You could never know, what the compiler did behind your back. If for
instance the processor did not have multiply instruction, the
compiler generated a library call, which usually contained non
re-entrant code, which of course is unacceptable.

On VAX/VMS, while a large part of the user mode code (and some
executive mode) code was written in Bliss-11 (an intermediate level
language of which DEC had full control), most kernel mode and
certainly any ISR was written in assembler.

Since 1980, a lot has happened. At least the compiler writer have
recognized, that the run time must be re-entrant (which is quite hard
in C due to that some string functions having internal storage). Some
compiler vendors even have "interrupt" extensions, so they seriously
must think about re-entarncy issues in the run time library.

Paul

On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 09:20:55 -0700 (PDT), linnix
<me@linnix.info-for.us> wrote:

In 1982 I used a strange Pascal compiler on the Motorola EXORciser
targeting the 6809, which had a statically defined 8 level "display
register" system to handle nested function definitions.

Such constructs were of course completely useless for handling ISR
code.

Paul

On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:17:14 +0100, "(see below)"
<yaldnif.w@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

I agree (even though I didn't quite agree at the time I learnt Ada and
had just been using Occam-2. Ada's advantage is that it was already a
complete language when it became available and has been developed ever
since. Occam-2, on the other hand, was really just something knocked
out by Inmos to support their hardware and basically died when the
transputers disappeared.

I was, of course, joking to some extent about the "one true language",
but Occam-x could have gone far! You can still get Occam for PC
(apparently) here:

http://www.hpcc.ecs.soton.ac.uk/software/spoc/

On Thu, 01 May 2008 09:54:49 +0300, Paul Keinanen <keinanen@sci.fi>
wrote:

It seems that Bliss is much more commonly used language that I have
ever expected.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLISS_language

Paul

lucretia wrote:
I am somewhat in the same position as you. While I would probably find
doing the port 'fun' there are a few factors about it that would tend to
make it a non-trivial port and going without vendor support in this case
is somewhat not practical.

Looking into a GNAT paid port for it. Maybe now that PA Semi PowerPC is
dead people looking for low power, full temp range, high performance
will need to return to the MIPS world (shudder) and vendors will find it
more interesting.

On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:26:37 -0400, Stephen Pelc <stephenXXX@mpeforth.com>
wrote:
....
No real disagreement. But I think in general, there are a lot of methods
that can be applied to reduce the need to spend a lot of time in the
debugger. These range from compiler checks, to use of assertions/DbC
where available, coding standards, pair programming, code reviews,
test-first "design" and unit tests, frequent integration, to formal
methods and even informal reasoning about the code being written. Isn't
the common perception that most programmers these days spend most of their
time in the debugger?

Paul Keinanen wrote:

I have a Cadence Graphics box consisting of an Apple IIe married to
an OEM MC68000 coprocessor running an O/S that has drivers written in
Pascal

Michael

On Thu, 01 May 2008 13:34:40 GMT, "Ed Falis" <falis@verizon.net>
wrote:

Is it really true? A debugger should be a tool to help with
observation so that you can form a hypothesis from which to
generate a yes/no experiment.

From observation of programmers, some can debug, others cannot.
The majority of those who can are not great users of debuggers.
If you can't observe, you can't debug. Tools that help me
observe are the ones I want. When you debug a TCP/IP stack,
Ethereal is much more useful than a debugger.

I once debugged a banknote sorting machine (16 bit TMS9995,
a long time ago) with a pair of resistor-ladder DACs
attached to the upper and lower 8 bits of the address
bus and feeding a scope in X-Y mode. That told me far more
about my program than any number of debuggers.

Debugging, especially for hard real time systems, has
actually become more difficult rather than less over the
years. These days, you can manipulate squillions of
bits per peekosecond, and there's not a single pin
change! And if you attach the usual invasive debugger,
your peeksecond becomes a crashosecond.

Stephen

--
Stephen Pelc, stephenXXX@mpeforth.com
MicroProcessor Engineering Ltd - More Real, Less Time
133 Hill Lane, Southampton SO15 5AF, England
tel: +44 (0)23 8063 1441, fax: +44 (0)23 8033 9691
web: http://www.mpeforth.com - free VFX Forth downloads

On 01/05/2008 14:34, in article op.uag9b1xw5afhvo@naropa, "Ed Falis"
<falis@verizon.net> wrote:

Perhaps.

I have not used a debugger for over 20 years, and only once or twice in the
10 years before that. Of course, when I did use one, it was for some C code.
I have never needed to use a debugger on Pascal, Modula, or Ada programs.
--
Bill Findlay
<surname><forename> chez blueyonder.co.uk

On 1 May, 12:15, Jeffrey Creem <j...@thecreems.com> wrote:

Think you might find it a tad expensive if it's for a personal
project.

Not dead, just absorbed by Apple

Nothing wrong with MIPS, it's nice n clean...I liked it anyways :P

Luke.