jb@rti-sel (04/29/86)
Subject: Re: Request for Pascal Reviews for ][ (v long) > In message <527@unirot.UUCP> halloran@unirot.UUCP (Bob Halloran) writes: > >My wife is a high school teacher who has been put in charge of the > >new computer lab. She is now working up her purchase requests for > >the next school year. She wants to purchase Pascal, but wants to > >know which will be the 'best' for students starting out. My Apple > >experience is insufficient to be of help. > > > >Any opinions on good versions of Pascal for a school environment? > >Apple-native, please, they don't have Z-80 cards and the additional > >expense would rule any CP/M versions out. > With over 50,000 lines of Apple Pascal under my belt, I recommend it for learning pascal and developmental work. > While I have only used one Pascal version for native Apple ][, I > can give you a recommendation for it and my experiences with it. > > Apple's own Pascal is a UCSD Pascal. It has its own editor which is > at least decent (I only used it for a little while, but I had no > trouble with it). The compiler is rather slow, but works fine. There > are a number of problems you have to think about, however: > > This Pascal does not operate under DOS 3.3 or ProDOS. It uses a > strange 512-byte sector format and I couldn't even get it to drop > me to a command level. THIS IS NOT REALLY BAD! More on this later. Floppys are formmated as volumes that hold 77 files in 280 blocks. File space is allocated contiguously. This enhances data access time. Dos and Prodos have scattered allocation. There is no command line level. > The environment is completely menu-driven, which annoyed me but > was still not too much of an annoyance. In the simplest mode of development the keystokes 'qur' will exit the editor, save your work, compile the program and execute it. 'e' will re-edit the file. When an compilation error occurs, you have the option of continuing or editing the file at the exact place of the error. Once inside the editor, a more verbose form of the error message appears. By using the 'setup' program, you can set the 'student' global flag which forces the path to the editor after an error. > > The only serious problems/annoyances come if you are using a ][ or > ][+. You NEED 64K (//e //c or ][ ][+ w/ language card) to run this. > You also want an 80 column card (I don't remember which cards it > supports, so check this--Apples' own worked, of course) because other- > wise you get to flip between two 40 column screens. This works, but Apple's, Videx, SuprTerm, etc..... work. I avoid 40 column mode like the plague. > it still a pain. The last problem I had resulted in needing two > disk drives. You definitely need two of them. The program uses a > LOT of stuff on diskette. We managed to get it to do things on a > single drive, but not well, so if you want to use this, make sure you > have that extra drive. This high disk usage brings up another problem. Single drive pascal is no fun. Two drive pascal works, but the compiler is slow. Four drive pascal, works, more space but still slow. I recommend a hard-disk. For a single station the Sider for ~<$700 would be the best for the money. I haven't worked with one, but the ads suggest it works with pascal. For multiple stations, I stand by Corvus. I've used a 5 meg drive, and 3-20 meg drives. The 5 meg was bought in '82, and is still in service. The 20 meg drives have had some problems, but I find that a mean time before failure of 1.5 years acceptable. Three of the drives have been transported over 25,000 miles by car. Failures include: media fatality (oxide flaked off due to vibration ;-) ,etc ) connector failure (teardown/putup equipment twice a week for a couple years) Directory was updated while the media spundown during a brownout. No failure of electronics. I've used a 3 station configuration of Omninet (old version), no problems. A new 2 station OmniNet system, with a 20 meg OmniDrive, arrived but I haven't had time to work with it much. As for field service, No complains. Once there was a slip-up in their shipping department, an invoice got lost on somebody's desk. We contacted them, one of the managers found it late in the afternoon. We picked it up at 5am the next morning at the airport on the east coast. > It is VERY standard. I could not find a single thing that was not > implemented on this version that was in standard Pascal. There were > a number of extras that took advantage of the Apples' graphics. They have units that allow you to 'chain' from one application to another. > > The compiled code was not as fast as native code would be. It compiles > into a heavily tokenized form that still runs considerably faster than > Applesoft, using equivalent code. P-code is very dense. You can get alot of program functionality in 64k. Also applications can have their program units (modules) swap in from disk only when needed. I have running programs that take up over 90k of disk space. > by now. You already said that you weren't interested in anything that > used CP/M cards or the like. It may be that this Pascal is still ex- > pensive enough that the purchase of a CP/M card as well as Turbo > Pascal would be competitively priced. If this is the case, I would > recommend doing this above buying the Apple Pascal. Otherwise, this > is a useable version. Enhancement Technologies Corp. (ETC) has a 68000 board that runs version 4.? of the UCSD-p system. PDQ they call it. Speeds up applesoft also. > : Jim Frost : "You just gotta smile through it" : Jeff Bartlett Now with: Research Triangle Institute Center for Digital Systems Research RTP, NC. {back-bone} mcnc!rti-sel!jb