jjhnsn@ut-ngp.UUCP (J. Lee Johnson) (07/25/84)
There has been some discussion on the net about Rosetta Smalltalk.
Rosetta Smalltalk was written by Scott K. Warren and Dennis Abbe of
Rosetta, Inc., 5925 Kirby Drive, Houston, Tx 77005. They had a prototype
Z80 version running in 1979, and later, under contract to Intel, worked
on versions for newer microprocessors. I believe Intel paid for the new
versions and never used them.
I have a Beta test version of Rosetta Smalltalk that runs under CP/M or
CDOS on my Cromemco Z80 computer. The window software is configured for
a Zenith-Z19/Heath-H19 terminal. While Rosetta is not a "graphic"
smalltalk, the window system is impressive. Only workspace availability
limits the size and number of windows. Window "frames" are drawn with
the Z19 graphic characters. The smalltalk mouse is a secondary cursor
(block style) that is moved around the screen by control keys.
I cannot even begin to think of a reasonable benchmark to run under
Rosetta and (for example) Microsoft Basic. Other than both being
interative and conversational, they are totally different. Rosetta
Smalltalk echos typed characters promptly, and the window software is
quite acceptable, even on a 9600 baud serial terminal. Rosetta
Smalltalk for the Exidy Sorcerer is even more impressive.
Rosetta Smalltalk was based on the work at Xerox PARC, but is not an
implementation of Smalltalk-72, Smalltalk-76, or Smalltalk-80. As far
as I know, Rosetta Smalltalk was never available commercially. The
software and manual that I have are prototypes. A lot of stuff on the
market is not as well done.
For more information see:
"Rosetta Smalltalk: A Conversational, Extensible Microcomputer Language",
Scott K. Warren, Dennis Abbe; ACM SigPC Notes, vol. 2, numbers 1/2
(spring/summer 1979).
Or come by my house for a demo :-)
"Texans for Bill the Cat"
James Lee Johnson, U.T. Computation Center, Austin, Texas 78712
ARPA: jjhnsn@ut-ngp
UUCP: {allegra,ihnp4,gatech,ut-sally}!ut-ngp!jjhnsnbrucec@orca.UUCP (Master of the Belvedere) (08/04/84)
---------- >> Rosetta Smalltalk was written by Scott K. Warren and Dennis Abbe of >> Rosetta, Inc., 5925 Kirby Drive, Houston, Tx 77005. They had a prototype >> Z80 version running in 1979, and later, under contract to Intel, worked >> on versions for newer microprocessors. I believe Intel paid for the new >> versions and never used them. Intel did in fact market Rosetta Smalltalk on the iAPX 432 processor (the 432-100 board, which plugs into an Intel "bl
brucec@orca.UUCP (08/08/84)
[Reposted by request; the article-eater zapped me.] >> Rosetta Smalltalk was written by Scott K. Warren and Dennis Abbe of >> Rosetta, Inc., 5925 Kirby Drive, Houston, Tx 77005. They had a prototype >> Z80 version running in 1979, and later, under contract to Intel, worked >> on versions for newer microprocessors. I believe Intel paid for the new >> versions and never used them. Intel did in fact market Rosetta Smalltalk on the iAPX 432 processor (the 432-100 board, which plugs into an Intel "blue box") as OPL (for Object Programming Language). This made some sense, since they had no other real demos for the 432. I had one of the beasts in my system when I worked at Intel, and I still have the OPL manual. OPL was a real dog for performance, largely because of a *really* bad hardware architecture in the 432-100 board design. The 432 was forced to go onto the Multibus for every memory access, and the bus interface was screwed up so that if you didn't modify the system, each access cost >100 microseconds (16 bits wide, in my system). I have a feeling that, if Intel had been serious about either Smalltalk or the 432, that we would be seeing amazing things now, but as it is, they have effectively tubed both. C'est la vie ... C'est le guerre ... C'est what? Bruce Cohen UUCP: ...!tektronix!orca!brucec CSNET: orca!brucec@tektronix ARPA: orca!brucec.tektronix@rand-relay USMail: M/S 61-183 Tektronix, Inc. P.O. Box 1000 Wilsonville, OR 97070