pete@abccam.abcl.co.uk (Peter Cockerell) (09/21/90)
I'm wondering what happened to the MINT (Machine-Independent Organic Software Tools) system that was described in the monograph of the same name by D Hendry et al. I assume it didn't take the world by storm, as I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere recently. It's an interpreted system with a very simple virtual machine, for which I implemented an interpreter on a 6502-based system a while ago. I thought for a grin I'd do the same on an ARM machine (which would give me a factor of 10 speed increase, I reckon), but I don't have the distribution tape anymore. Any pointers would be gratefully received. Thanks in advance, Pete Cockerell.
kend@data.UUCP (Ken Dickey) (09/28/90)
pete@abccam.abcl.co.uk (Peter Cockerell) writes: >I'm wondering what happened to the MINT (Machine-Independent Organic >Software Tools) system that was described in the monograph of the same >name by D Hendry et al. I assume it didn't take the world by storm, as >I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere recently. ... I have not seen recent mention, but "Machine-Independent Organic Software Tools (MINT)" by M. Godfrey, H. Hermans, D. Hendry, and R. Hessenberg was published by Academic Press. The ISBN for the 1980 printing is 0-12-286980-X. There was a second, expanded edition. My recollection is that the 2nd ed. was accompanied by an Apple II implementation in addition to the 8080 and Univac 1100 implementations. -Ken Dickey kend@data.uucp
strobl@gmdzi.gmd.de (Wolfgang Strobl) (09/29/90)
kend@data.UUCP (Ken Dickey) writes: >pete@abccam.abcl.co.uk (Peter Cockerell) writes: >>I'm wondering what happened to the MINT (Machine-Independent Organic >>Software Tools) system that was described in the monograph of the same >>name by D Hendry et al. I assume it didn't take the world by storm, as >>I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere recently. ... >I have not seen recent mention, but "Machine-Independent Organic >Software Tools (MINT)" by M. Godfrey, H. Hermans, D. Hendry, and R. >Hessenberg was published by Academic Press. The ISBN for the 1980 >printing is 0-12-286980-X. There was a second, expanded edition. My >recollection is that the 2nd ed. was accompanied by an Apple II >implementation in addition to the 8080 and Univac 1100 >implementations. A friend of mine (Gerd Quecke) and myself have created a modified, enhanced version of MINT eight or nine years ago. We started by typing in parts of the source code of the compiler from the first edition of the book, in a slightly modified form (postfix expressions only, different macro semantics). I wrote a compiler in SNOBOL, which compiled into MINT's machine language, and Gerd wrote the VM (the machine language interpreter) for a Z80 based single board computer with cassette tape, using an assembler for this single board computer (NASCOM II) whe had written using ROM Basic. Later we enhanced the language and the VM to make it more structured, and ported it first to CP/M and then to Siemens BS2000 and IBM OS/MVS-TSO. The system was nice, small, fast, complete and self contained. We could compile the compiler with itself, using a 32K machine with only one 1200 baud tape. The language had everything: compile time capabilities, macros, recursion, local variables, extensibility, the usual control structures, ... Unfortunately, we both didn't have enough spare time to polish the whole thing enough to make it useable for real work, so the project faded away five years ago or so. Wolfgang Strobl #include <std.disclaimer.hpp>