d@alice.UUCP (12/10/86)
Help!
We're using IBM's Basic Compiler v. 2.0 to program a data acquisition
system (hey folks, that's the GPIB driver we had on hand....) Anyway,
the project is quite far along, only the Basic Compiler is threatening
to drive me garbonzo!
The system is being implemented on an AT&T 6300 with 640K of memory,
a hard disk, and an HP 3497a data acq unit hooked up to a National
Instruments IEEE-488 interface board.
It doesn't like passing 2+ dimensional arrays between or back and
forth from or to subprograms, and it corrupts the string space every
chance it gets (when CHAINing, or doing a SHELL command.)
We've attempted to see if IBM is distributing any of the rumored patches,
but they pretty much gave us the cold shoulder. I'm *really* about
to get between a rock and a hard place, as I don't have the time to
translate this to Pascal, the knowledge to put it in C, the compiler
or GPIB drive for neither... yow!
Any help / pointers you can provide would be appreciated.
Please call 201 582 6455 after 3 pm weekdays, or mail me at either of
the following addresses:
{ihnp4; allegra; research}!alice!d
{ihnp4; allegra; research}!charm!dan
I'll be forever grateful.
--
# Daniel Rosenberg (CE) @ AT&T Bell Labs, Murray Hill
# disclaimer: These opinions are necessarily mine, not my employer's.
# UUCP: {ihnp4 || research || allegra}!alice!d AT&T: 201/582-6455 (work)
# INTERNET: (ARPA, whatever) possibly: d%alice.btl@csnetneff@hpvcla.HP.COM (Dave Neff) (12/11/86)
Daniel's problem with the IBM compiler is another example that supports one if my strong beliefs: DON'T EVER BUY PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT TOOLS FROM IBM! Why? The tools were really written by someone else and IBM gives little support and infrequent updates. Long ago I bought Pascal 1.0 and Masm 1.0 from IBM. These were written by Microsoft and had some serious bugs and limitations. Microsoft continued to upgrade its own version of these tools but it was sometime before IBM finally had any upgrade available. I needed some of the features the newer Microsoft tools had (8087, overlays, and 32 bit integer support) so I could not wait for IBM to offer an upgrade. I threw these tools into the garbage and bought the latest ones from Microsoft. I did the right thing. It was another year before IBM finally updated their tools. I heard that people who bought the IBM 1.0 Basic compiler had similar problems especially the lack of Dos 2.0 and later directory path support. Finally IBM updated the Basic compiler but it was very slow in coming. In general, it is best to by any software from the company that originally made it. You will get better support and faster updates. I know that Daniel seems to be "stuck" since I understand that the latest Microsoft Basic compiler does not have some of the nice features of the IBM compiler so moving over to Microsoft's latest version may not be practical. But its worth considering. By the way, I'm no great fan of Microsoft. Their software has more bugs than it should and their documentation is average at best. But they do have above average product support. Dave Neff hpfcla!hpvcla!neff