GUBBINS@RADC-TOPS20.ARPA@sri-unix.UUCP (09/07/83)
From: Gern <GUBBINS@RADC-TOPS20.ARPA> I visited Clarkson College on the long weekend to see my younger set of friends, and to behold 1200 Zenith Z-100 systems (also this year's freshman class has 47% females, opposed to 24% of last years class, and the 9 to 1 male/female ratio of my freshman class in '79 - I was tempted to take my four years over again...). I found it hard to believe, but Clarkson pulled it off. All 800 freshman have working 192K Z-100s, Z-DOS, CP/M-85, Z-BASIC, FORTRAN, Pascal, Multiplan, and a large variety of home grown software tools: Word processor - GALAHAD, a spelling proofer, Lisp, Forth, LOGO, Pilot, and a LOT of games. Forth and LOGO are written in ZBASIC. Only five Z-100s were DOA, and 3 others died during checkout. I have permission to freely distribute the CP/M-85 version of LISP-80 that I spoke of in previous messages. The Z-DOS version of Lisp and the above mentioned home growns I do not have permission to release. The Z-DOS lisp is not perfected at this time anyway. I believe all of Clarkson's software tools (under the names: Golden Knight Software, and Virtual Systems Software) will be made available to the public at a nominal fee. At this time, piracy of Clarkson software is a growing problem, and a local vender was caught giving out copyrighted Clarkson software for free to the public. Since I do not have a modem or the means at this time, I will send the CP/M-85 LISP-80 to Sol Libes (are you out there? - tell me where to mail it) along with the 10 page hardcopy DOCs for SIG/M use and standard Net distribution. LISP-80 is an efficient 8080 implementation of a large subset of LISP 1.5 (refer to LISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual - McCarthy, MIT Press 1965). The LISP-80 implementation is LISP interpreter described in Appendix B of the LISP 1.5 manual, with the only exception that the LABEL construct is not allowed. Atoms may be of any length. It was originally designed for use on an IMSAI 8080A with NothrStar DOS. It was written by Dr. David W. Bray (now Dean of Education Computing) and Paul R. Austin, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Clarkson College. As for the Zenith users group newsletters: It was decided that most of the contents pertains to events at the College and they decided not to have an outside mailing list hassle (much against my wishes). For anyone interested, I will soon (somehow) upload the newsletters to the net for distribution. There are currently 2 back issues and a 3rd is being compiled now. End of report and ramblings. Cheers, Gern -------