Category Archives: BCPL

cintsys followup:

Posted on by
Reply

For Windows users you’ll actually need a different archive that includes Windows support. I’m using VisualC++ 2005 Express to build this out. You can find it @ http://msdn.microsoft.com/express . Don’t forget the servicepack 1 for Vista users.

Retrieve http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/mr/BCPL/bcpl.zip

unzip the bcpl zip to somewhere eg (c:\proj\bcpl)

run the visual studio 2005 command promptcd to your project directory

edit the vc9env.bat file: search and replace distribution with where you put your zip file (proj)Next remove all the vcvar lines (since we invoked a vc capable shell we dont need to worry here)

vc9env.bat

nmake -f MakefileVC
It’ll compiler the interpeter, then it’ll compile all the bcpl bits, and dump you into a shell. From here you can type in ‘logout’ and cd into the bcplprogs directory and play around.
For example

cd ..\bcplprogs\maze

..\..\cintcode\cintsys.exe

then we’ll compile the maze program with:

bcpl maze.b to maze hdrs BCPLHDRS

finally we can run the maze program:

maze

C:\proj\BCPL\bcplprogs\maze>..\..\cintcode\cintsys
BCPL Cintcode System (25 Jan 2007)

0> bcpl maze.b to maze hdrs BCPLHDRS
BCPL (3 July 2007)

Code size = 1164 bytes

40> maze

… the program will print the maze, as it solves it…

screens will fly by.

4965>

From here you can play with the rest of the bcpl examples. You can exit the interpeter with either control C or logout. Currently there doesnt seem to be a cd command, so I just exit and move via the Vista command shell.

I hope this clears it up somewhat.

TripOS / Cintsys

Posted on by
3

While I was reading the new part 4 ( http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/amiga-history-4-commodore-years.ars ) on the history of the Commodore Amiga, it mentions that AmigaDOS was not the original Operating System that they had wanted, but due to difficulties they had to pick a ‘plan b’ as it were.. They went with TripOS a portable OS written in BCPL.

TripOS ran on PDP-11’s, NOVA’s, m68k’s, and probably other machine type… What is also interesting is that BCPL heavily influenced the development of C! Searching about I found this:

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mr10/BCPL.html

The homepage of Martin Richards, the author of TripOS & BCPL! What’s even cooler is that he’s cooked up an interpeted version of TripOS that will run on most anything! Downloading http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/mr/Cintpos/cintpos.zip I was quickly able to setup the exe’s under Vista, and run TripOS. It’s very cool!

C:\temp\BCPL\cintcode>cintsys.exe -v
Boot tracing level is set to 1
Cintcode memory (upb=4000000) allocated
Boot’s stack allocated at 211
Boot’s global vector allocated at 727
Rootnode allocated at 100
syscin/boot loaded successfully
syscin/blib loaded successfully
syscin/syslib loaded successfully
syscin/dlib loaded successfully
BOOT stack is at 211
BOOT global vector is at 727
CLI stack allocated at 8551
CLI global vector allocated at 9067
BCPL Cintcode System (25 Jan 2007)
boot about to call the interpreter recursively
It should start executing the boot function: startrootboot: about to call sys(Sys_interpret,…)
startroot: can now use normal stream i/o
startroot: trying to load syscin/cli
startroot: loaded syscin/cli successfully
startroot: now entering the cli
cli: now entering the main CLI loop
0>

From here you can build various demonstration BCPL programs, and whatnot. Also looking at the code for TripOS it’s VERY small… But then the same could be said of UnixV6.. Things have gotten VERY complicated over the years..

Anyways, I thought you’d like a glimpse into the basis of AmigaDOS!