Questions tagged [programming]
Programming aspects of retro systems and historical programming languages. Please check for language-specific tags first and use those instead, if applicable.
274 questions
11votes
7answers
1kviews
(In)significance of spaces in parsing Fortran IV
I'm analyzing a Fortran IV program written for a PDP-10. I was briefly acquainted with the language but had never studied it. Now I have a couple Fortran reference manuals (IV and 77), and I'm ...
4votes
2answers
390views
Where can I find a tutorial on using floating point arithmetic via BASIC ROM calls as part of a machine language program
I am trying to reproduce a program I wrote for a Office of Surface Mining scientists back in 1985 that was written on a commodore 128 in BASIC 7.0. The program performed a Monte Carlo simulation of ...
24votes
5answers
4kviews
How plausible is this anecdote about "toggling in" an operating system?
The parody essay Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal (1983) states: What kind of tools does a Real Programmer use? In theory, a Real Programmer could run his programs by keying them into the front ...
3votes
1answer
194views
Is there any compiler (either native or cross-compiler) for NEC PC-88?
After searching for the file system for this computer I have gained interest in this machine and development for it. I have found a C compiler but anything else. So basically I would like to ask if ...
- 1,696
7votes
1answer
395views
Is the Source Code from "Professional Symbian Programming" by Martin Tasker available?
I have a physical copy of "Professional Symbian programming : mobile solutions on the EPOC platform" by Martin Tasker. The book originally came with a CD containing source code; but mine is ...
- 3,925
19votes
2answers
4kviews
Origin of "foo", "bar", and "baz"
I'm pretty sure I've seen references to these words as placeholders, variable names, etc. going back to at least the 1970s. I always guessed there was a connection to "FUBAR" there somewhere,...
- 351
4votes
1answer
324views
Cannot read from floppy to a specific memory address using BIOS CHS
In my boot sector code, I'm using the following code to read a sector from disk (floppy if DL == 0, HDD if DL == 0x80): mov ax, 0xfe1 ; Read destination segment. mov es, ax mov ax, 0x201 ; Read 1 ...
- 4,095
16votes
4answers
2kviews
How did 1977's Car Polo arcade game by Exidy perform hitbox detection, and rigid body collision and movement on the ball?
The link here is a youtube video of Exidy's Car Polo from 1977 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMljzipOy4s What blew me away when seeing it in action was the game's hitbox detection for all 4 ...
- 795
6votes
1answer
1kviews
How do I run DOS 2.0 .exe and .com programs from my .exe program?
I'm writing a very small .exe program in assembly, targeting DOS 2.0 (or, if it doesn't work, DOS 3.00 is also fine). It has to be able to run other DOS .com and .exe programs, wait for them to finish,...
- 4,095
12votes
1answer
1kviews
How much extra stack space should I reserve for MS-DOS and interrupts?
When I write a program for MS-DOS, and I know at most how many bytes of stack space my program needs, then how many extra bytes of additional stack space should I reserve (in the assembly source code ...
- 4,095
5votes
0answers
143views
Running .CO programs from file on Kyocera 85/TRS-80 Model 100/NEC PC-8201
I'm starting to write some machine language programs for my Kyocera 85-family systems, starting with my TRS-80 Model 100 and NEC PC-8201. My understanding is that the .CO files contain the binary code ...
- 28.5k
17votes
4answers
4kviews
Did the ENIAC have any programming language?
On Wikipedia's entry for ENIAC, it states the ENIAC had 5 programming languages. I believe some of those are just names for different graphing systems, but ARC Assembly and Curry Notation System seem ...
- 903
5votes
1answer
361views
Apple IIe Enhanced not following BEQ correctly
I'm running the example code from Assembly Lines chapter 5 programs 2A and 2B which print the entire character map for the Apple II and then are supposed to break, however my code is looping ...
- 121
13votes
2answers
3kviews
What was the main implementation programming language of old 16-bit Windows versions (Windows 1 - Windows 3.11)?
It seems that MS-DOS was primarily written in assembly even in its last versions. I understand that new versions of Windows such as the NT-based versions currently in use, and Windows 95 .. ME which ...
- 1,165
13votes
2answers
2kviews
Which programming language/environment pioneered row-major array order?
The Wikipedia page describing specifics of row-major vs column-major storage order for multi-dimensional arrays, mentions, among others, C/C++ (*1), Pascal and PL/I for the former, and, surely, ...
- 21.5k
