PING: Charles Self

[jo4hn]

66 here. My first computer was a Burroughs E101, externally programmed, about the size of a desk and did about as much. creak, jo4hn

[Greg G]

Our customers all run MS systems, however, so we have to concentrate on that realm of bizarreness.

agree with what he says. I am embarrassed to admit that most of my work is done on MS systems, and I find myself spending more time looking at the keyboard to find those insipid function keys these days than actually typing. ;-)

Thanks for the info,

Greg G.

[Morris Dovey]

| Odinn wrote: | ||| Right! I finally remembered the company (Ecosoft) but not the ||| compiler name. ||| || || Ecosoft was EXPENSIVE, and had a nasty habit of crashing while || compiling if you had a syntax error in your code instead of just || reporting the syntax error. | | We're really getting into off-topic old, old history here, but I | can't resist one more comment. | | You must have had an earlier version than I did. I remember Aztec | C as very reliable on my S100 buss CP/M system. I don't recall it | being expensive, but since I have no record of my purchase you may | be right there.

Ecosoft and Aztec were separate producers. I bought Eco-C and regretted the purchase. I backed up and stuck with Ron Cain's Small-C until Borland finally came out with TurboC (I still have all three of the original compilers and the T-shirt Borland sent to help purchasers feel better about having to wait three months for delivery).

IIRC, Ecosoft was located in Indianapolis and Aztec was on one coast or the other...

-- Morris Dovey DeSoto Solar DeSoto, Iowa USA

[Odinn]

Ummm, Aztec is not Ecosoft :) Manx Aztec C was plenty good, and wasn't that expensive. BDS was pretty good, but was a bit non-standard until version 1.6 or something like that. Of course, the big player was Lattice (who later sold out to Microsoft). Then there was Wizard, which Borland bought and turned into Turbo C, Borland's C (before they bought Wizard) became Top Speed, Mix who later created Power C, Datalight which became Zortech which became Symantec and somehow ended as Think C (or at least a portion of it), and not to mention a couple of others that just disappeared like DeSmet and Whitesmiths

[Larry Blanchard]

Ouch - my memory is failing. Yes, the Ecosoft product was Eco-C. I must have had some aquaintance with Aztec-C or I wouldn't have gotten them confused.

Was Aztec-C complete K&R? Double precision and all? I know Eco-C was - that was their big claim to fame.

[Robert Bonomi]

Ecosoft was _not_ the same as "Aztec C". Aztec C was put out by "Manx Software Systems", and existed for a whole variety of platforms.

8080/Z-80 under CP/M, 808x under MSDOS _and_ CP/M-86. Apple II under ProDOS, at least. I think there was a CP/M-68K version as well. And, they had _cross-compilers_ -- which would run on one type of box, and produce executables for a different kind of box.

Aztec C did vary in price, depending on what capabilities you needed. Cross-compilers were more expensive than 'native' only. the ability to create "ROM-able code", and the ability to create true 'stand-alone' programs (*no* operating-system services required), were also things you paid extra for.

[Robert Bonomi]

I don't know for sure about CP/M. but on MS-DOS (_and_ Apple II!!) the 'native' floating-point numbeers were 8-bytes long. and were called type 'double'.

I think Aztec _might_ have lacked "enumerated bitfields", but thats about the only piece of the K&R spec that I didn't (ab)use. I could take practically anything that compiled on my real UNIX box, and Aztec C would compile it without complaining.

I *LIKED* Aztec C. It generated tight code, and minimal overhead in the executables (pulled in only routines actually used from a library, rather than including the _entire_ library, for example)

They were, unfortunately, very slow in coming out with an 'ANSI' compiler. or an IDE, and the market bypassed them.

[Contrarian]

Gnoppix. Ubuntu. Uhuru!

[Charles Self]

Hey, guys! Please work out a way to take my name off this thing. I keep looking to see what might be wanted, and I don't even know what you're writing about some 93% of the time.