Modula-2 Handbook and M2M-PC

[Rod Schiffman]

Actually the M2MPC code was written in the early 80's. I guess they didn't
anticipate that we would still be running their actual code 27 years later!

Wow, who would have thought what was basically a student project would
still be used 27 years later. I didn't expect it to last 27 months
when Rod Riggs and I wrote it.

It was my idea to fill in some dead time and Modula Research let me
run with it using a part time student to do a lot of the code writing.
I have a box of junk from that period. I'll have to see what's there.
Writing it was serendipity. The company I worked for (Computer System
Architects) was a sister company to Modula Research Institute. One
being non profit and the other being commercial. We occupied the same
building. We were just getting started using the Lilith for some
commercial project work. I had previously written a couple emulator
layers as personal and student projects at college. The IBM PC had
just come out. MRI bought one with dual floppies that we used to do
this. When I showed it to Nicklaus Wirth, after we got it partially
done, he thought it was pretty cool. So, we started sending it out to
anyone who wanted it for cost of duplication. The idea was just to
evangelize the language a little.

Somehow when I was looking for information on the possibility of
finding alternate Oracle drivers for Clarion, I stumbled on a Modula
II reference that brought me here. I'll have to look at the Lilith
emulator. It sounds cool. I still see Rod Riggs every now and then.
I'll have to let him know and see what he has laying around.

[Chris Burrows]

Post by Rod Schiffman

Actually the M2MPC code was written in the early 80's. I guess they didn't
anticipate that we would still be running their actual code 27 years later!

Wow, who would have thought what was basically a student project would
still be used 27 years later. I didn't expect it to last 27 months
when Rod Riggs and I wrote it.

You're too modest! Great to hear from you anyway. Pity we didn't have the
internet back then - it makes international communication / collaboration
infinitely easier.

Post by Rod Schiffman
I have a box of junk from that period. I'll have to see what's there.

Please do. I'm particularly interested if you still have the assembler
source code of the PC M-2 interpreter. I've also been trying to track down
Wirth's single-pass Modula-2 compiler without any success so far.

Post by Rod Schiffman
I still see Rod Riggs every now and then.
I'll have to let him know and see what he has laying around.

I'd appreciate that.

Cheers,
Chris Burrows

CFB Software
http://www.cfbsoftware.com/modula2

[Jos Dreesen]

Post by Chris Burrows
You're too modest! Great to hear from you anyway. Pity we didn't have the
internet back then - it makes international communication / collaboration
infinitely easier.

Indeed Chris, very much so.
But of course it also means I have to compete against other good engineers at 20% of the local salary !

Post by Chris Burrows

Post by Rod Schiffman
I have a box of junk from that period. I'll have to see what's there.

Rod, if that junkbox contains anything Lilith related I would be very much interested.
Things very high on the wanted list are :

-- A Lilith backplane : I have (almost, DSP mising) enough spare PCB's to make one more Lilith.
-- (Copies of) the second generation Lilith microcode, as sourcecode or PROM images
This would be the one with the 15MB MFM drive instead of the cartridge disk drive, which was available as a tower case or as the "Executive" version.

Background to this is that I would like to extend Emulith, my Lilith emulator, to cover this later version of the hardware.
I can read proms, MFM disks and HoneywellBull disk cartridges if that is of any help.


Jos Dreesen

[Rod Schiffman]

Post by Jos Dreesen

Post by Chris Burrows
You're too modest! Great to hear from you anyway. Pity we didn't have the
internet back then - it makes international communication / collaboration
infinitely easier.

Indeed Chris, very much so.
But of course it also means I have to compete against other good engineers at 20% of the local salary !

Post by Chris Burrows

Post by Rod Schiffman
I have a box of junk from that period. I'll have to see what's there.

Rod, if that junkbox contains anything Lilith related I would be very much interested.
-- A Lilith backplane : I have (almost, DSP mising) enough spare PCB's to make one more Lilith.
-- (Copies of) the second generation Lilith microcode, as sourcecode or PROM images
This would be the one with the 15MB MFM drive instead of the cartridge disk drive, which was available as a tower case or as the "Executive" version.
Background to this is that I would like to extend Emulith, my Lilith emulator, to cover this later version of the hardware.
I can read proms, MFM disks and HoneywellBull disk cartridges if that is of any help.
Jos Dreesen

I just had a couple minutes to look last and it wasn't in the most
obvious place. However, more to go through when I have a little time.
One of Richard Ohran's nephews works where I do. He was saying they
cleaned out most of their old Little stuff a few years back. However,
I've been meaning to visit Richard Ohran and Duane Call for a long
time anyway. This could provide the impetus to do it.
I don't remember ever seeing a Lilith without the cartridge drive.
That obviously happened after CSA fell apart. I know they were still
using Lilith for some projects after I was gone. Rod and I had moved
on to working at WordPerfect. They were just starting to really take
on WordStar and looked promising.

One item. It's pretty much a guarantee there's no source for the M2M-
PC anymore. I'll talk to Rod, but I can't see anyone still having a 5
1/4 disk of it around. I don't think we ever printed a copy of it.
However, it wasn't complicated code. The distribution already explains
how the registers are used and the stack was implemented. Outside of a
handful of routines for hooking the I/O to the PC and finding the
jumptable for the M-codes, it shouldn't be a real difficult task to
disassemble it and recompile it up. That way changes can be made if
there is an issue in it. This ran an 8088 with 64K of memory. We only
had 2 360K floppies to hold the OS, development environment, source
code and test examples. It's not big. You already have the M codes
documented so you know what each routine does. We didn't have to worry
about obfuscation. The code isn't much more than a jump table and
routines to emulate the M-Codes. On first blush, how difficult can it
be?

[Chris Burrows]

roups.com>...
One item. It's pretty much a guarantee there's no source for the M2M-
PC anymore. I'll talk to Rod, but I can't see anyone still having a 5
1/4 disk of it around. I don't think we ever printed a copy of it.
However, it wasn't complicated code. The distribution already explains
how the registers are used and the stack was implemented. Outside of a
handful of routines for hooking the I/O to the PC and finding the
jumptable for the M-codes, it shouldn't be a real difficult task to
disassemble it and recompile it up. That way changes can be made if
there is an issue in it. This ran an 8088 with 64K of memory. We only
had 2 360K floppies to hold the OS, development environment, source
code and test examples. It's not big. You already have the M codes
documented so you know what each routine does. We didn't have to worry
about obfuscation. The code isn't much more than a jump table and
routines to emulate the M-Codes. On first blush, how difficult can it
be?

I don't particularly want to assemble / run the code. Been there, done
that - over the years I have ported the M-code interpreter to various
systems using 68000 assembler, C, Delphi, Oberon etc.

In recent times I have become more interested in the preservation / public
availability of Modula-2 origins and early history. e.g. just recently I was
researching Logitech's history on their company website. Although there were
several refeences to their early days Modula-2 seems to have totally
disappeared from their on-line corporate memory. If anybody knows otherwise
I'd be interested to have some references,

Cheers,
Chris

Chris Burrows
CFB Software
http://www.cfbsoftware.com/modula2

[Chris Burrows]

Post by Chris Burrows
In recent times I have become more interested in the preservation / public
availability of Modula-2 origins and early history. e.g. just recently I
was researching Logitech's history on their company website. Although
there were several refeences to their early days Modula-2 seems to have
totally disappeared from their on-line corporate memory. If anybody knows
otherwise I'd be interested to have some references,

Since writing that I have found a site written by ex-Logitech employees.
Unfortunately there isn't much about the compiler there yet but there is an
article about their incredible (at that time) Multiscope debugger which
started its life as part of the Modula-2 development system:

"MultiScope has been written entirely in Modula-2 using the Logitech Modula
OS/2 Development System Version 1.1. It consists of approximately 107,000
lines of source code."

http://logistory.wikispaces.com/Multiscope

Regards,
Chris Burrows

CFB Software
http://www.cfbsoftware.com/modula2

[Martin Brown]

Post by Chris Burrows

Post by Chris Burrows
In recent times I have become more interested in the preservation / public
availability of Modula-2 origins and early history. e.g. just recently I
was researching Logitech's history on their company website. Although
there were several refeences to their early days Modula-2 seems to have
totally disappeared from their on-line corporate memory. If anybody knows
otherwise I'd be interested to have some references,

Since writing that I have found a site written by ex-Logitech employees.
Unfortunately there isn't much about the compiler there yet but there is an
article about their incredible (at that time) Multiscope debugger which
"MultiScope has been written entirely in Modula-2 using the Logitech Modula
OS/2 Development System Version 1.1. It consists of approximately 107,000
lines of source code."
http://logistory.wikispaces.com/Multiscope

Shame there isn't much about the compiler. I remember back to v1.0 just
about and did a lot of work using ISTR v2.10 using their overlays. The
original PostMortem Debugger PMD was also very impressive at the time
(ca 1984) providing mainframe debugging facilities on a humble PC.

Like its academic ancestor it was a four pass compiler with a core
called COMP and a series of overlays PASS1,..PASS4. (names?)

Its code generator in that era was a bit basic but I seldom found any
compiler errors which is more than could be said for some mainframes.
Optimisation was a distant pipedream although you could disassemble and
insert go faster cryptic hex constants to go into the executable binary
in the non-standard CODE( ) statement.

The slightly later RTD was very limited in the size of LOD file it could
load and coexist with but it was useful for module testing.

ISTR an editor called MOD with some added M2 syntax sugar and then later
a LOD2EXE utility that turned their custom LOD module into a standard
DOS EXE file.

I also recall moving from dedicated NEC7201 chip graphic hardware
(capable of hardware assisted 256 colour 1024x1024 in 1984) to the
grotty VGA assisted by a MetaWindows binding that might have come from
Logitech or one of their development team. Memory fails me on this one.

I might still have an original manual in the loft, but a lot of my
manuals were left in Japan rather than pay for shipping them home.

Anyone else recollect things of Logitech times past?

Regards,
Martin Brown

[Chris Burrows]

I might still have an original manual in the loft, but a lot of my manuals
were left in Japan rather than pay for shipping them home.

A PDF copy of the v1.0 Logitech Modula-2 compiler manual from Feb 1984 can
be downloaded from BitSavers:

http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/logitech/

Chris.

[rob solomon]

Post by Martin Brown

Post by Chris Burrows

Post by Chris Burrows
In recent times I have become more interested in the preservation / public
availability of Modula-2 origins and early history. e.g. just recently I
was researching Logitech's history on their company website. Although
there were several refeences to their early days Modula-2 seems to have
totally disappeared from their on-line corporate memory. If anybody knows
otherwise I'd be interested to have some references,

Since writing that I have found a site written by ex-Logitech employees.
Unfortunately there isn't much about the compiler there yet but there is an
article about their incredible (at that time) Multiscope debugger which
"MultiScope has been written entirely in Modula-2 using the Logitech Modula
OS/2 Development System Version 1.1. It consists of approximately 107,000
lines of source code."
http://logistory.wikispaces.com/Multiscope

Shame there isn't much about the compiler. I remember back to v1.0 just
about and did a lot of work using ISTR v2.10 using their overlays. The
original PostMortem Debugger PMD was also very impressive at the time
(ca 1984) providing mainframe debugging facilities on a humble PC.
Like its academic ancestor it was a four pass compiler with a core
called COMP and a series of overlays PASS1,..PASS4. (names?)
Its code generator in that era was a bit basic but I seldom found any
compiler errors which is more than could be said for some mainframes.
Optimisation was a distant pipedream although you could disassemble and
insert go faster cryptic hex constants to go into the executable binary
in the non-standard CODE( ) statement.
The slightly later RTD was very limited in the size of LOD file it could
load and coexist with but it was useful for module testing.
ISTR an editor called MOD with some added M2 syntax sugar and then later
a LOD2EXE utility that turned their custom LOD module into a standard
DOS EXE file.
I also recall moving from dedicated NEC7201 chip graphic hardware
(capable of hardware assisted 256 colour 1024x1024 in 1984) to the
grotty VGA assisted by a MetaWindows binding that might have come from
Logitech or one of their development team. Memory fails me on this one.
I might still have an original manual in the loft, but a lot of my

I only recently thru out my Logitech Modula-2 manuals. I think they
were v4. Their multiscope debugger was very impressive, I agree. I
believe I still have a backup copy of the last version they shipped, and
I had the patches from that Swiss company.

After it's demise, I went to Stony Brook because the Symantec documents
admitted that their last version was the SB compiler w/ the
Logitech/Symantec libraries. I don't remember if the debugger still
worked or not, but I expect it still did.

And the Stony Brook product was also excellent. It's really a shame
that SB went away also.

Now I'm playing w/ gm2 under Ubuntu, and I'm sort of following the
development of M2 Rl0.

Since I never learned C or its successors, I am having trouble
interfacing M2 code w/ libc.

This is going to take a while ...

[Marco van de Voort]

Post by Chris Burrows
In recent times I have become more interested in the preservation / public
availability of Modula-2 origins and early history. e.g. just recently I
was researching Logitech's history on their company website. Although
there were several refeences to their early days Modula-2 seems to have
totally disappeared from their on-line corporate memory. If anybody knows
otherwise I'd be interested to have some references,

Maybe I offered them before, but I have two logitech manuals in fairly
decent condition:

- Logitech Modula-2 Version 3,0
- User's Manual
- Point Editor

[Chris Burrows]

Post by Marco van de Voort

Post by Chris Burrows
In recent times I have become more interested in the preservation / public
availability of Modula-2 origins and early history. e.g. just recently I
was researching Logitech's history on their company website. Although
there were several refeences to their early days Modula-2 seems to have
totally disappeared from their on-line corporate memory. If anybody knows
otherwise I'd be interested to have some references,

Maybe I offered them before, but I have two logitech manuals in fairly
- Logitech Modula-2 Version 3,0
- User's Manual
- Point Editor

Thank you for your offer. However, I don't need them as I already have v1.1,
v3 and v4 versions of the Logitech M2 development system including all the
manuals. If you no longer want to keep them but would like them to go to a
good home try putting them up for auction on eBay.

Chris.

[Torfinn Ingolfsen]

Post by Chris Burrows
In recent times I have become more interested in the preservation / public
availability of Modula-2 origins and early history. e.g. just recently I
was researching Logitech's history on their company website. Although
there were several refeences to their early days Modula-2 seems to have
totally disappeared from their on-line corporate memory. If anybody knows
otherwise I'd be interested to have some references,

Ah, Logitech Modula-2 - fond memories. I used Logitech Modula-2 under
MS-DOS, I got a package with a three-button mouse (required for the
editor. What was the name... Point?).

These days, I'm collecting nostalgic computers and software from my past
(and also the ones from my dreams in those years), but so far I haven't
managed to find a copy of Logitech Modula-2 anywhere.

As you say, it has disappeared.

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

Post by Chris Burrows
Since writing that I have found a site written by ex-Logitech employees.
Unfortunately there isn't much about the compiler there yet but there is an
article about their incredible (at that time) Multiscope debugger which

I tried using Google Images to find a screenshot but was unsuccessful.

However, I did notice an obit for Mansour Safai, which you may want to
read (sad but anyways):

http://www.theopenforce.com/2006/02/mansour.html