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The Icon Bar: News and features: NTK's take on BBC BASIC interpreter Brandy
Posted by Richard Goodwin on 16:54, 31/1/2002
| RISC OS, Programming, Sound and music, Open source, Retro, Internet, Acorn
Just catching up on my reading and came across this in NTK's edition of January 25th. It's rare enough that RISC OS and Acorn stuff gets a mention outside the usual suspects, but when it's done with such humour it's an added bonus so I'll post the Tracking section in full for all to enjoy. There's even a link to ArgoNet user Dave Daniel's site at the bottom, for it is he who has ported BASIC V to Unix, Windows and, um, RISC OS in interpreter Brandy; and if you follow the second link there's some interesting Acorn history. Who hasn't at some point yearned to write UNIX scripts in the Basic that came with the original 1982 BBC Computer? Everyone. Don't argue: everyone. BRANDY is a GPL'd port of BBC BASIC's last living descendant, BASIC V, to BSD/Unix, Windows/DOS, and RISCOS. From the PASCALish DEF PROC to the BBC's peculiar C-like indirection operators ! and ?, it's all here. Brandy's RISC version even has support for VDU 19 and SOUND commands - it's up to you to implement those under the other platforms. Best of all, it's had the USENET seal of approval from Sophie nee Roger Wilson, the one-woman once-man whirlwind who wrote the first BBC Basic in assembler as well as creating most of the original Atom, designing the BBC screen font, and sketching out the first ARM RISC processor instruction set. Nice she's letting other people get their hand in these days.
http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/dave_daniels/- do hope it's not named after Brandon Butterworth http://digital-guru.de/stage2/et/bigtime2.htm- Sophie Creates An Industry Source: NTK
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NTK's take on BBC BASIC interpreter Brandy |
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(17:11 31/1/2002) John Hoare (20:46 31/1/2002) Iain Williamson (21:05 31/1/2002) Jason Tribbeck (22:02 31/1/2002) Anonymous (09:53 1/2/2002) Anonymous (09:58 1/2/2002) Mr Jake Monkeyson (12:04 1/2/2002) Guest (13:51 1/2/2002) Richard Goodwin (14:48 1/2/2002) Guest (15:40 1/2/2002) Andrew Weston (16:26 1/2/2002) Richard Goodwin (17:25 1/2/2002) mark quint (17:35 1/2/2002) Annraoi (20:12 1/2/2002) John Hoare (00:10 2/2/2002) Guest (00:15 2/2/2002) ed (21:16 21/8/2005) ed (21:25 21/8/2005)
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Jason Tribbeck |
Message #89978, posted at 17:11, 31/1/2002 |
Unregistered user
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Brandy looks interesting; the other site looked awful - I hate it when someone tries to be really clever 'let's put everything in lower case because i think it looks cool'. Especially when it appears as very small text in a narrow column on a large screen with a nasty background.
A much more readable one is available from http://www.poppyfields.net/acorn/docs/armdocs/hauser.shtml |
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John Hoare |
Message #89979, posted at 20:46, 31/1/2002, in reply to message #89978 |
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The ARM wasn't the world's first RISC processor though, as stated in the 'Missing the big time' article, was it? (I can't remember what it was, but wasn't it IBM in the 70's or something? Or was there one before that?) |
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Iain Williamson |
Message #89980, posted at 21:05, 31/1/2002, in reply to message #89979 |
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You're testing my memory now too. I think IBM came up with the concept, but obviously at that time wouldn't have been able to make a chip out of it. The ARM still wasn't the first IC RISC processor though - but it was the first one to be commercially available.
That's the received wisdom at least. |
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Jason Tribbeck |
Message #89981, posted at 22:02, 31/1/2002, in reply to message #89980 |
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The very first processors were RISC - but they didn't know it then. It was only when processors started having lots of instructions that the names RISC and CISC was born.
As an aside, the minimum number of instructions for a processor with one operand is 2. Now, that's RISC! |
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Anonymous |
Message #89982, posted at 09:53, 1/2/2002, in reply to message #89981 |
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Sophie Wilson was once a man? |
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Anonymous |
Message #89983, posted at 09:58, 1/2/2002, in reply to message #89982 |
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Yes - she's quite famous for it in the developer circles. There was another sex change (man to woman) in the industry a few years back, but I forget which company she was in. |
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Mr Jake Monkeyson |
Message #89984, posted at 12:04, 1/2/2002, in reply to message #89983 |
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What what what what what??? I never knew that!
I wonder how many jokes about masking out bits, etc, Sophie had to put up with... |
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Guest |
Message #89985, posted at 13:51, 1/2/2002, in reply to message #89984 |
Unregistered user
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I thought it was well known that a bloke working at Acorn in the early days walked into work on day as a woman. I remember reading an interview with Hermann Hauser and he mentioned it - but didn't say who it was. I didn't relise it was Sophie Wilson until I read this.
She probably didn't have to put up with many jokes - remember Acorn was full of very intelligent and eccentric people... |
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Richard Goodwin |
Message #89986, posted at 14:48, 1/2/2002, in reply to message #89985 |
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My favourite ill-informed comment that someone told me about was a news story where the reporter said that Sophie was one of the only girls to attend an all-boys school. Someone didn't do their research... |
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Guest |
Message #89987, posted at 15:40, 1/2/2002, in reply to message #89986 |
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I think the ARM was the first *commercial* RISC processor. And you can have a CPU with *one* instruction that will work - decrement by one and jump if non-zero. Search for OSIC on Google :)
(And quite frankly, ARM is only RISCish these days...) |
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Andrew Weston |
Message #89988, posted at 16:26, 1/2/2002, in reply to message #89987 |
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That story was right Rich. She worked for Acorn!! |
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Richard Goodwin |
Message #89989, posted at 17:25, 1/2/2002, in reply to message #89988 |
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The story wasn't right, because she wasn't a she when she was at school/college. Hence, not the only girl at an all boys school. |
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mark quint |
Message #89990, posted at 17:35, 1/2/2002, in reply to message #89989 |
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not in body anyway :o |
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Annraoi |
Message #89991, posted at 20:12, 1/2/2002, in reply to message #89990 |
Unregistered user
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Regarding first RISC.
IBM did a research project which produced a research machine (called the 801, after the room it was designed in). IBM did NOT release a computer based on it at that stage (it was in the 1970's AFAIK).
The ARM was the FIRST commercially available RISC chip (in 1985, though the research started in 1983 and the ARM-2 (and Archimedes) took a while longer to develope (1987). Acorn had a development system that could be hooked up to a BBC Model B (using the Tube) but ALSO released a device called "Springboard" which allowed development of ARM software on a PC.
The Archimedes was the first mass market (!) RISC computer (although I think Sun Sparc workstations were being bought by universities at around the same time), IBM's first commercial RISC computer being the PC-RT which came after the Archimedes. |
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John Hoare |
Message #89992, posted at 00:10, 2/2/2002, in reply to message #89991 |
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Would now be a fun moment to bring up Acorn's full page ad against Apple's RISC processor claims? :-) |
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Guest |
Message #89993, posted at 00:15, 2/2/2002, in reply to message #89992 |
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Yes it would!
Mike |
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Ed Avis |
Message #89994, posted by ed at 21:16, 21/8/2005, in reply to message #89993 |
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Posts: 2
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Dave Daniels's website seems to have disappeared. Does anyone have a current copy of the brandy source, or the URI of the new site? |
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Ed Avis |
Message #89995, posted by ed at 21:25, 21/8/2005, in reply to message #89994 |
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It might be possible to contact Dave Daniels on comp.sys.acorn.programming. In the meantime, the current website for brandy seems to be <http://jaguar.orpheusweb.co.uk/branpage.html> and there is an interview with the author at <http://www.drobe.co.uk/riscos/artifact126.html>. |
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The Icon Bar: News and features: NTK's take on BBC BASIC interpreter Brandy | |
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