David was a member of the UCSD Pascal group in the late 1970's, and that group had a reunion at UCSD to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the project and look at the legacy of the UCSD p-System in the world today.
David was instrumental in getting UCSD Pascal I.5 released for all to download and use. The UCSD link has gone inactive however the code got spread about the internet pretty liberally.
The UCSD Pascal system was innovative and creative. Lead by Ken Bowles, a collection of Graduate and Undergraduate students designed and produced the first truly portable operating system. Based on a 'p-code' the system required that any new hardware have a BIOS and an interpreter written. After that, all code written for the OS would run. It worked; a little too well. The University determined that the IRS would require a tax return from the University if it kept shipping a product which was so successful. According to Ken, the costs charged to customers for the product didn't cover the expense of running the project, but the university indicated that he needed to move the project elsewhere. UCSD has an excellent article about the project, and I recommend reading it. A history of the versions of UCSD Pascal is also an interesting read.
A timeline for the project runs sort of as follows (All dates are approximate):
•1972 Ken discovers Pascal from ETH Zurich.
•1974 Pascal is running on the Burroughs B6700 at UCSD
•1976 UCSD Pascal is running on a Terak microcomputer.
•1980 UCSD Pascal is sent off campus to SofTech MicroSystems
The First version of the UCSD Pascal Manual I have is for I.5.
It is number 1624, the second printing of Dec-78.
The II.0 manual looked like this.
This is number 3340, and is hand inscribed by Keith Shillington to me. The date on the front is March 1979.
The last manual I have is also for UCSD Pascal II.0, however it is from SofTech Microsystems
It is the third printing, February, 1980
The symposium was on October 22, 2004. I took some pictures before, during and at the dinner after.
During Ken's talk, it was noted that if Open Source existed today as it did then, we would have a much different world; Ken was just a little ahead of his time.
Today the legacy of UCSD Pascal and the p-System endures in Java and the byte code that it executes, as well as .NET and other interpreted languages.
One of the nice things about being on the project was the annual trip to Disneyland the day after Labor Day. In 1985 I took my camera to Disneyland, and along with others of the project, I took a few pictures.
Getting UCSD Pascal Interpreter and Disk Images
UCSD Pascal I.5 was made available from UCSD though those pages are no longer active. The I.5 release is as complete a distribution as David could put together, including interpreters for the Z80 and PDP-11, the Compiler, Filer, Editors, and System. It can be used to build a completely functional UCSD Pascal system (with a little work).
UCSD Pascal in other versions is available with a bit of web searching. I’ve found source and executables for I.4, II.0 and IV.0.
You can get a Pascal compiler and interpreter online. I tried it, and it is interesting to play with. It isn't UCSD Pascal though.
For a UCSD Pascal interpreter which runs on Linux and Mac OS, try this from Mario Klebsch (alternate). Though it is written in German, you can download and compile the interpreter. The changes to make it work on MacOS X can be found here.
I have the Apple Pascal disk images apple_pascal_0.dsk.gz, apple_pascal_1.dsk.gz, apple_pascal_2.dsk.gz, and apple_pascal_3.dsk.gz.
Others have become interested in making the UCSD Pascal p-System run on modern computers. For more links google UCSD p-code interpreter.
There is even a way to mount UCSD Pascal disks on your Macintosh (Mac OS X), OpenSolaris, BSD, or Linux computer. A package available from http://ucsd-psystem-fs.sourceforge.net/ provides a way to do this. It can convert text files on the fly and opens up the ability to use this system on modern computers. There is a cross compiler for the p-System available from http://ucsd-psystem-xc.sourceforge.net/. It will allow cross compiling of your UCSD Pascal code into native p-Code for execution.
