Confessions of a Pascal Programmer...
In the beginning there was Apple...My pride and joy is programming. I started in elementary school (Overbrook on 64th & Malvern) with BASIC on Apple II's (1981). I continued taking programming classes in BASIC and PASCAL right up through high school (George Washington Carver High School for Engineering and Science).
The Pascal language was named for Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician who was a pioneer in computer development history. In 1641, at the age of eighteen, Pascal constructed the first arithmetical machine, arguably the first computer. He would improve upon the instrument eight years later. In 1650, Pascal left the world of geometry and physics, and shifted his focus towards religious studies, or, as Pascal wrote, to... "contemplate the greatness and the misery of man"... Pascal died in Paris on August 19, 1662.
The earliest computers were programmed in machine code and assembly. This type of programming is tedious and error prone, as well as extremely difficult to understand and modify. Programming is a time-consuming and expensive process. High level languages were developed to resolve this problem. High level languages provide a set of instructions that read like English, but can be translated by a program called a compiler into machine code. Pascal is one such language.
MC-10...My first home PC (if you want to call it that) was the "MC-10" by Radio Shack. It had a whopping 4K of memory (expandable to 16K) and used a tape recorder to store data (1983). I wrote a very nice Tic Tac Toe program and remember having so much fun trying to load programs off the tape. This computer used a TV set as a monitor and the TV interfered with the tape deck, so the TV had to be turned off while sending or receiving data. I think that the text resolution was something like 32x16. It supported some graphics modes, but, with only 4K of memory, these features were not really useful. Also, it didn't do anything besides BASIC and I don't think that there was ever any software produced for it. I kept this PC for a few months and ended up giving that one away- I don't remember to whom.
The age of Aquarius...Then there was the Aquarius by Mattel (1983)- 4K ram (expandable to 20K) and a tiny printer that printed on these funky 4-inch rolls of thermal paper (in blue). The tape deck was resurrected once again to send and receive data. But, the major problem with this computer was that it tended to overheat and become totally useless. I wrote my first version of Crazy-Line on that thing and lost it at least half a dozen times before I learned to backup more often. It had 16 colors, a text resolution of 40x24 (a 25th line was accessible using "Peeks" and "Pokes") and a graphics resolution of 80x72. I had the expansion pack with extra memory and several application and software packs. My favorite games were Burger Time and Dungeons and Dragons. I kept this PC for about two years. I don't remember what became of it, but, I don't think it had a happy ending. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I'm sure it didn't. I'm fairly sure that it was beaten to death and dismembered.
RadioShack and the ill-fated CoCo...Then there was the infamous Color Computer 3 (1986). It had an honest to goodness disk drive (5 1/4") and 128K ram (expandable to 512K). I thought I would never run out of space. Up to this point, all of my programming was in BASIC. But, then I got an assembler module and suddenly I was beginning to do all sorts of wonderful things in Assembly Language. I wrote the second version of Crazy-Line using some assembler functions tied into my BASIC program. I had a clock function, some screen functions, and even joystick controls. I still had a shitty little printer that used 4-inch rolls of thermal paper (by the way, the Radio Shack thermal paper was slightly wider than the Aquarius thermal paper). It didn't come with a word processing application, so I wrote one. My application could even print half a page at a time so that the two halves of the page could be printed on 4-inch paper. Then, I would tape the two halves together and use the photocopier in my local library to produce finished letter-size sheets. Later I was able to get a real printer for this computer- the printer had both serial and parallel connections. Believe it or not, I actually used that computer up to about 1990. This PC ended up in the home of one of my nieces.
The origins of the "Help Menu"...In 1990, I got my first real computer. It was an 8086 with 768Kb ram, a 20Mb hard drive, and -get this- a VGA monitor. I was able to go into places other than Radio Shack to get software for this thing. It even came with a Windows shell look-alike called Deskmate. I ran stuff like WordPerfect 5.1, dBase, Lotus 123, lots of games (many of which I still have and play), and Borland Turbo Pascal 6.0 (more on this in a bit). And, I was even able to recycle my printer. I had always been into all the little detailed things that you had to do to get this, that or the other up and running, but, my younger brother (Tony) needed some help, so I devised a menu program to make things easier. At first I used batch files, but, after a while things got a bit too complex, so, I wrote my first version of the Help Menu in PASCAL, using Borland Turbo Pascal 6.0. I continued to improve upon the menu program (up to version 3) and I also wrote my third and fourth versions of Crazy-Line and had a few of my friends look at them. One guy, a lawyer, was almost impressed. The animations, although crude, were the best part. This PC moved into Tony's house for a while and then went out into the wide wide world as a second-hand PC.
Technology marches on...
Eventually, the time came for a new PC. In 1992, I got a 486sx-25 with 4Mb ram and 150Mb hard drive. Later, I bumped things up quite a bit- 8Mb ram and 7Gb hard drive. Also added a CD-ROM, a Sound Blaster card, and a modem. This thing ran Windows 3.1 (and, for a brief time, Windows 95) and did very well. That's the PC that I did most of my programming on. I wrote version 5 of Crazy-Line, re-wrote Tic Tac Toe, re-vamped (again) the Help Menu (version 5), wrote my own version of Break Out, and a graphics editor to manage the various images that all the games were now using. I also started adding Sound Blaster support to the programs. There was also the short-lived and ill-fated Destroy and Conquer. There were lots of plans, but, nothing ever came of it. This PC stayed with me until 1998. It lived more or less comfortably with my brother (Tony) as a 486dx-33 with 12Mb ram. He had high hopes of bumping the 33 chip up to something like a 166 using an Evergreen chip or some such, but, someone made him an offer he couldn't refuse. Now that PC is living out in the wide wide world.
My first Windows-based PC...
In 1998, I went out and got a brand new PC. An AMD K6 with 32Mb ram and a 2Gb hard drive. Programming had to wait while I spent time trying to settle into Windows 95. A lot of things refused to work in the new OS. After a lot a fidgeting, I managed to get nearly everything to work.
Late in 1999, I finally started programming again. Game Editor can now read those pesky Windows-generated PCX files. I also completely re-wrote the Help Menu (version 6).
Browse through billions of web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine is a service that allows people to visit archived versions of Web sites. Visitors to the Wayback Machine can type in a URL, select a date range, and then begin surfing on an archived version of the Web. Imagine surfing circa 1999 and looking at all the Y2K hype, or revisiting an older version of your favorite Web site. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine can make all of this possible.
Another web-site is born...In 1999, I created a web-site for my programs. When I opened my anime web-site, I put some of my software on the anime web-site. As the anime web-site started to do better and get bigger, I decided to move my software to its own dedicated web-space. With more room to grow, I took the opportunity to provide almost all of my software to anyone that wanted it.
By 2000, the site was doing reasonably well considering the nature of the content, but, I was having trouble keeping web-rings. I would sign up for a web-ring and the next thing I knew, the ring was dead.
In 2001, I started using Free Pascal to compile some of my source code. I thought that major changes would be needed, but, to my amazement, most of my source code could be compiled with both Turbo Pascal and Free Pascal with only a few small changes. I also developed some new projects (CopyLogo - a Win 9x start-up logo switcher - and HexViewer - a binary reader and writer).
My second Windows-based PC...
Late in 2002, after having added a second hard-drive (20Gb) and more memory, I decided to retire my first windows-based PC and got a new PC. An AMD Athlon 1.8Ghz, 120Gb hard-drive and running under Windows XP.
Programming stalled while I settled into my new PC, but, I did have the chance to test my old software and almost everything worked under Win XP. The few things that didn't could be easily modified to function again.
By mid-2004, my new PC had a another 120Gb hard-drive and also a 20Gb hard-drive to keep it company. Programming was still stalled and is likely to be stalled for the foreseeable future.
Another web-site dies an untimely death...
In mid-2004, I decided to take down the pascal site on the free web-host. I haven't had the desire to continue pascal programming - favoring instead ASP, JavaScript and HTML.
After my decision to take down the anime site on the free web-host, I felt that there was no longer a need to maintain the pascal site. The lack of FTP support, the ad-ware problems, the bandwidth restrictions and the fact that the site hadn't been updated for several months all contributed to my decision.
The archives of my web-site on the Wayback Machine are not necessarily complete. There will be missing images and broken links, etc...
My third Windows-based PC...
In the summer of 2010, my PC of 8 years, having been struck by lightning twice and surviving, was powered down for the last time. It was unceremoniously replaced with a Windows 7 dual core PC with over 1 Tb of storage. Even though I got the computer as a gift, it still managed to cost quite a bit to upgrade my supplemental software to versions that work with Windows 7. Most notable among the casualties, was my ISP. I ended up switching to a wireless ISP.
Since Windows 7 doesn't really like to display DOS-mode applications, my programming shifted to mostly on-line work. I created my own custom related post widget for Blogger. And to support my anime web site, I created some custom MS Access queries to render the navigation links for the related post widget as well as the content for anime ratings pages.
My fourth Windows-based PC...
In the summer of 2014, my PC of just a few years had been caught misbehaving on a number of occasions. So, I decided to replace my PC with a brand new Windows 8.1 desktop with 8 Gb of RAM and 2 Tb of storage. I also added in the 1Tb drive from my previous PC bringing the total internal storage up to 3Tb. This time around, there were only a handful of casualties. Again, the most notable casualty this time around was my ISP. My former ISP, didn't support Windows 8.
I updated my version of MS Office to MS Office 2013 and noticed that some of the MS Access queries I built with an earlier version of Office were misbehaving. It seems that there are some slight differences in syntax between the two versions of MS Access. It took a bit of trial an error, but, I managed to get the queries working again. Most of the issues were traced to slight differences in the handling of nulls versus empty strings.
Windows 10...
Late in 2015, I took advantage of the free upgrade from Windows 8 to Windows 10. In 2016, with help from DOS Box, I've been able to get Turbo Pascal up and running and I found my old Pascal source code in my archives. I've revisited some of my software and everything seems to be working reasonably well in DOS Box. Although I have not actually done any new Pascal development work in a while, at least I have a fairly stable environment to do some Pascal coding (it should be noted that the DOS Box development team does not recommend using the app for mission critical applications). The hope is, that someday, I'll get all of my code organized into a library and publish it on Github.
