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People's Pascal

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natcha

Experienced Member
Joined
Jun 16, 2011
Messages
196
Many years ago, I played around with People's Pascal which was a Tiny Pascal based on the Byte articles.

Unfortunately, I have lost the drive that had the files on them. This came on a cassette tape that
had People's Pascal I and People's Pascal II on it. I'm hoping that someone here still has a copy of
the files that were on the tape.

Please let me know if you have the cas files or the wav files. I've looked all over the web and it
seems that there are very few cas files out there. I seem to remember that many years ago
I could download almost every cas and disk programs that were available for the TRS model I.
These files seems to have totally disappeared from the web. Not sure why.

Thanks for your help

73
Bill WD9EQD
Smithville, NJ
 
If People's Pascal is really the Chung/Yuen pascal, as the ad says, then THAT is attached. It will ONLY run under Model III TRSDOS. Don't know if that means it is a CAS program, but as soon as you go to load or save we will know.

The ad talks about a BASIC version, which I do not have.
 

Attachments

  • tnypsc2a.zip
    15.8 KB · Views: 14
Thanks for the zip.

But I'm looking for the original People's Pascal that only came on cassette.

There were two versions:
People Pascal I - Which was written in basic and almost exactly
matched the Byte Tiny Pascal.

People Pascal II - Which was the typical Tiny Pascal that is most common.
I have the files for this version.

I'm looking for the files from People Pascal I. This was all in basic.
It included the compiler/editor that create P-code, an interpreter for
executing the P-code and a translate program that would create
a native Z-80 code program.

73
Bill WD9EQD
Smithville, NJ
 
Never found the People's Pascal BASIC versions, although the manual is out there.

But thank you for the Model III version. There are many, many copies and variations of the Model I version, but I never could find the Model III version until now. I'm curious if there Chung/Yuen made any further updates to the P-code for it, as it's very different from the BYTE version.
 
natcha said:
Thanks for the zip.

But I'm looking for the original People's Pascal that only came on cassette.

There were two versions:
People Pascal I - Which was written in basic and almost exactly
matched the Byte Tiny Pascal.

People Pascal II - Which was the typical Tiny Pascal that is most common.
I have the files for this version.

I'm looking for the files from People Pascal I. This was all in basic.
It included the compiler/editor that create P-code, an interpreter for
executing the P-code and a translate program that would create
a native Z-80 code program.

73
Bill WD9EQD
Smithville, NJ
Click to expand...
Bill:

If Radio Shack ever offered it directly, do you know the catalog number for this version of People's Pascal ? I would like to
find it as well. Maybe 26-2009 ?

Dick McCoy, N4UN
 
Last edited:
People's Pascal was sold by Computing Information Exchange. There were two versions:

People's Pascal I was implemented for the TRS-80 by John Alexander of Pipe Dream Software, Berwick, Australia.
It was a fairly straight forward implementation of the three part Byte Magazine.
It consisted of several programs:
TPEC - Editor /Compiler written in Basic. You enter the Pascal Source and then compile it to P-Code.
PPINT - P-Code interpreter. Written in Basic. You could execute the P-Code. Plus single step through it and add breakpoints
to help debug the code or just to get a feel for how P-Code is executed.
PPTRANS - Translator written in Basic. This would translate the P-Code to Z-80 Code.
PPRUN - This is the Z-80 Run Time code, You use T-Bug to load the Run Time along with t he Z-80 coe generated by the Translator.
You then can execute the Pascal program in Native Z-80 Code.

The second People's Pascal was People's Pascal II. This was the same one that was later released
by Radio Shack as 26-2009. Also released as 26-2020 for the Model III.
This used P-code also, but a different set of P-Code than Pascal I.
It would only Interpret the P-Code. No option to generate Native Z-80 code.
I also included the pascal p-code compiler written in Tiny Pascal.
Unfortunately, it doesn't document the interpreter or the runtime system.

For a description of People's Pascal, refer to the Ad on page 19 of Recreational Computing, Jan/Feb, 1980:

archive.org

1980-02 Recreational Computing : People's Computer Company : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

The sixth issue of Recreational Computing.Issue #43Vol. 8 No. 4January/February 1980
archive.org

Following is the People's Pascal Manual which will give you a good overview. It starts with People's Pascal II and
then follows with People's Pascal 1:

archive.org

TRS-80 Manual: Peoples Pascal II (1979)(Kin-Man Chung and Herbert Yuen) : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

TRS-80 Manual: Peoples Pascal II (1979)(Kin-Man Chung and Herbert Yuen)
archive.org

What I'm searching for is a copy of People's Pascal I.

73
Bill WD9EQD
Smithville, NJ
 
natcha said:
People's Pascal was sold by Computing Information Exchange. There were two versions:

People's Pascal I was implemented for the TRS-80 by John Alexander of Pipe Dream Software, Berwick, Australia.
It was a fairly straight forward implementation of the three part Byte Magazine.
It consisted of several programs:

What I'm searching for is a copy of People's Pascal I.

73
Bill WD9EQD
Smithville, NJ
Click to expand...
Bill:

Thanks very much for the extra info., especially the Manual with Both versions !
Nice .pdf version ! I'm especially interested in the Translator module.

Dick
 
Interesting read! I am trained as a software engineer in the 80's and started programming with Pascal. I had a Model 4 by then and used Pascal80 for the programming I did at home (the university had an DEC VAX). Good to read the humble beginnings of Tiny Pascal, I wish I had access to Byte in those days (especially the articles about computer chess by the Spracklen's)!
I searched the net and didn't find the Peoples Pascal 1 nor version 2, only a picture of the cassette tape:

product-130168.jpg

Interestingly Supersoft is the copyright holder, and I haven't seen the name People's Royalty Software mentioned before.

@natcha : could you please share your version 2 of People's Pascal? For reference it would be wonderful!

I found the original articles in Byte and extracted the pages with the Tiny Pascal code. I've cleaned them up a bit and attached them.
Part 1: The P-Code Interpreter
Part 2: The P-Compiler
Part 3: P-Code to 8080 Conversion

I also found the original Pascal code from Byte, in North Star Basic. It includes all the Basic and Pascal code, plus the assembler files + executable for the 8080-runtime. I'm trying to get this running on an emulator, but didn't succeed yet.

People's Pascal is the same code, but translated to TRS-80 Basic and Z80-assembler. I'll have to do some work to get in a usable and logical file, and post it here as well. Maybe there's someone out here who is willing to help to convert from North Start Basic to TRS-80 Basic, it would be a nice piece of history. I wonder if it was ever done back in the day other than by John Alexander, as the TRS-80 was difficult to obtain, was very new, and as shown in the product review in one of these Bytes, only available in Level 1.

Regards, Bart
 

Attachments

  • TinyPascal1.pdf
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  • TinyPascal3.pdf
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  • TinyPascal2.pdf
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BartH said:
I found the original articles in Byte and extracted the pages with the Tiny Pascal code. I've cleaned them up a bit and attached them.
Part 1: The P-Code Interpreter
Part 2: The P-Compiler
Part 3: P-Code to 8080 Conversion

I also found the original Pascal code from Byte, in North Star Basic. It includes all the Basic and Pascal code, plus the assembler files + executable for the 8080-runtime. I'm trying to get this running on an emulator, but didn't succeed yet.

People's Pascal is the same code, but translated to TRS-80 Basic and Z80-assembler. I'll have to do some work to get in a usable and logical file, and post it here as well. Maybe there's someone out here who is willing to help to convert from North Start Basic to TRS-80 Basic, it would be a nice piece of history. I wonder if it was ever done back in the day other than by John Alexander, as the TRS-80 was difficult to obtain, was very new, and as shown in the product review in one of these Bytes, only available in Level 1.

Regards, Bart
Click to expand...
Hey.... this is great Bart ! I was reading the Byte articles last night. These .pdf s are a much easier read.

I also found the original North Star Basic files and started using them on an emulator too! So on a similar track here.

Thanks for providing the files.

Dick
 
See attached for People's Pascal II :
from the Humongous TRS-80 site : http://cpmarchives.classiccmp.org/ftp.php?b=trs80/Software/Model+1/T

For those wishing to try it......

This runs in the TRS80gp emulator set for 'Model I" .

Use TRStools to create a .dmk disk image that will load in the Emulator;
by extracting a BLANK dmk from the emulator to local file. Then add
files from the .zip file to the disk .dmk file. Attach the new .dmk file
to Diskette drive :1 in the emulator. Run PASCAL from TRS-DOS 2.3

Dick
 

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  • Tiny Pascal (19xx)(Radio Shack)[CMD].zip
    29.5 KB · Views: 9
Last edited:
rpmccoy said:
See attached for People's Pascal II :
from the Humongous TRS-80 site : http://cpmarchives.classiccmp.org/ftp.php?b=trs80/Software/Model+1/T

For those wishing to try it......

This runs in the TRS80gp emulator set for 'Model I" .

Use TRStools to create a .dmk disk image that will load in the Emulator;
by extracting a BLANK dmk from the emulator to local file. Then add
files from the .zip file to the disk .dmk file. Attach the new .dmk file
to Diskette drive :1 in the emulator. Run PASCAL from TRS-DOS 2.3

Dick
Click to expand...
Ok this zip file contains a .dmk image that can be attached to drive :1.
Run PASCAL from TRS-DOS 2.3. There are several source files, including
the actual Source to the compiler. Try the SAMPLE file first: LS SAMPLE,
then E to edit. The source files can be loaded, compiled, and Run.

Download the Manual from @natcha 's post above.

Dick
 

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  • M1_Tiny_PASCAL.zip
    42 KB · Views: 8
Last edited:
But rmpmcoy, what you found is just the regular Model I Radio Shack version sold in stores, not the People's Pascal version. There are many copies of that one. We never found the People's Pascal version, either I or II, for TRS-80.

Check out the history on: http://www.trs-80.org/tiny-pascal/
Converting the BYTE Basic version to Microsoft Basic is hard because it was written North Star Basic, which has a very different DEF FN with multiple statements. (As the box on pg 13 of the TinyPascal1.PDF points out.)

The good news is that we now do have a Microsoft Basic version of Peoples Pascal I! It's the CompuColor version above. The CompuColor II's Basic was Microsoft's (stolen), so it is compatible with the TRS-80's Level II. Conversion of PASCAL.BAS and INTERP.BAS would be much easier.

PASCAL.BAS: http://www.compucolor.org/vmedia.html?diskname=vmedia/tiny_pascal-sector.ccvf&filename=PASCAL.BAS;01
INTERP.BAS: http://www.compucolor.org/vmedia.html?diskname=vmedia/tiny_pascal-sector.ccvf&filename=INTERP.BAS;01

Personally, I do prefer the Radio Shack Model I version, because of the Pascal source of the compiler, with redesigned P-Code.
 
jrd said:
But rpmcoy, what you found is just the regular Model I Radio Shack version sold in stores, not the People's Pascal version. There are many copies of that one. We never found the People's Pascal version, either I or II, for TRS-80.
Click to expand...
Oh.... I understand that. I just made it easier for people to try the Tiny Pascal system. It does use the manual listed above as 'TRS80 People's Pascal II '

Install TRS80gp, set to Model I, insert M1.dmk in Diskette :1, use Reset button, it Boots, and DIR :1 to see the Pascal disk.
See the manual for directions to use the system.

Then maybe they will help us look for People's Pascal I. :)
 
I was able to find my old work where I had typed in the Basic Compiler from the BYTE Magazine articles. I got it working with Basica or GWBasic in the MSDos computer. I had converted the North Star Basic FN functions to straight basic code. When the program is run, it asks for the name of a Pascal Source file and then generates a P-code file. Today, I finished writing a crude basic program that can read the P-Code file and then generate a P-Code.CAS file that can be read by the Pascal Interpreter of People's Pascal. I was able to find a CAS file of the original People's Pascal Interpreter (People's Pascal I).

I just did a test by using the MSDos basic program to compile the Hilbert.Pas file to a Pcode.out file and then used the P2CAS.bas program to create a Hilbert.cas file. Using an emulator, I was successful in loading the PPint.cas program and then load the Hilbert.cas p-code file and then interpret the Hilbert Pascal program. It ran really slow but did run correctly.

I wish be could find the Translate program that could translate the Pcod to Z80 code. Of could we would still need to have the Z80 Run Time System code.

I need to clean up the basic programs. I will then make them available if others wish to play with them.

73
Bill WD9EQD
Smithville, NJ
 
natcha said:
I need to clean up the basic programs. I will then make them available if others wish to play with them.

73
Bill WD9EQD
Smithville, NJ
Click to expand...
Bill:

Please upload your files when you are ready.

Thanks,
Dick
 
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