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Whitewater Group - Actor 2.0 for Windows 2?

M

Martin Hepperle

Experienced Member
Joined
Nov 10, 2014
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203
Actor was an object oriented programming language for Windows. Very unique for its time.

There was a version 2.0 for Windows 2.11, which I would like to try out.

The internet offers version 3.1, which runs under Windows 3, but the earlier versions seem to have been lost.

Does someone have a copy of the earlier versions 2.0 and maybe 1.0 (if it existed?)

It usually came with a thick, blue paperback manual.

Martin
 
Actor is procedural Smalltalk. Instead of slapping Smalltalk object concepts on an existing language, Actor swam against the current by adding Pascal syntax to a Smalltalk inspired base.

I would recommend sticking with the Windows 3 versions of Actor. Actor needs a lot more memory for development than easily available under Windows 2.

I had used Actor 2 with Windows 2.x but upgraded. The copy I have visible is the May 1990 release of Actor 3.0 which has updated screen shots of Windows 3 but the code changes were mostly to reduce crashes in protected mode. I might have kept the Windows 2 release in a box but it might take years to find it.

I think Actor 2 had a single large manual. Actor 3 has two smaller manuals which are much easier to handle.
 
krebizfan said:
[...]
I would recommend sticking with the Windows 3 versions of Actor. Actor needs a lot more memory for development than easily available under Windows 2.
[...]
I might have kept the Windows 2 release in a box but it might take years to find it.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately I am currently on my Windows 2 trip :-)
I even backported one of my own programs from Windows 3 to Windows 2.

If you ever find these disks ...

Martin
 
Ah, brings back memories. I actually produced a commercial piece of software using it! It was "rigorously" object oriented, all objects visibly descending from "the object".

As far as I can remember, this was written by CS graduates from Northwestern University. I found a few bugs and was on the phone with them. The company I worked for was pretty generous with equipment so I built a very fast 386 on their dime for development. The Whitewater people were jealous of it, and complained they did the development of Actor on 8 and 12 mhz 286's. That's where I got the idea of giving developers crappy computers so that they will produce efficient software :)

AFAIK Whitewater was bought by Symantec for their compiler technology.
 
I see someone just grabbed that Actor copy. I would be interested to know the result if that actually runs under Windows 2 or if it differers from what is out there. There is an Actor 3.1P archived on Winworld, but that only runs on Windows 3.0.
 
Actor 3.0 runs in real mode Windows 3 but IIRC uses the resource format of Windows 3 so can't be used on Windows 2.
 
O.K. I tried today: Actor 3.0 does definitely not run under Windows 2.11.
It says that it wants a newer version of Windows (3.0 or 3.1).

So I am still looking for a copy of Version 2.0.

Martin
 
krebizfan said:
[...]
I had used Actor 2 with Windows 2.x but upgraded. The copy I have visible is the May 1990 release of Actor 3.0 which has updated screen shots of Windows 3 but the code changes were mostly to reduce crashes in protected mode. I might have kept the Windows 2 release in a box but it might take years to find it.
[...]
Click to expand...
... years have passed ... did you have time to find Version 2.x - if you still have it ;-)
 
Martin Hepperle said:
... years have passed ... did you have time to find Version 2.x - if you still have it ;-)
Click to expand...
I have been repacking various boxes over the years. Haven't found Actor 2 or the other Windows 2 related disks I thought I had stored. Running out of boxes so I probably lost it in one of the moves.
 
Either Actor or Gupta SQL*Windows was the first Windows hosted development environment available for purchase. SQL*Windows was very strange and in many respects only good at the few tasks shown at trade show demos. Actor had the very impressive manual and resource tools to make up for the unusual language. I suspect most users of Actor found the ability to replace an icon without recompiling the application to be worth the cost even if no program written in Actor was ever completed.

Other Windows 2 development environments included Macrocalc, a HP programmable calculator emulator, and prototypes of what became CA/Realizer. Realizer had a very long development so the commercial release didn't happen until 1992.
 
Yep, it is a Windows 1 application.

Disk 2 appears to be a user copy. It is missing the volume label that setup looks for and the files are supposed to be in a sub directory. May or may not be complete, but the program runs.

Actor 1.0 - Startup.png
 
I also installed it in a VirtualBox machine.

The INSTALL.COM program exited with a non-readable ACTOR.IMG image file on disk #3.
However, transferring all files from the disks ACTOR1 to ACTOR3 with a simple COPY command worked so far. Some (non essential) files like DEMOS seem to be missing.
The INSTALL program wants to copy the first three disks which must carry the volume labels ACTOR1 to ACTOR3 and have the directories below ACTOR1 to ACTOR3.
The remaining disks are an (incomplete) Windows 1.03 runtime version, but the first three disks can be installed/copied into a full Windows 1.03 installation.
The complete ACTOR 1.0 disk set should comprise 7 disks (with the complete Windows runtime).

The ACTOR.IMA image seems to work but (as expected) it reports something like 10 KB free dynamic RAM.

Now I have to read the manual and make some experiments.

Martin
 
Also on disk 5, there is an "icons" directory that is corrupt due to one of the bad sectors. Did not seem to be needed for installation.

Per the imagedisk image, disk 5 has errors on cyl 38 head 0 sector 8 and cyl 39 had 0 sector 5. No contents of these sectors were preserved.
 
Here is a short summary of the Actor versions I have come across. I am not sure whether there were more intermediate versions, probabaly not.
Finally, I also found a copy of Actor 2.0, which I was able to install and run under Windows 2.0.

Overview of known Actor Versions:
Actor Version 1.0 02-18-1987 Windows 1.0
Actor Version 1.1 Windows 1.0, 2.0 $495
Actor Language Extensions I V.1.2b 11-07-1988 Windows 1.0, 2.0 (brings Actor 1.1 to version 1.2b)
Actor Version 1.2b 02-09-1989 Windows 1.0, 2.0
Actor Version 2.0 01-28-1990 Windows 2.0
Actor Version 3.0 05-29-1990 Windows 3.0, 95, 98
Actor Version 3.1 02-19-1991 Windows 3.0, 95, 98
Actor Version 4.0 06-12-1991 Windows 3.0, 95, 98

Related Products by The Whitewater Group:
ObjectGraphics 1.1 10-18-1991 Windows 3.0
Whitewater Resource Toolkit 3.01a 1991
 

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