1470 Software

The original WindLogger / Micromonitor software was written in 1802 assembler code. Although this could make full use of the limited capabilities of the processor it was not suitable for the one off designs we were intending to use the 1470 system for. A Basic language interpreter was available as a series of ROMs and this could and was used initially for some basic systems. Something better was needed for more complex systems however. My initial software learning as an undergraduate was in Algol W, a structured high level language. Pascal was derived from Algol and designed as a teaching language by Niklaus Wirth. UCSD (University of California, San Diago) Pascal was a complete operating system and compiler, itself written in Pascal and freely available. UCSD Pascal was a p-code (pseudo or intermediate code) based system which could easily be implemented in a wide variety of processors. My experience with Algol W allowed easy adaption to UCSD Pascal and successfully support the design and implementation of the system. A number of implementations had appeared in the early 80’s including the IBM PC and Apple 2 microcomputers. A chip based version also appeared for the Digital Equipment Corporation LSI-11 single board microcomputer which I had experience of from previous employment and at the university which used LSI-11s as terminal concentrators on the local area network.

My work at the University included a recommendation to use an Apple 2 microcomputer in inorganic chemistry for interfacing a mass spectrometer to the university mainframe in order to improve data processing. I suggested (and supported) using the UCSD Pascal system rather than the standard Apple software that came with the computer.

My previous experience with Pascal influenced the products we designed including both a bespoke product design based on our 1470 hardware and a more general Windows based software product that followed later.

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