Date   : Wed, 21 Apr 1993 10:53:13 +0100 (BST)
From   : "I Stephenson" <ian@...>
Subject: The big 4 0 !

There are now 40 users on the BBC list :-)

The latest is Angus Duggan (ajcd@...) who sent the folloing  
resume:

>BBC Model B series 7, 65C02 second processor (Tube), 80K SWRam on modified
ATPL board, 2x80 track floppy discs using 8271 controller and my own
hierarchical DFS (with advanced Tube support, utilities and Acorn
compatibility built in), AMX compatible mouse, Mono monitor, own
Assembler/Disassembler, Music 500/5000. Quite a lot of software/ROM
Images/etc.  Write most of my own programs in assembler, including a major
re-write of Elite (you can buy new ships, take courier missions, ship
configurations/speeds/armour/manouvreability are all different, on-line
encyclopaedia, 6502 Tube support, replaced cop out features, much harder...).
Don't use it a lot now, but if I can get a Music 4000 keyboard and other
expansions at reasonable prices, I'll probably resurrect it.


There's some cool stuff in there - I'd like to hear more about this  
hierarchical DFS...


On a completly different tack - I'm now 80% of the way to a working BCPL system  
thats completly free of proprietry code. Last night it ran a factorial program  
from start to finished, and printed out the right answers without generating  
any errors :-). The only stuff left to do is add the file handling routines,  
fix some endian-ness problems, and rewrite the comparison routines to work with  
signed ints.

It actually pisses me of a little that Acorn had the nerve to charge so much  
for BCPL, as the product they sold is almost identical to the one I've  
developed, and its taken me about two days so far! I suspect that Acorns will  
run a little faster than mine does (better optimisation), and the libraries  
will be a little more complete in a professional product, but the compiler is  
going to be THE SAME CODE! Acorn could have shipped it free with all machines,  
and still made a profit on it!

For those who haven't seen BCPL, it's a lot like C but without any types, and  
with a number of familiar extensions (that found there way into other languages  
like BBC Basic and Occam!). I think its probably better than small C, though  
not as good as a full C compiler would be (but then again I've got the source,  
so it could be developed).

Ian