UCSD Fortran-77

UCSD Fortran-77 was developed to be totally compatible with UCSD Fortran-77 developed for a range of machines by the Regents of the University of California.

Unusually, UCSD Fortran-77 does not generate native 68008 machine code, but instead generates an intermediate p-code, which then runs under an interpreter, allowing for easy debugging of a running program, by immediately calling up an editor to look at the statement causing an error. The interpreter (known as the p-System), was designed so that the same source code could run on any machine with a p-System (the p-System was designed as the system for an ideal machine for running Pascal). The p-System was developed at the University of California at San Diego, by a team headed by Kenneth W. Bowles during the 1970s.

The final p-code is more compact than the alternative 68000 machine code, although you may wish to rewrite sections of the code in native machine code in order to obtain the maximum speed (although it must be noted that the supplied assembler was only 16 bit, and could not cope with the 32 bit addressing modes native to the 68008 processor).

However, one of the downsides to using this implementation of Fortran, is that you need to learn and become accustomed to the p-System operating system which is menu driven, and has an integral screen editor and filing system (luckily a good manual - 'Operating System Reference Manual' - was included with the program).

Although originally supplied on microdrive cartridge, disk drives or RAM drives were ideally required, as the p-System is I/O intensive and needs to constantly refer to files stored on disk.

It also did mean that completed programs would need a licensed copy of the p-system on which to run, if you were to supply them to a third party.

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Title: UCSD Fortran-77
Language: Unknown
Author: Unknown
Publisher: TDI Software Limited
Year of Publication: 1985
Platforms Suitable for: All Sinclair QLs and emulators
Commercial Status: Commercial
Price as at April 1985: £99.95
Reviews: QL User (August 1985)
Sources Available from: n/a
Latest Version available from: Unknown