Early microcomputer esp i8008 software

hansp

The Intel PL-M compiler that generates i8008 code is out there on the net. It used to be on the oak.oakland.edu ftp site in the CP-M directory, but while that archive is gone I'm convinced that it must be still out there.

I think Gary Kildall was probably the actual author of that compiler. The compiler itself is in somewhat portable Fortran IV. (Hollerith strings IIRC, making those portable is actually a lot of work). It compiled and worked out-of-the-box on VAX Fortran and also I think the PDP-11 Fortrans, and while those were nominally Fotran 77 compilers they also did a very good job supporting dusty-deck Fortran code.

Modern Fortran compilers (including the GNU toolchain and f77 on most commercial unix platforms) are not nearly so good about supporting dusty-deck code.

The 8008 is not exactly your ideal target for a compiler. Stack and math operations exist but not in the same way you'd expect on a modern target (or even say a PDP-11 target). But they made it work quite well (PL-M is actually a pretty well-targeted language for typical embedded microcontroller stuff, unlike say C).

Much of CP-M was written in PL-M (ignore those disbuttemblies which make it appear as if it were authored in buttembler) and if IIUC the very earliest versions of CP-M actually ran on 8008's.

Tim.