[Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2018-01-26 18:08, Phil Budne wrote:
> Paul Koning wrote:
>> As for BLISS, there's BLISS-16 and BLISS-11.  One came from Carnegie-Mellon; the other was built at DEC.  Both are cross-compilers, but I don't remember which platform.  PDP-10 for both?  10 for one and VAX for the other?
> 
> BLISS-11 was written in BLISS-10 (and both were written at C-MU), and
> BLISS-11 was the jumping off point for COMMON BLISS.  I think sources
> for both 'B10 and 'B11 are on PDP-10 DECUS tapes.

Hmm, the sources could be fun to check.

> BLISS-16 was a member of the COMMON BLISS family.  I don't ever
> remember seeing an EXE for it on a PDP-10, but I was never a COMMON
> BLISS fan.  I hacked on FINE at Stevens Tech (the computing center had
> a copy of BLISS-36, the PDP-10 COMMON BLISS compiler, but it wasn't
> available to the unwashed masses).  When I went to DEC, I worked on
> FORTRAN-10/20, which was also in BLISS-10.  I was down in Marlborough
> (MR1-2) and don't recall ever seeing COMMON BLISS sources.

Right. As far as I know, BLISS-16 only ran under VMS.

> I do recall a mention (perhaps in a published article?) of the
> existence of a "cut down" version of BLISS-16 that could run on an '11.

That would be uBLISS (or Micro BLISS). As far as I know/heard, it got as 
far as working, but it was abandoned as people decided it would not ever 
become good enough to actually be used for any development.
I have a manual/documentation for uBLISS, but nothing of the actual code.

> I once sang in a chorus with someone who had worked on COMMON BLISS.
> ISTR he said he was a contractor, not a DEC employee.
> 
> My boss on the F10 project was Sara Murphy, one of the original F10
> developers, and I have some recall that she had been involved in a
> fancy BASIC for TOPS-20 (I _think_ it was called BP2, but I could be
> wrong).

Yes. That would be the BASIC+2 for TOPS-20. It's written in BLISS, and 
have nothing to do with the BASIC+2 for PDP-11. Except, I guess, that 
they tried to be compatible.

   Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol