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

[John Forecast]

> On Jan 26, 2018, at 2:17 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
> 
> On 2018-01-26 18:48, Timothe Litt wrote:
>> BLISS-36,-16,-32,-32E,-64E, MIPS, INTEL, IA64, are DEC's common BLISS - evolved (and greatly extended) from BLISS-11, but not (really) source-compatible for non-trivial programs.  "common" means that (with carefully defined exceptions that can be conditionally compiled), the same language is accepted by all, and it's possible to write portable programs.  Including common BLISS itself.  RMS-10/20 is another non-trivial example - same sources as VAX/RMS.  There are a number of targets and host environment combinations that are supported.
>> BLISS-16 is hosted on both PDP-10 and VAX, producing PDP-11 object code.  I used both.  I didn't encounter an Alpha-hosted version - but it should have compiled & run there, so it probably existed.  Or was VESTed.
> 
> I don't think BLISS-16 ran on PDP-10, but I could be wrong. I've never seen or heard anything about BLISS-16 running on Alpha or beyond. I guess it could be possible to do, but I sortof doubt anyone did. If anyone have the bits, I would be very interested in hearing about it, as I would like to recompile some bits and pieces. (Any BLISS-16 compiler would be a good start.)
> 
>> Most software written in BLISS-10 & -11 was converted to common  BLISS.
>> There was an attempt at self-hosting BLISS-16, but it failed - technically, it ran, but there really wasn't enough address space to make it usable.  Cross-compiling wasn't popular (networks were crude), so BLISS-16 was not as widely adopted.
> 
> Well, parts of the RSX kernel is written in BLISS-16, and all of RMS-11. Also some parts of DECnet-11M-PLUS.
> That much I know. I don't know what else might been written in BLISS-16.
> 
	Do you know which parts ended up in Bliss? I was project lead for the first version of DECnet-11M-Plus which was written entirely in Macro-11 (Well there may have been Fortran/Basic etc in the run-time libraries).

  John.

> 	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
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