4K FORTRAN was a subset of FORTRAN II and was the first high-level language available for the DEC PDP-8.  It consisted of two parts: the 4K FORTRAN Compiler (nicknamed "Fivetran") and the 4K FORTRAN Operating System.  The compiler was written by Larry Portner and the operating system was written by Henry Burkhardt.  The introduction of this compiler made the PDP-8 much easier to program and was particularly useful to those using the machine for scientific calculations.  Below is a guide to using 4K FORTRAN.

I remember reading about Corewar roughly 20 years ago and thinking that I will have to have a go at that when I get the time.  As often happens in life, things got in the way and I only recently managed to give it a go.  I love the challenge of programming and the competitive aspect of this programming game really appeals to me.  The object of the game is to write a battle program that will take over a virtual computer and kill the other battle programs running upon it.  Since the game recently celebrated it's 25th birthday, I thought that I would write the following brief introduction to the game to whet peoples' appetite and encourage new interest.

I was going through a backup of my dos machine, taken in 1998, and came across some source code which I haven't seen for a long time.  It was great to see that old code, and I must set-up a machine so that I can run some of it again.  In particular I came across an attempt at writing the world's smallest communication program for an x86 based PC running DOS.  I used to love writing these sort of little programs to test different things.  I know we get more done these days, but it was fun tinkering around at such a low-level.  So here follows the program.

After writing a previous article: The SUBLEQ URISC (Ultimate RISC) / OISC (One Instruction Set Computer) Architecture.  I was left thinking that I should really have given at least a "hello, world" program as a demonstration.  I was then inspired after seeing John Metcalf's post: Hello World for the RSSB Virtual Computer.  This showed that these OISCs don't require as much code as people may think to do what you want.  So here is my version of a "hello, world" program for the SUBLEQ Architecture.

For the past 6 months I have been using Test-Driven Development (TDD) on a new project.  It has made such a difference to the quality of my code, that I feel I just have to share it's benefits with those who may not have heard of it. TDD reverses the normal order of testing as it requires developers to create automated unit tests before code is written not after.  This takes some getting used to, and it can be quite difficult to resist the urge to write code first and then a test, but it really is essential to test first in order to gain the full benefits of TDD.  The beauty of this is that it allows you to concentrate on what you want the code to do before you concentrate on how to implement it.

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This book, written in 1975, offers a fascinating insight into the software engineering process used at that time.  The author draws from his experience as project manager for the IBM System/360 and OS/360, and in doing so also sheds light on how they were put together.  The 1995 edition, reviewed here, is particularly good as it presents the same 1975 text with only typographical alterations, followed by a couple of extra essays and reflection on the previous essays after 20 years.

I have long been fascinated with entering programs into computers by methods not involving a standard keyboard and monitor.  This interest was peeked by my last article: Using the latest z80pack‚ version 1.17‚ to emulate an Altair 8800 or IMSAI 8080 using the new graphical FrontPanel.  I have therefore chosen to design and write a program for the IMSAI 8080.  In this article I will show you how I went about it, and how you could do the same.  You may want to look at this article, if you don't own an IMSAI 8080 and don't already have an emulator for it.

My language of choice is C and I am currently getting more involved with the CP/M operating system.  I have therefore decided that it would be nice to have a C compiler working under CP/M.  There are a number of options available in the archives, but I have found that HI-TECH are allowing their CP/M C compiler to be downloaded for free.  This is a very good product, has good documentation, is almost ANSI C compliant and can be used for commercial and non-commercial use.  This, therefore, is the one I have chosen.

To do any serious programming under CP/M, the first thing you need is a good programmers editor.  There aren't many in the archives, but I have tried most of them and found ZDE to be the best.  It is small, has lots of features, and uses Wordstar commands which are familiar to me and easy to learn.

Website hosting companies often provide a shared SSL certificate, but this presents the web designer with the problem of how to use it for a site that uses cookies. I have read many people say that this can't be done. However, this article will show a simple way of using a shared SSL certificate with cookies for a login page.

COBOL has been in the news quite a lot recently and I have been reading that there are still huge amounts of COBOL code running and being written. This led me to wonder why this language was still being used. I therefore decided to look at a few sites about COBOL and see what they said was good about the language. The main benefits appeared to be that it is portable and self-documenting. Indeed, I often read about how COBOL programmers say that they can go to code written 10-15 years ago and still easily understand what is happening.