{"id":361,"date":"2014-07-01T19:09:07","date_gmt":"2014-07-01T19:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wickensonline.co.uk\/rc2012sc\/?p=361"},"modified":"2014-07-02T10:45:46","modified_gmt":"2014-07-02T10:45:46","slug":"introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.wickensonline.co.uk\/rc2012sc\/2014\/07\/01\/introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in the day…<\/h2>\n

So, what’s this all about then? Well, it’s the usual story – reconnecting with my youth.<\/p>\n

I owned an Amiga following a CBM-64 during my A-Levels and into University. I used my Amiga to learn how to program in Modula-2 which was one of the set languages in my 2nd year at Uni. The version I chose was Benchmark Modula-2 by Avante-Garde Software. It came as a shrink wrapped 1,000-odd page manual and a couple of disks. I successfully used this on a two-floppy 512KB expanded Amiga 500.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The 1000 odd page manual that came with Benchmark Modula-2 (before I sliced it up for scanning!)<\/p><\/div>\n

\"BenchmarkModula2-Manual-BackDetail\"<\/a>

Detail of the back of the manual. I’m not joking, I must had read that 100 times over the years!<\/p><\/div>\n

During my 3rd year at Uni I ditched the Amiga in favour of a PC (first a twin-floppy Amstrad PPC-640 [some would say a distinct step backwards!] and then a Twinhead Desktop 8088 with a hard drive). At some point the Benchmark Modula-2 disks either became unreadable or got lost. The Amiga became very yellow and stopped working.<\/p>\n

The search is on<\/h2>\n

In the intervening 22-ish years I kept the manual. In the past five or so years I have been actively looking for the software. This year, after some detective work, I managed to track down someone who had an ISO image of the compiler, editor, demo programs and source level debugger. Part of the deal was that I scanned the manual and made it available in PDF form. I scanned the entire manual by hand on a flat-bed scanner over about 3 long nights, and after a nervous wait was finally rewarded with a 5-ish MB ISO image.<\/p>\n

Top trumps!<\/h2>\n

Several stalled attempts with WinUAE (copying Amiga files using Windows Explorer doesn’t work too well) I finally had the screen I had waited 20-some years to see again. M2Ed.<\/p>\n

\"fs-uae-crop-1407011838-02\"<\/a>

The startup screen for a freshly installed copy of Benchmark Modula-2. A Hello World program is waiting to be compiled, linked and run.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in the day… So, what’s this all about then? Well, it’s the usual story – reconnecting with my youth. I owned an Amiga following a CBM-64 during my A-Levels and into University. I used my Amiga to learn how to program in Modula-2 which was one of the set languages in my 2nd year …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘Introduction’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[37,39],"class_list":["post-361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","hentry","category-general","tag-amiga","tag-rc2014sc","post_format-post-format-image"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p73JhD-5P","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wickensonline.co.uk\/rc2012sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wickensonline.co.uk\/rc2012sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wickensonline.co.uk\/rc2012sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wickensonline.co.uk\/rc2012sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wickensonline.co.uk\/rc2012sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.wickensonline.co.uk\/rc2012sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":374,"href":"http:\/\/www.wickensonline.co.uk\/rc2012sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions\/374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wickensonline.co.uk\/rc2012sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wickensonline.co.uk\/rc2012sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wickensonline.co.uk\/rc2012sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}