SGI, BASIC, OPL and so
======================
I'm running my SGI O2 once more. This is what I am doing rather
randomly since I have got the POWER9 machine for a desktop and the
ARM-based MNT-reform for as a laptop.
The main issues seem sto be the SSL apocalypse - the poor old O2 cannot
open such basic sources at the Wikipedia. There is a workaround [1] but
it's of course text-only, This is usually OK but sometimes one need to
- with some effort - see formulas and then one is out of luck. Well,
not exactly as the Wikipedia can be accessed through the FrogFind [2]
(no formulas anyway) or downloaded with use of the Cameron Kaiser's
"carl" utility [3] (then the formulae can be extracted from their text
representations).
The easiest way is of course to use a more modern computer. But why
power on the SGI then?
Well, my SGI/IRIX environment is highly customised andit is still
comfortable for me (for some reasons I never have felt so well in any
modern OS).
I only wanted to make a OPL program which will approximately compute
the Dew Point. The basic formula is simple: Tdp = T - ((100 - H)/5) ;
where T is in degrees of Celsius and H is relative humidity in percents
(please note: the formula is useful for H>50%).
So I cheated by reading the Wikipedia on the Gemini PDA. The rest of my
work was done on the SGI O2 anyway. I first have made a BASIC code for
the bwbasic interpreter (that was easy enough - I'm going to use use
the "code" on other places).
Then I started the DOSbox. There is an old IRIX port which is
fortunately complete enough for such things. Here I have the PSION's
Organiser 2 IDE/emulator. I used this thing for writing and testing the
OPL equivalent of the BASIC code. I didn't used it for years so I
forgot that I have to boot the emulated Organiser 2 first (the "boot"
command) and then use it as a normal Organiser (the "Menu" key is
emulated by the "F2"). Also the "RUN" menu command will start the
debugger but not the program itself (the "F7" start code execution).
The debugger is pretty useful anyway.
Now I should transfer the OPL program to the actual device. It can be
done from the O2 as all needed functionality is here but I will
probably do it later from my MC600 laptop.
Of course I should be able to do all of these things (writing and
testing BASIC code, ruggin g=the ORG2 IDE) on a 8086 or 8088
machine such is the PSION MC600 but it will be less comfortable (no
multitasking here and much slower execution - especially when emulation
the Organiser).
Actually, I re-typed the working program to my Organiser II LZ. It was
an useful exercise because I almost forgot how to use its keyboard for
programming (it usually serves just as an alarm clock and the
calendar).
Referecnes:
[1]
gopher://gopherpedia.com/
[2]
http://frogfind.com
[3] github.com/classilla/cryanc
