DOS ain't dead

JPI TopSpeed (Pascal, Modula-2) (Developers)

posted by marcov, 10.04.2020, 17:25

> So, apparently, JPI was a spinoff of Borland, initially focusing mostly on
> TopSpeed
> Modula-2 compiler? Later bought by SoftVelocity and bundled with
> Clarion (language).

Yes, though that was afaik quite some time after the release of the 3.1 lines. Afaik Softvelocity used one of the compilers (C++ one?) internally, and bought it because of that stalling. But I'm not really sure.

> TopSpeed also supported other languages (e.g.
> Pascal). Part of
> the appeal was OS/2 1.x support, in addition to 16-bit DOS.

As I understand correctly, it was a never released compiler generation that should have replaced the old archaic compilers in assembler. I never knew many of the things on that page btw.

> Regarding add-ons, apparently the
> TechKit added
> support for various things (assembly, RTL sources, Win16 development). The
> TechKit was also sold in "Extended" editions, and according to DDJ's 1990
> Cruising
> With Topspeed, "includes support for DLLs that can be used under
> DOS").

Maybe. Take care with the division into packages. From what I can remember what each package exactly contained changed with the era.

Also I only used the M2 compiler, so don't know much about the pascal and C++ compilers and their features.

Anyway, I didn't have an extender, and got frustrated with realmode memory management, 64kb barriers etc. So started looking for a 32-bit compiler in any Wirthian language, and first looked at GPC, but it was too clunky and the project seemed quite apathetic, so then about a month later I found FPC.

That was also not a slam dunk, because all my questions were diverted with "will be fixed in next version", which didn't give me any immediate relief, but the 0.99.5 version a few months later was usable, and over the course of the next year I pretty much migrated and left M2 behind. I did maintain some tools till I move to Windows 2000, then I mostly ported the last ones I still needed to FPC.

Complete thread:

• Stony Brook (Pascal, Modula-2) - Rugxulo, 08.04.2020, 04:24 (Developers)
  • JPI TopSpeed (Pascal, Modula-2) - Rugxulo, 10.04.2020, 08:14
    • JPI TopSpeed (Pascal, Modula-2) - marcov, 10.04.2020, 17:25