Domain Pascal Language Reference (1987) [pdf]

bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de

20 points·Tomte··6 comments

Ah, I still remember some Apollo Workstations used for email (i.e. Pine) at my university. Never got around to seeing the original Domain/OS, as by then the acquisition by HP was very much complete (and boy, if it weren't for IBM, HP-UX would've looked even worse).

Anyone got to use those boxes in their prime? Supposed to be Unix-ish, but not quite...

Yes. Unix-enough. Why not play, today: https://www.mess.org/howto/apollo ;-)

I'll definitely try that out, thanks.

I remember these machines fondly. I suppose they were pretty Unixy, but since it was the first *nix system I was ever exposed to, it was hard for me to judge. I do remember they renamed a lot of the command line tools (like fpat instead of grep).

After working on some of the console-based systems of the time (VMS, CTOS, PC-DOS), Apollo systems seemed almost magical to me. It had a mouse and I could just click on a file to edit it (it was also my first GUI).

We used their Pascal compiler to develop software for a certain government agency. The very day that we flew to DC to install the software on their systems, they let us know that they had changed some of the fundamental requirements. Back to the drawing board...

Is there anything about this Pascal superior to the Borland pascal of the time?

No really, I'm asking. It would be interesting to know how they compare.

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