1 Comment.

Hello, Mark,

I was recently digging out any info I can find on the 'net about
FLOPTRAN-IV, and one of the few hits was your page
http://zhurnaly.com/zhurnal08.html

You are probably wondering why anyone would mention it after so long,
but I typed in the program on my 32K PET back when it was first
published and I've recently purchased an original 8K PET, giving me
reason to dig out all that old stuff. I thought you might be
interested to hear that c. 1981, I not only ported FLOPTRAN to PET
BASIC 3.0, but I extended the language a little to give me very simple
string input and testing (for yes/no questions), and to compile to
upper memory (vs writing bytes to tape) so I could easily test
compiled programs without loading and reloading the compiler from
tape. Using the enhanced compiler, I was able to tweak simple
programs like "Chemist" from David Ahl's "101 Microcomputer Games" to
work in the reduced environment. I was "just a kid" at the time, so I
didn't know about ways to publish or share my modifications, but now
that's a trivial task.

I just wanted to thank you for your work decades ago. I had just
learned 6502 machine language while hand-compiling Scott Adams'
adventure game engine, and FLOPTRAN was just the thing to keep me
engaged on learning more about the inner workings of my system. The
first job I ever landed was programming the Commodore-64, so I
consider all that time spent noodling around on the PET to be well
spent.

-ethan — 2010-11-24</div>