History of Parallax Microcontrollers and languages
AwesomeCronk
Posts: 1,055
Hello, I am putting together a school report for my social studies teacher. He approved the topic of 21 microcontrollers, 70's-80's Era PCs, and programming languages.
The great part, items 1-11 on the list of 21 are Parallax creations.
I would like help gathering the "stories" of the BS1, BS2s, P1, PIC, and SX microcontrollers. I am especially interested in the reasons that they were made, and how long they were in design.
The great part, items 1-11 on the list of 21 are Parallax creations.
I would like help gathering the "stories" of the BS1, BS2s, P1, PIC, and SX microcontrollers. I am especially interested in the reasons that they were made, and how long they were in design.
Comments
Since when did "social studies" people start thinking about micro-controllers?
Do you really mean "History of Parallax Micro-controllers"? If so then presumably all the 21 items on the list are Parallax creations. Not just 1 to 11.
Or do you mean "History of Micro-controllers"? If so that is a huge subject that has really changed society since the mid-nineteen-seventies. There are hundreds of micro-controllers that were around before Parallax existed.
The first high level language targeted at microprocessors/micro-controllers was PL/M by Gary Kildall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PL/M
Microsoft shipped BASIC with all versions of MS-DOS and Windows (which was originally a shell running atop MS-DOS) until IIRC Windows 95. The command-line simple BASIC became QBASIC which was a full screen editor, integrated development system style stripped down version of QuickBASIC, which was a compiler as well as interpreter capable of producing standalone executable program files (aka "professional looking software.") With Windows 9x Microsoft jumped to Visual Basic, which they did not feel like giving away and became the most popular programming environment in history.
Meanwhile, BASIC was getting serious competition from C, which was about the same age but had always been compiled, often not self-sufficient when applied to a microcomputer, and very fast and efficient compared to BASIC. Again there were other offerings but with small computers it really came down to C, usually supported by a compiler running on a "real computer," and BASIC which might be self-sufficient.
The 1990's were a barren time for people interested in things like hobby electronics and robotics. Modern parts were getting hard to source and hard to use, documentation was unavailable or hidden behind non-disclosure agreements and steep licensing fees, and there was for practical purposes no internet as we've known it in the 21st century. The Parallax BASIC stamps were a response to this. You needed a "real computer" to program them, but no additional expensive software, documentation, or hardware programming tools. They were very limited yet capable of practical stuff. And at the time they were far more inexpensive than anything else with their capabilities. With a BASIC stamp instead of programming the PIC microcontroller, you programmed an EEPROM with byte code which was run by a very small interpreter running in the PIC. The interpreter would accept a download and program the EEPROM with your program. This avoided the need for PIC programming tools, which at the time were fairly esoteric and expensive.
Parallax introduced more and more capable BASIC stamps, with the second generation based on SX series PIC clones that ran much faster. As I understand it the Propeller chip came about because when Chip Gracey was looking for a suitable chip for a third generation he wasn't finding anything he liked, and being a genius visionary decided to design his own microprocessor to fill what he saw as a huge gap in the market.
Meanwhile outside of the Parallax ecosystem all versions of BASIC are fading as even the best are considered limited in capability and hard to use compared to alternatives. Instead of BASIC Chip came up with Spin for the Propeller, a fast and capable language designed for teaching essential computer development concepts as well as being practical. Arduino, which has taken over much of the BASIC Stamp market, uses a smoothed-over version of C++ for performance. And since C and C++ are now the standards in many spheres Parallax has been trying to get on board with versions for the Propeller and, presumably better supported in the hardware, P2.
That pretty much nailed it.
Somehow I like your writing style, stop messing around with those scales and sell some books instead... (yes, I did read and really enjoyed the stories you have written and pointed me to long ago)
Enjoy!
Mike
https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/7b0pnx/oc_the_curators_part_1/
I drop episode 50 tomorrow (Saturday).
cool, thank you very much!
Enjoy!
Mike.
Mike
Idea: Export to pdf.
That's supported here, and eliminates PP versioning issues too.
I once read something attributed to you. Don't remember much except that it was a fascinating story of a Las Vegas gambler. Was that autobiographical or a work of fiction?
BASIC was a language that had been around for many years and had a long history before the arrival of the microprocessor. Started in the early 1960's or so on mainframe time sharing systems and then minicomputers. A means by which many students and other users could get time on those massively expensive machines.
BASIC was my first introduction to computers and programming as a teenager in 1972. Via a teletype connected via a phone line to some far away mainframe in a different city.
When the microprocessor arrived there was no BASIC or other high level language available to those pioneering first adopters. They just had the chips. One programmed them in assembler. If one was lucky one used a mini computer to help or a development system provided by the chip vendor. Like the Intel MDS 80: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/731/Intel-MDS-80-Microcomputer-Development-System/ Very helpful at 10,000 GBP a piece!
In my case we had no such luxury. We wrote our algorithms in an ALGOL like pseudo code. With a pencil on paper. We then compiled that into assembler manually. Then assembled that into HEX code which got entered into an EPROM programmer.
The first high level language available for these new microprocessors was PL/M. Created by Gary Kildal, of CP/M fame, and supplied by Intel. It was great, more like the ALGOL pseudo code we had been using manually.
Of course that was no use to anyone without a mini computer or expensive development system to run it on.
That is where Bill Gates and co. saw an opportunity to make the microprocessor usable by the common folk. With a very minimal implementation of a language that looked like BASIC and ran on the chip itself.
That is where BASIC finally meets the microprocessor.
I've gone all misty eyed again. According to the introduction in my copy of McCraken, it was introduced in 1973.
Tinybasic might pre-date Microsoft Basic, in the form of MITS Altair Basic, by a couple of months. But, on the whole, Basic was several years late to the micro party.
For sure Bill was not the only one making a BASIC for microprocessors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_BASIC
Sounds like it did pre-date Microsoft Basic.
Tiny Basic for the 1802 by Tom Pittman was my first exposure to BASIC.
It has some 1802 specific extensions to support the Q output and EF1 - EF4 inputs.
It made use of a VM, which appears to be common for many of the Tiny BASIC versions.
C.W.
Edit: Here is a link to Tom's site http://www.ittybittycomputers.com/IttyBitty/TinyBasic/
That was A Casino Odyssey which was the true-life account of how my best friend started a card counting team in the 1990's. It is cached along with a lot of my kuro5hin era stuff at localroger.com.
Before the triad of TRS-80/Apple/Commodore became nearly the entire market, all that was really available were very expensive boxes needing many peripherals to be useful like the Altair-8800 and a few really business class S-100 style systems that could run CP/M. Those were great if you had $10K-$20K to spend on a hobby computer, in 1970's dollars. Otherwise it was what amounted to microprocessor trainers like the COSMAC Super Elf (of which I have one in a picture frame above this desk), which you either programmed in hex or Tiny BASIC, which very definitely predated Microsoft BASIC and had a rather different philosophy of operation.
I had no idea. Awesome. More when I have read.
I am not really a "social studies person"
However, my teacher did approve of the topic when I asked him.
The 8-bit Guy rules.
Not for cutting edge, but for learning...
Arguably BASIC was cutting edge in the early environment of the 8 bit micros as it was the only high level language available to most people.
Given that we now have much better languages for introducing programming to beginners there is not much need for BASIC. For example Python: https://micropython.org/, Javascript: https://www.espruino.com/
Javascript is so good that Microsoft used it to create their new Visual Studio Code editor/IDE. Which is a wonderful thing.
Anyway we should not argue that case here, we have the "The Official JavaScript Religious War Thread." for that: https://forums.parallax.com/discussion/152201/the-official-javascript-religious-war-thread/p1