I am thinking of getting a copy of Apple II Pascal (1979/1980 version with 4 disks, not the later "instant Pascal"). Any users out there?
Also my Wizardry disk, which is the only vintage disk in my collection which refuses to boot, has a golden sticker which says (something to the effect of) "requires Pascal 1.x operating system" (can't recall if it needed 1.1 or 1.2). When I try booting the Wizardry disk without Pascal it gives me an error message, something like "X=random number, Y=random number etc"
Does the Wizardry game (early version for the Apple II) require you to pre-boot with Pascal before you can use it? If it does then this alone will justify me getting hold of a copy of Pascal.
Arukum,
No. The Wizardry Series disks were self booting. Is this a "Saved Game" disk you are trying to bring up, or some sort of Wiz Edit disk?
You really didn't say.
I have several of the Apple Pascal packages (Manuals and Software), but I have yet to learn Pascal.
The Wizardry disk is the actual game disk (copywrite 1981 by SirTech)
The golden sticker says
"Apple Pascal 1.1 runtime operating system copywright"
So it's already got Pascal on the disk and should boot up without any trouble. If you can't boot it then there are several possibilities as to why. I'd find a copy of Apple Pascal some where and try booting it to see if it boots up.
Dean
I would recommend Apple Pascal: A Hand's on Approach
http://www.scribd.com/doc/232823/Apple-Pascal-A-Handson-Approach
as a good starting point. For the day, it was quite a sophisticated environment: built-in editor, compiler, assembler, etc. It is a port of the UCSD p-System and is actually an interpreter for p-code, a precursor to the Java bytecodes. However, it is diskette based (although it is possible to get it working in a hard disk or CFFA) and aside from some interesting historical context, there isn't much value in learning pascal on it. The above mentioned book is a great introduction and tutorial; combined with http://www.freepascal.org/ and you might make faster progress learning the language.
I hope I don't discourage you from trying Apple Pascal out, though. It really makes you appreciate what we have now and understand the foundations for many follow on technologies like Turbo Pascal, Java, IDE's, and virtual machines.
BTW, the Apple Pascal 1.1 disk images are available on the internet. The latest version, 1.3, is still sold here:
http://store.syndicomm.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2&products_id=32
Version 1.3 can be installed on a hard disk or CFFA, and it's hard to beat having the documentation.
Dave...