Turbo Pascal alternatives

[Bill (Smithville NJ)]

(02-23-2015 11:24 PM)Dave Britten Wrote:  I love those old pocket computers, even if the Sharp ones make it either clumsy or impossible to keep multiple programs in memory. The Casios make it a little easier with multple program spaces, though memory is still pretty tight.

Anybody ever used one of those Japanese Sharp/Casio pocket computers from (I think) the '90s? I see a lot of them on ebay, and the inclusion of both BASIC and C on most of them is rather intriguing. I think they were meant for use in CS classes.

Hi Dave,

Same here - I started out with the Sharp PC-1211, moved to the PC-1500A with four color plotter/printer, then added a PC-1250A and PC-1262.

Finally settled on the PC-1600. I have a bunch of memory modules (8KB to 256 KB) which gives me a file system and a way to save programs. Plus about 77K of basic programming space. Add the RS-232 interface cable and can easily save/load to a PC. My favorite part of the PC-1600 is that it has a Z-80 processor which my first personal computer had. So fun to program in machine code.

The Casio's have interested me also. Especially the Z-1/Z-1GR/FX-890P series which has a 16 bit processor and might be pretty fast. But I think it was for Japan only, so no English manual. But I did find an English manual that some one had written for it.

The other Casio that has always interested me is the PB-2000C which had multiple language modules - in addition to Assembly, Basic & C, there are the LISP, Prolog and the very rare Pascal modules.

Bill
Smithville, NJ