What This Primer Is

Introduction

This primer is for someone who has finished the Turbo Pascal course on this site. It does not teach Pascal again. You already know how to write a program with procedures, records, sets, files and pointers; this primer shows you how to do the same things in the Einstein's other Pascal, HiSoft Pascal - and what is different, section by section, in the order the Turbo course met them.

If you have not done the Turbo Pascal course, start there. Nearly every page here says "in the Turbo course you did this; here you do that", and it will not make much sense without the first half.

HiSoft Pascal

HiSoft Pascal was HiSoft's Pascal compiler for the Einstein, published by Kuma with an "Einsoft Approved" label on the manual's cover. The copy this primer uses signs on like this:

Hisoft Pascal for the Tatung Einstein
Version of 24 October 1984
Copyright Hisoft 1984.
All rights reserved.

There is no version number, only that date, so that is how this primer refers to it. Its manual, HiSoft Pascal for the Tatung Einstein Micro-Computer (1984), is on this site. It says plainly that it is not meant to teach Pascal - it is a reference to the particular features of HiSoft Pascal - which is exactly what this primer adds to.

The Biggest Difference

Turbo Pascal was one program: an editor, a compiler and a menu, all in TURBO. HiSoft Pascal is only a compiler. It has no editor and no menu. Writing a program takes three programs, one after the other:

1. XBAS - the Einstein's own BASIC - to type the program in. You type Pascal as numbered lines, just as you would type BASIC, and save it with SAVE "NAME.ASC". This is the way the HiSoft manual itself tells you to do it.
2. HPEIN - the compiler - typed at the 0: prompt: HPEIN NAME. It reads NAME.ASC and writes NAME.COM.
3. NAME - your program, a .COM file that runs on its own.

It sounds roundabout, and it is: the Turbo course's edit-and-press-R is gone. But every program you compile is a .COM from the start, and a small one - 3,584 bytes for a four-line program, where Turbo's Hello was 8,064.

What HiSoft Has That Turbo Did Not

Two things the Turbo course could not do at all. HiSoft Pascal has pictures - lines, points, circles and fills on the Einstein's screen - and sound, straight to the Einstein's sound chip, built into the language. They get a section each near the end.

What You Need

• Everything from the Turbo course's S2: MAME and the Einstein ROM, or a real Einstein.
• The HiSoft Pascal Primer disc, from this site. It holds the compiler, XBAS, and the longer programs from these sections. S2 starts it up.

How Each Section Is Laid Out

The same shape as the Turbo course's.

• What it teaches, and which Turbo sections it follows on from, at the top.
• The explanation, one difference at a time. What works just as it did in Turbo is not explained again.
• The code - a complete program, with Starting from and What you should see.
• Change one thing - small edits with a question attached. Many of them are "try it the Turbo way": the compiler will tell you whether it works.
• Exercises, with worked solutions in Appendix II.
• When it goes wrong - the failures we actually hit.

Appendix V is the whole primer on one page: each thing from the Turbo course and what HiSoft Pascal has instead.

Found A Mistake? Stuck? Want To Help?

All three are worth a message, and the last one most of all. Nothing in this primer has yet been tried on a real Einstein.

Next

S2, Setting Up - the primer's disc, and the compiler on the screen.