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The Apple II Source Code for the LOGO Language Found

posted by martyb on Sunday October 07 2018, @01:14PM   Printer-friendly
from the have-you-ever-programmed-a-6502? dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Adafruit visited the history of the LOGO "turtle graphics" language not long ago.

Now on Twitter, folks have found the source code for the LOGO program used on Apple II computers. Source on GitHub.

It turns out that the program was written on a DEC PDP-10 minicomputer running the Incompatible Timesharing System (ITS).

I'd take it that the code is in 6502 assembly and the program works the whole Apple II memory map for functionality. Did ITS have a 6502 cross-compiler or did the MIDAS program have separate target environments?

Very interesting programming archaeology – see the source code yourself along with the full PDP-10 ITS image still maintained today.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:27PM (4 children)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:27PM (#745509) Journal

    Back in kindergarten there were some Apple IIe machines in one of the rooms. First time I remember actually using a computer, rather than just banging at the keyboard on my father's when he brought me in to work one morning, was that one. And it was running LOGO. And I was one of those wise-ass kindergarteners who could handle 4-digit letters, and asked the turtle to walk 5,000 steps to see what happened. What happened was a unholy buzzing fan noise and then a field full of stripes, more or less.

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  • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Sunday October 07 2018, @05:36PM (1 child)

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 07 2018, @05:36PM (#745561) Journal

    4-digit letters

    I almost hesitate to ask what language and alphabet you were learning that had multi-digit letters.

    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday October 07 2018, @06:06PM

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Sunday October 07 2018, @06:06PM (#745566) Journal

      The one I remember before morning coffee, sorry @_@

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by canopic jug on Monday October 08 2018, @07:18AM (1 child)

    by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Monday October 08 2018, @07:18AM (#745846) Journal

    Clever.

    Moving a "turtle" around on the screen was all I ever saw it do, though I only took a quick look at it and had no one to show it to me. So I dismissed Logo as irrelevant because you could do way more with 6502 assembly if you had lots and lots of time and the skill. If you had less time and less skill then Applesoft BASIC had functions like HPLOT() and really, really slow gimmicks like Shape Tables. So I never saw the point of Logo but perhaps I missed something. What was Logo intended for and what could it do besides the turtle thing?

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @12:53PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @12:53PM (#745935)

      What was Logo intended for […]?

      From Wikipedia: [wikipedia.org]

      The language was conceived to teach concepts of programming related to Lisp