OpenEuphoria

Re: Writing an assembler

• Posted by Robert Craig <rds at RapidEuphoria.com> Feb 21, 2007
• 485 views

duke normandin wrote:
> Robert Craig wrote:
> [snip]
> > 
> > Wow. What memories!
> > Back in 1982, I worked at a company (now defunct)
> > called AES. Along with another guy (Al Matsuoka are you out there?),
> > I wrote an assembler for the Zilog Z8000.
> > (Why didn't they just buy an assembler? It's a long story.
> > They also built their own C compiler.)
> 
> Do you mean AES -- as in the dedicated word-processing machine c/w 8" floppies
> my secretary used and loved (more than an IBM Selectric) for years?

Yes. That's right.
That machine was a big hit for a few years.
It was designed and built in Canada.
It sold extremely well, and at the time I was hired,
they had grandiose plans for a second generation machine
based on a version of Unix, that would do more than word
processing. Eventually though, after a few years, the 
industry changed, and offices started buying general purpose 
IBM PC's instead of buying special purpose machines that 
could only do word processing. In a short time AES went from
being extremely successful to extremely unsuccessful. The project
dragged on too long and was dropped. Scores of developers were 
laid off, but a month later a dozen of us were hired by IBM to
develop a set of new compilers for the top-secret (at the time)
IBM RISC system. That's how I ended up at the IBM lab in Toronto.

Regards,
   Rob Craig
   Rapid Deployment Software
   http://www.RapidEuphoria.com